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Sprint To Customer: "Are You Nucking Futs?"

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Reader Pam asked Jessica if she could port her landline to her mobile account, prompting the Sprint CSR to respond: "No, are you nucking futz?" Pam wasn't expecting an abusive chat when she visited Sprint's website to research a potential contract extension, but Jessica unexpectedly appeared with advice that wasn't just rude, but also wrong.

UPDATE: Sprint's "Nucking Futs" "Jessica" Fired

Pam writes:

I've been a Sprint customer for two and a half years. The contracts on two of my three lines are up, and the third will be up in a few months. I've seriously thought of switching to another carrier, but now that Sprint is offering the unlimited plan and saying that customer service will be improving I've considered staying with them and giving up my landline altogether. Money talks, and Sprint IS less expensive overall.

I went to Sprint's website to get more information about the unlimited plan. I've also heard that in some areas a landline number can be ported to a mobile provider, so I wanted to look in to that as well. How convenient that a chat box popped up almost immediately and a representative offered to help me! I don't do online chats like that much, but on a whim I typed in my question.

If you were wondering how dedicated Sprint really is to improving customer service, take a look at the most impressive, helpful and friendly response I got back from the chat representative. I took a screenshot (which is attached) just because it was SO awesome and I knew that other people would want to know about the NEW and IMPROVED Sprint! Thanks Jessica, your answer told me everything I ever needed to know about Sprint's new dedication to pleasing customers.

Thanks Sprint!

http://consumerist.com/images/resources/2008/04/New%20and%20Improved%20Sprint-thumb.png
Federal law compels your landline carrier to let you to port your number to Sprint. The process could take up to 10 days, but it's entirely doable. The only question is, why would you want to port your landline to a carrier that thinks you're nucking futz?

This is a test using rich text formatting and html links. It's the generic "company" ad that should appear on all posts with the Company category if they don't have an ad attached to a specific company.

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Comments:

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cmcd14
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Seems strange, Sprint haxed?

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@tripnman: don't you mean cucking frazy?

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I don't know about that. I vote either hacker or Photoshop.

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/em mashes his fat fingers helplessly on the keyboard looking for the edit button then wanders away looking for his drink

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Maybe it was Jessica's last day. Although in that situation, I would have gone with the full-blown obscenity.

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Maybe Pam signed up for Sprint service under the name "Nucking Futs," and the Sprint representative was just verifying her identity.

--Dohn Joe

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@DrGirlfriend: If it's real, I vote profanity filter workaround.

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Well, normally I find a lot of those sites send you a chat transcript if you entered an email address... chances are someone will look at it if it's real.

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And the sad thing is this "jessica" person will probably face no consequences for her actions.

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Photoshop seems awfully likely here.

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Interestingly enough, when I was poking around Sprints website today for something of the same reason, I had that chat window pop up, and the name there was "Jessica" as well.


My thought is that its a bot, not a live person, and Pam's collection of keywords hit a response the programmer's stuck in there that was never supposed to be seen by the customer.

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"Jessica" is Sprint's name for all their chat agents. If you stay on a page long enough the chat comes up and it's always initiated by good ol' "Jessica." Either that or "Jessica" is the only chat CSR they have and she works REALLY long hours so of course she would be a little touchy after awhile.

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Maybe Jessica is a AI Bot. They do go crazy sometimes like the Santa AI Bot that liked oral sex.

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Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do silicon based chat reps fear virtual unemployment? Discuss.

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@sprocket79: Nope, it's not. Just the other day I chatted with "Shella" and "Missia." They aren't bots, but they do copy and paste a lot of pre-written answers.

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@sprocket79: Same with AT&T. I know it's stupid, but it really bugs me to be harassed by Jessica every time I'm on their site.

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@Bramble73: Well, unless it has been fixed by now, your theory should be testable by someone who has Sprint since we appear to have the entire chat in the screenshot.

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+1 for the person who coded that response into the database

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That would have totally made my day.

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@MyPetFly: Not everything is a fake, you know.

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Real, fake, correct or incorrect response on the part of Jessica, that is hilarious.

