Sprint announced Monday it was canceling the accounts of around 1,000 people who called customer service too much. At first blush, it might sound like a pretty jerk thing to do, have bad service and then punish people who complain, but we spoke with one of our most reliable Sprint insiders, who had a different side to the story: the terminated customers were scamming Sprint, calling in again and again, just to get free service credits.
CONSUMERIST: How frequently did someone have to call to get terminated for calling customer service too much?
SPRINT INSIDER: 90 times in a 6 month period was the standard I think.
CONSUMERIST: Were they calling about the same service problem?
SPRINT INSIDER: These were the customers that had nothing to do but call us every single day demanding credit. And they were getting it because customer care was getting exhausted from arguing with them. So a nickel at a time these customers were collecting literally thousands of dollars in credit balances.
We were targeting people that were just outright defrauding the company. These customers will probably eventually force their future service providers to take similar action if they do not change their ways.
CONSUMERIST: One reader said he got canceled because he kept calling you because you were charging him for text messages he shouldn’t have been charged for.
SPRINT INSIDER: I can’t really get into specifics on an account, BUT… I will re-direct to what I mentioned earlier…These customers were for the most part literally defrauding our company. Not just a courtesy credit or two… We’re talking customers that haven’t made a payment since 2005 and still have active service. Customers who were getting better deals than our own employees get for their own personal accounts. These weren’t the customer care horror stories we’ve heard where a billing issue drags on for 8 months. This was just unrealistic amounts of credits and at the end of the year we were LITERALLY paying these customers to use our service.
CONSUMERIST: That’s pretty amazing, considering people have been emailing us this story all week saying, “Don’t complain too much to Sprint about their crappy service or they’ll cancel you.” PR wise, it spins very badly, very quickly.
SPRINT INSIDER: Most of these customers are just looking to make a scene and want their excessive credit balances sent in a check. And that’s just not going to happen. We are considering every request on a case by case basis. We absolutely will not terminate a customer who had a reasonable claim for calling in. But the ones with the $5k credit balances… they’re going to hear us say no. It’s a harsh decision but it really makes sense to almost anyone who knows both sides of the situation.
CONSUMERIST: Of the 1,000 or so that were terminated, how many are calling in?
SPRINT INSIDER: Haven’t seen any reporting data yet but by the end of the week I anticipate most of them.
CONSUMERIST: They’re sad the video game is broken.
SPRINT INSIDER: Ten months of calling customer care and telling us how badly they hated us and threatening to cancel to get more credits… And one day we say, “Okay. We’ll credit your balance, waive your contracts and you’re free to be happy.” And then they don’t like the ink the letter was written with. Kills me. I’d be devastated if I got a letter like that from a company I do business with. But if I hated them I’d gladly walk away in a situation like that.
PREVIOUSLY: Sprint Drops You Because You Call Customer Service Too Much
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@spincycle0: T-Mobile is great, but sparse coverage and slow data plans. But customer service rocks. I hope they do well with the latest spectrum auction!
There’s a moral to this story:
Always listen to BOTH sides before making judgment.
I wonder if part of the problem is people who expect the cellular service they want not the service they’re promised in the contract. Anger may come from dashed expectations that aren’t too real to begin with. Sort of an “I want my steak well done” then complain when it isn’t tender and juicy type attitude. I’ve actually heard of a senior executive in the mid 90s who kept his IT department in fits because he wanted a PC that would take “simple” voice commands “you know, like on Star Trek.”
This thread is about Sprint so there are many comments about how bad Sprint is. I read another blog about an AT&T problem and many posters talked about how bad AT&T is. If I found another blog post about T-Mobile, Verizon, or some other carrier there would be comments about how bad they are. Are there no good cell phone service providers in the USA?
Sprint still sucks. that’s why i got rid of them.
@tentimesodds: Yeah, something is not adding up here. CSRs memo accounts and it would quickly become clear when a frequent caller is credit-fishing. There is no way they would continue to issue credits, courtesy or otherwise, to a customer with a credit balance who has received numerous adjustments. If they do, it’s their own fault, and they should have to cut the customer a check. A 5K credit balance strikes me as a figment of your “insider’s” imagination. But boy, it did have me feeling sorry for poor Sprint. Those darned customers, such a bunch of loser scam artists.
Not paying since 2005? Hell I would’ve canceled their serve back in 2006…
@tcp100
if the problem is simply that i’m eating up 100% of a voice circuit because there is more information in a modulated signal.. that is definitely not my problem. i’m being sold a circuit by the minute, and just because i don’t normally use all that bandwith, they can hardly complain when i do.
