Adam had a question on his bill—either about the $9.68 adjustment in his favor, or the $102,861.30 they say he still owes, we’re not sure—so he decided to take advantage of their online chat. He writes, “Conveniently, they have a link that says ‘Questions about your bill?’ When you click it, it brings you to a live agent. This is a picture of our session.”
I want to point out the timestamps. Yup, that’s more then 6 hours from when “someone will be with me shortly”. And to think, when I connected I was only number 14 in queue!
Way to keep the whole world moving at Sprint Speed!
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Haha, that’s priceless. I wonder how many “are you there?” notices he pastes into the chatline in a day…
See they are using reverse psychology, sprint speed just means the opposite.
Oh and #1!
According to his bill, he recently made a payment of $214,000 ? Is he what they call a “power user”? I’d like to hear the story behind that payment of $214K… The story doesn’t really say if his bill is massively inaccurate, or if he is in charge of the Sprint bill for a company that has something like 4000 cell phones.
It seems to be SOP for all companies these days. I had to call ReplayTV yesterday because we kept getting messages that our service was about to be cut off (for no reason). I was number 41 in the queue when I called in. Checking their website, I found an address for Tech Support and emailed my question to them instead. What did I get back “Sorry, we no longer provide tech support by email”, please call our ‘Customer Support’ number… I don’t think they have any right to even call it ‘Customer Service’ any more.
@CharlieInSeattle: First fail
Oops, wrong blog.
@CharlieInSeattle: Well, passing stuff the President wants without questioning it is now called “decisive leadership,” so your mileage may vary.
That real sadness to all of this is that Rocky may not have known how long the customer was waiting.
This may have been outsourced to another nation.
If Rocky did know how long the wait was – he certainly should have acknowledged it in his greeting
Thank god i don’t use sprint, I would have a heart attack if i got a bill that high.
I’ve noticed the companies with the worst customer service are on one of two areas:
1) An area where if you cancel, you have to pay a termination fee, your entire balance at once, or results in some other large hassle (e.g. chaning banks). So, credit cards, mobile phones, banks, etc.
2) Areas where this is a quasi-monopoly (cable, phone, etc.).
Someone put a FAIL logo on that and forward it to the appropriate website.
They were busy doing magic tricks… “Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat.” (1960s cartoon reference…)
Not sure this is legit. I agree with others on this board questioning why he had a payment of $214,000. Something is just weird here. The screen grab also looks like an amateur job of cutting and pasting a Sprint logo onto a timestamp.
@gmss0205:
Agreed. Still funny though.
I can tell you for a fact that these chats are not handled by Sprint. They are handled by a company in Concord, NC called Connextions. I used to work for them and was a Supervisor on this account. The people they have running these chats are the worst people you would want poking around in your account.
They pay them 10.00. Some of them have serious criminal backgrounds. Would you feel safe?
$102,861.30?! Jeez how much phone sex does one really need?
@snoop-blog: If you have to ask…
actually it’s 6 hours 9 minutes… and to think, i wouldn’t have waited the 9 minutes!
@gmss0205: Perhaps he’s responsible for paying the bill for a corporation?
YO ADRIAN! I DID IT!!
Hhehehehe, coulden’t resist!
Maybe the timestamps are wrong? It’s not really clear from the post’s description that the user waited in front of his computer with the window open for 6 hours.
It’s fairly clear that he/she didn’t wait, else there might have been a response from the OP.
Maybe he paid ahead on his bill……
[consumerist.com]
After about 20 mins of no answer i would have called them on the phone. And the screencap sould have the full program used to do this. It looks like a mac screen ? And who keeps a program running for 6 hours ? Maybe they had that on a tab and forgot ? And from the sprint end why did it not close it after about 60 mins ?
@MyPetFly:
That trick never works!
I called Sprint today and got connected within 30 seconds. *shrugs*
@Human947:
Yup, the OP was me. I had logged in to my Sprint account and saw the total due. I knew it was an error because my normal bill is like $120/mo. I was on my home computer (which is a Mac btw, good observation!) and you’re right, it was in a tab that I forgot about until I came home that night. I guess I just thought the chat timed out. Later I got it adjusted to my normal monthly rate. Apparently I was moved to a new billing system and this was a glitch.
For anyone else, the ammount due was real and not modified. It was just a glitch in sprints billing system.
Something tells me this was an error. I wonder if similar results would be seen if they exited out of the chat and started another session request.
@adster: I would have thought the site would have timed out too. Verizon clocks you out after 30 minutes of inactivity.
a stuck computer task…. just like a webpage that will not load. It could be at either end. Let’s grow up and move on.
@Dr. Chim Richolds:
“This time for sure!”
“Wrong hat!”
People still use Sprint? There’s your problem.
@JustaConsumer:Having unlimited 3g, text messaging, and 500 minutes a month starting at 7pm for only $30 a month is a problem?
<3 Sprint
<3 SERO
I wonder who Sprint uses for their chat service, is it LivePerson? I do customer service chat, and my system usually will only make a customer wait I think about an hour before it tells them nobody’s available, and hangs up on them.
And yes, we can see how long they’ve been waiting, but we don’t check it, and wouldn’t say anything about it, because would it really make a difference?
Hey um….not that I’m defending Sprint…but what occurred here was (likely) a browser issue. The same thing happened to me last week. I’ve used Firefox, Explorer and Safari to try and chat with Sprint. One of these browsers doesn’t work with their system. (Sorry, I forget which one) I just picked up the phone and got someone in under 5 minutes. Just sayin’…
Ah! Just saw adster response. Yah, I was on a Mac at work. That might be the issue. Hmmm.
i can see the scenario:
dude waited and waited… gave them 6 hours of his life waiting online, went to take a crap for 5 minutes, sprint rep joins, sees no response, and left.
that’s just wrong, sprint, they should see how long the customer waited and should have at least reciprocated the patience.
You’d think they’d give a customer who brings in so much revenue VIP service. Maybe this is fake and just a smearjob by AT&T.
His internet probably disconnected
Who remembers the “are you nucking futz” thing from a while back?
I work on the phones for Sprint, not the Live Chat, but even I have to say “WTF?”
Pretty sure that’s an anomaly and not the norm. Even still…
Unless this happened some time in May or earlier, then it wasn’t related to Sprint’s billing system conversion. Definitely had to be a glitch, though, and glad you got everything resolved.