Certainly doesn't make me want to do business with Sprint, but I would totally hit on Jessica in a bar.

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@male roof blower: Agreed. If this "Jessica" is just an A.I bot and this was a glitch, than others here should be able to reproduce the same thing.

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Nope... no way it's faked.
Jessica and Carey sitting in a tree, T - E - X - T - I - N - G. ;)

(My apologies for not bothering to find out what the exact font is. 9px MS Serif seemed close enough).

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Has anyone else tried asking the op's question again? See if lightning strikes twice?

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@marasolo: I tried. There was no chat button on that page, but that might mean it's not available at 12:07am PST. I'm sure someone will try tomorrow or Monday.

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Just FYI, if you know how to print screen, then you probably are smart enough to know how to photoshop that text.

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@MercuryPDX: Looks like this is a fake then. This should be the headliner instead....or a contest of who can photoshop the best line of Jessica's response.

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@youbastid: Hmm... well I can honestly say I've always had "Jessica" when the chat window has appeared on Sprint. I actually just checked again a little while ago and sure enough, the name was Jessica.

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This looks shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.

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first of all, a sprint CSR would have to be from the united states to make a comment like that. since we know all sprint CSRs are from india, this is simply impossible.

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I do more than a little Photoshop here and there, and I don't see any sign that this is 'shopped.

Judging by other places where they appear, the kerning looks correct on the characters (means it's probably not a "kidnap letter" style text assembly) and I don't see any stray "halo" pixels that indicate a sloppy cut and paste.

That said, I could probably reproduce this in Photoshop. Easiest bet would be to type the needed text on your line (either in this or another chat) so you get it in the right font, then recolor text from blue to black. Since the dialog background is pure white, it'd be a pretty easy copy/paste job.

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@Macroy: I must ask: Which pixels look wrong?

The pixels in the full-size, lossless image look perfect to me. The anti-aliasing with subpixel rendering is impeccable and consistent with Firefox's default. It's not Photoshop text.

Now sure she could have hacked the system somehow. But I'm content to accept that Jessica has a mouth full of potty Spoonerisms.

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On the other hand, someone who knows how to use a Firefox theme might also know how to modify the rendered page. Can GreaseMonkey pull off this trick?

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@Michael Belisle: Or simply using the Firebug extension to edit the rendered HTML

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Once I hung up on an MCI phone rep and he called back later in the day and left a message on my answering machine calling me a bitch. It was sort of unbelievable. Especially because I had caller ID and the guy hadn't even bothered to block the fact that he was calling from his internal MCI phone number.

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@skitzogreg: not true - my mother hasn't even mastered copying text, so she print screens EVERYTHING.

and in any event, i've personally mastered the print screen, but can't even crop an image, much less photoshop one!

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The vibe I got from this was that "Jessica" has idiot friends who somehow had the chance to type an answer under her name (like if they were near her computer and she stepped away and the computer automatically opened a dialogue with a customer) and thought it would be really funny to say something horribly inappropriate. Or maybe one of Jessica's coworkers hates her and hacked into her username to get her fired. That's just my guess; I find it very hard to believe that the actual employee would type that unless they wanted to be fired.

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Is that really their interface? It looks like Prodigy Classic.

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I want to know what Firefox extension that is in the top right hand corner!

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that didn't quite work out as I expected
direct site [addons.mozilla.org]

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@Propaniac:


lol you have never worked in a call center have you? I did for a short period of time they have a 30-40 percent yearlt turn over in a lot of places and some of the things I've seen and heard nothing suprises me any more.

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It's not like she isn't giving good advice.

You must be nucking futs to pay Sprint money if you've seen the shit they pull.

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Are You Nucking Futs? Good god man, this is going to be the catch phrase of the summer! Catch the nucking futs wave now!

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@dlynch: What? Sprint/Nextel has some small rollover facilities in the Asia region (none in India) but the OVERWHELMING majority of support requests are directed to North American based call centers...

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Jessica is obviously a David Spade fan. Which speaks volumes about Jessica.