@kcskater
i can believe there is another box in there because of architecture problems due to ma bell culture. the phone should be able to function as a modem. if it requires an extra piece of equipment to do so, then i still blame sprint, for having sold me a defective/closed/locked phone, rather than having open networks, open phones, and thereby having the phone function as a modem being a no-brainer.
I call BS on this “Sprint Insider” story. The CSR’s have access to the persons account. They can see if they have a balance or not.
So now we are to believe that Sprint will credit your account over and over until you get a $5000 credit?
I don’t even believe anyone got a $5 credit balance. The CSR can see if multiple credits are being given and even the most stupid amongst them can see they are being played long before any real amount of credit builds up.
This is BS. The Sprint rep states “We’re talking customers that haven’t made a payment since 2005 and still have active service.”
I bought 2 new phones through their service reps at 100 a pop and was 2 days late for my $50 bill. They cut off my service – total owed – $250.
If someone hasn’t paid since 2005, I find it hard to believe they haven’t shut their service off.
Sprint Customer Service blows donkeys. If you actually can get thru theres a 20 min wait and then a transfer to someone else that “can” help you. I gladly paid the early termination fee to go back to tmobile.
And I wasn’t even all that concerned with the spotty service either.
@mind
First off, you agreed not do use your phone as a modem when you signed up for your service. See Terms and Conditions. [nextelonline.nextel.com]
Control F modem and it will take you to the relavant info.
Like tcp100 said, “You’re bypassing all of the voice compression and bandwidth reduction methods used by Sprint. This is why they don’t like it, and why they charge you more – you’re eating up their single-cell capacity at that point.”
And if you still want to use these services they have data plans available that range from $39.99-$49.99 for unlimited access. That is still cheaper than trying to pirate the service.
Secondly, if they were charging you for minutes then you were going about it the wrong way. There are several ways to get around Sprint “catching you” for doing something your not paying for. The reason your getting billed is because your making it obvious that your using the service and the way that you are connnecting just happens to be the most network intensive. Your eating more bandwith than your plan was designed to cover.
I actually applaud The Consumerist for posting this story. Most other media outlets are just repeating the scammers’ complaint without any balance whatsoever. ZDNet’s Larry In-Dignan-t is calling for a BOYCOTT of Sprint, for chrissakes.
In any population of hundreds of thousands of consumers you’re going to get a percentage of people who “game” the system. If it’s true that Sprint sent out 1000 letters then I’m sure they didn’t catch all of the scam artists.
Did any innocent people get caught in the dragnet? Possibly. That’s why they had a number you could call and apparently (from ISLNDBOI’s post) they actually listened to him, took a look at his account, and reversed their decision.
But if you think the bulk of these letter recipients are “poor, innocent customers” I suggest you look around on the web a little bit. There are dozens of sites and bulletin boards dedicated to “hacking” Sprint customer service. They tell you how to get employee pricing when you’re not an employee. They list the discount codes available to customer support reps. They provide “scripts” to follow when calling in. Direct lines to the retentions department.
(How many of these people are finally getting their stated wish to have service cancelled?)
All of the sites advise you to be persistent. Keep calling. Keep writing emails. Keep pestering them until you find the employee who will give you the service credit you want.
And there’s plenty of people on them bragging about how they got this credit and that credit, free unlimited texting, free PowerVision, service discounts… it’s a SPORT to see who can get the best deal!
So I’m having a REAL hard time finding where people are working up the righteous indignation over this. They reset your account to zero dollars. They waive the ETF. They give you 30 days to find a new victim (I mean, carrier). They provide a number you can call to talk to a human being about the issue. And they don’t stonewall; they’ll change their mind if you’re a legitimate user.
I don’t see any foul here. I’m a lot more upset about AT&T facilitating warrantless wiretapping and handing private calling data over to the Bush administration. I’m a lot more upset about Verizon marketing “unlimited” data plans that are anything BUT. (And when Verizon terminates you for streaming TV on your Treo they make sure to bill you for it!)
Bravo, Sprint!
@humphrmi: We see one letter to a particular consumer. We don’t know to what extent the form letters were customized. Perhaps Mr. $5000 Credit received a different letter. (And he would have been an idiot for going to the media with it, as it would have been the ideal situation for Sprint to expose him for what he was.)
Having been part of management at several ISP’s I can tell you there are people who game the customer service system and do indeed find ways to rack up substantial credit balances. I have to agree that it’s Sprint’s fault that they allowed anyone to get up to that level — they should have ended the relationship much sooner. But when you have thousands of customer support reps, some of them outsourced to foreign countries, verus a determined, savvy user who peristently calls in and has the resources of multiple web sites telling him the most effective techniques with direct phone numbers, I can easily see it happening.
Good thing I e-mail them with my problems.
I feel that e-mail is always a better option when talking to CSRs. It’s just easier to get your point across with all the details.
I have been a Sprint customer for about 6 years now and I have a ton of freebies that would otherwise cost extra. Free 500 text messages, free Sprint-to-Sprint, 20% discount for working where I work, 10% customer loyalty discount. After all my discounts, I pay $35 a month!
I feel the service is pretty good, I get a dropped call maybe 2 or 3 times a month.
This is why I stay with Sprint.
I signed up for a 2yr contract in june. in july when i get my 2nd bill, i see that i am being billed month2month. [the first bill didnt show all the charges]. i call the Cust.service. put on hold for 20+ mins. then the sprint cust.rep said i wasnt on any contract!! and i could terminate without any ETF. but i am sure that if i do so, there will be a letter asking for ETF within 2 weeks.
also when i signed up, a cust rep gave me 6pm nights+weekends for free. thats what i thought. not so. it showed up as 10$/month charge [prorated] on my 2nd bill.
i had asked for the 7$ insurance [TEP]. the bill showed that i was being billed 7$, but the cust rep said she could not see it on her system. she put me thru to the insurance company[ sprint uses a 3rd party insurance company] the insurance cust.rep asked for my details and then said i was never enrolled in ANY insurance plan ever!!
so here i was being billed for what i was told was free[6pm NW] + being billed for a service i wasnt given [insurance] + being billed for month to month inspite of being on a contract. in correcting all this, i have spent hours n hours on the phone [ more holding than talking ,though] . i have a total of $70+ of credits to my account, all in less that 35 days of signing up. then the cust.rep has the gall to say ” you already have so much credits”. I didnt ask for credits. Sprint made mistakes. To correct it, they HAD to give out credits. then they turn around and say this.
so in total:
Am on a 2yr contract, but i still get to pay month2month !
they can bill u for a service but they dont have to give it to u !
cust reps follow different versions of company policy, which changes every time i call?
even yesterday i was on the phone for 2+ hours. still my bill is showing extra charges.
but i will not give up. i will keep calling them every time there is a problem.
if i get a termination letter, so be it. but i will not take this lying down.
I signed up for a 2yr contract in june. in july when i get my 2nd bill, i see that i am being billed month2month. [the first bill didnt show all the charges]. i call the Cust.service. put on hold for 20+ mins. then the sprint cust.rep said i wasnt on any contract!! and i could terminate without any ETF. but i am sure that if i do so, there will be a letter asking for ETF within 2 weeks.
also when i signed up, a cust rep gave me 6pm nights+weekends for free. thats what i thought. not so. it showed up as 10$/month charge [prorated] on my 2nd bill.
i had asked for the 7$ insurance [TEP]. the bill showed that i was being billed 7$, but the cust rep said she could not see it on her system. she put me thru to the insurance company[ sprint uses a 3rd party insurance company] the insurance cust.rep asked for my details and then said i was never enrolled in ANY insurance plan ever!!
so here i was being billed for what i was told was free[6pm NW] + being billed for a service i wasnt given [insurance] + being billed for month to month inspite of being on a contract. in correcting all this, i have spent hours n hours on the phone [ more holding than talking ,though] . i have a total of $70+ of credits to my account, all in less that 35 days of signing up. then the cust.rep has the gall to say ” you already have so much credits”. I didnt ask for credits. Sprint made mistakes. To correct it, they HAD to give out credits. then they turn around and say this.
so in total:
Am on a 2yr contract, but i still get to pay month2month !
they can bill u for a service but they dont have to give it to u !
cust reps follow different versions of company policy, which changes every time i call?
even yesterday i was on the phone for 2+ hours. still my bill is showing extra charges.
but i will not give up. i will keep calling them every time there is a problem.
if i get a termination letter, so be it. but i will not take this lying down.
Sprint’s side of this would be a lot more believable if they were not dead last in customer service and #1 in churn rate. They’re a lousy company and they will very likely now have an even worse reputation.
ERAN9000 – “A really gutsy move to cancel 1000 customers at the same time. As the old cliche said that ‘the customer is always right’, I guess Sprint was sick and tired of that motto, and took care of it. Based on the stats, it was simply a smart business move. It should be applauded.”
It’s not really a good move at all. Imagine the number of potential customers they will lose because of their now further tarnished reputation.
This is the strange thing about this whole company vs. customer control struggle; in the end the company loses. If you provide bad enough service, and the spiral always cycles downward, then you lose enough customers that the profits you made from bad service are eaten up. Suddenly the company realizes they have to change in order to make money again, but by then the positive reputation is gone. Meanwhile, the customer has moved on to a company that meets their needs.
Sprint decided to pull the plug on 1200 of its customers who complained too much (including some soldiers, oops). Man. Did the company not realize the letters would end up on the web?
When I heard that Spring was canceling the accounts of folks who constantly called customer service, I thought it was just another boneheaded company doing another boneheaded thing.
well i am personally a sprint customer and i havent called and gotten the free service i actually deserve, i have had nothing but SH!T7 service since i started and personally i think they are getting setup for a giant lawsuit. personally i could su because of the fact that they lied about 5 times in the contracts.
so what happens when they drop the people, do they still have to pay the cancelation fee??
After following the woes of current and cancelled Sprint customers, I’ve yet to see one issue addressed:
If Sprint cancels a customer, what happens to (the customer’s) number?
Federal law says that numbers must be portable to other services, but I’m uncertain if that covers “fired” customers.
How about it?
@quoteable
if you read the sprint letter it states that the customer has 30 to find service elsewhere and that they can take their number with them
@mind:
you said
“they readily give out credit to make up for a crappy billing system.”
I would expand to “they give credit to make up for the crazy internal systems they have in general”
I have been with sprint for a month, and probably made 20 calls, trying to straighten out details of my account. The first thing was that they were unable to activate my phone because they “could not find me in the system”. When they finally did activate it,(took 3 calls) it turns out they had erased my original plan, and added me to a new one which had no data plan.
I had to email to get the erroneous data charges erased (credit). And then I found out they claimed my phone was active when It hadnt been. (credit)
Then they offerred me a credit when I was going to throw in the towel because the phone they sold me was inadequate.
I have stuck with them because their data coverage is better than any other provider in my region.
I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would call my phone company 20 times in a month. That is until I met sprint. well – its one way to drive up minutes used…
Most people who call Sprint need to make a payment or had a son/daughter who discovered text messaging. Or that child got the phone and got spongebob squarepants, the cell phone game. A minority are technical concerns.
Therefore when the updates with the system take effect- like the ability to lock your phone, like the ability to stop the guy with your cell’s internet with only a button- Sprint will be happy.
Untill then, we do not wonder why companies do not upgrade systems to better systems. We know they just prefer what works. And they save themselves development costs.
Too many times I have seen someone from a different cell company transfer their service, and not keep their number.
This happens when an error locks the number on an old device or when that company gives the number to another person. This can happen when the person has not been with them for 6 months. And the new carrier gets the blame, the person goes back to the old carrier, and justice fails.
The worst thing is that if there is an error and the account is closed, apparently the fixing of the error is halted. And this occurs in nearly all carriers.
So believe the technician who says it will be a while. It is better than never.
I’ve read a lot of the comments and most are quick to condemn the complainers. I’m sure that some of them are people trying to scam Sprint. But I am also sure quite a few have legitimate complaints. That these people ended up with thousands of dollars in credit is Sprints fault. You have people who are tied into a contract that Sprint purposely makes difficult to break. The user may find that after they have had service for a while a dead spot appears. They let Spring know and Sprint does nothing. So the customer keeps complaining. Instead of fixing the dead spot, Sprint just keeps crediting the customer. What they should have done is offered the customer the opportunity to get out of the their contract at no cost. That would not have given them all the bad press they are getting.
I would have to disagree that about the comment about that Customers were getting better deals than employees get for their own personal accounts. because you an I know that employees get their services for free don pay anything cer,zip,nada!’how can ytou say that some of this customers where ghetting better services, employees get everything free excep their cell phone with they have to pay, but then agaim employees gett upgrade their devices every yearm unlike some comsumers get stuck with a contract and with devices that aren’t worth having sales, Sprint has some weir rules for customers but employees that dont pay for services have all benefits availble, im talking about unlimited web,employees dont pay tha $10 for the premium data that Sprint force customers to pay! its unfair dont you think and many employees take advantage of that and not only have one free line but they fins the way aroun to get a free lien for their spouse, mom.dad,sister,brother,son ro daughter so the ones that end up paying is the consumers last year,m sprint when after this employees that had more than one free line active, if they were over company compliance why were they not fired? many were aable to keed their jobs. for me it was like they were stealing money from the company. but Sprint makes the consumer pay, $10 for premium data, .45 cents a minute on overage, casual data charges if your not on a data plan,late fee if your payment is past due, I can go on and on.
Hmm. From my experience with Sprint, MCI, and AT&T–the consumer is probably justified in whining. All three companies made faulty charges on my account during the 90s (before I moved out of the US to Europe). AT&T still owes me over 900 dollars. MCI owed me 540 dollars, but because they were under FCC investigation in 2000 and 2001, I was able to get excellent cooperation from their VP of Finance who acknowledged their mistake and refunded the money. The other telecoms simply ignored me and I was so pleased to be rid of them that I never bothered pursuing the issue after I moved. I suspect that these companies still owe millions of consumers millions of dollars. How often do you all actually check every line item on your bills?