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As the new FISA bill—the one that grants retroactive immunity to wiretapping telcos—moves closer to a final vote in the Senate (and a threatened filibuster), Ars Technica looks at the money. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint donated double the amount to House Democrats who supported the bill than to those who opposed it. [Ars Technica]
The results of the Harris Interactive survey that tracks the reputations of the 60 most visible companies in America has been released and here they are: Google is tops and Halliburton is not. Not shocking, but there are some interesting findings. Honda is the only car company to make the top 10, and Comcast, Sprint and Northwest Airlines are the least well-regarded in their respective industries.
If you’ve ever received cell phone spam, you know how infuriating it can be—especially if you pay by the message. David Pogue of the New York Times recently got hit with a spate of junk text messages on his Verizon plan, and he figured out how to block most of them. If you’re with AT&T or Verizon you can block any messages sent through the Internet, as well as change your text message address to an alias to thwart number-guessing spammers. Sprint will let you block specific addresses. T-Mobile lets you block email messages and set up filters based on specific phrases. Login info below.
Sprint doesn’t charge Uncle Sam an early termination fee if he decides to get out of his cellphone contract early. Why? USAToday reports:
If Sprint’s goal was to appease their increasingly angry and increasingly departing customer base — adding 5GB per month data caps to their “unlimited” laptop data cards was not the best way to do it. People don’t like getting stuck with useless hardware. It makes them mad.
We get a lot of questions and complaints about the cellphone shopping process, so we thought we’d put together a list of 5 things consumers say to cellphone sales reps that they really should just keep to themselves. Enjoy.
Some people think the BBB doesn’t work. They do, but only if the company cares about keeping a clean record. See when you look up a company in the BBB database it shows you how many complaints have been filed against the company, how many were answered, how many did the consumer report as being satisfactorily resolved, etc. So if you have a valid complaint, file it with the BBB, and the company cares about its BBB record, you have a decent chance of getting a solution. You might not believe it, but it turns out Sprint is one of those companies. Here’s Kevin’s story of how the BBB got his erroneous text message charges refunded and let him leave contract early without early termination fee…
This is Round 46 in our Worst Company in America contest, Blue Cross Blue Shield vs Sprint!
Sprint thanked Ryan for his tour with the Navy by charging him $0.75 per minute for airtime, resulting in a $500 bill. When Ryan complained, Sprint’s customer service representatives called him irresponsible, and gently explained that they couldn’t care less about his problem.
A leaked internal Sprint memo says that the company will be placing limits on the previously unlimited EV-DO mobile broadband data service. If you go over 5GB per month total or 300MB/month while off-network roaming you will be subject to extra fees. Two Sprint employees writing on Sprint user forums vouched for the leak’s authenticity. Now Sprint will no longer be the only carrier to offer actually unlimited 3G service. Somehow I don’t see CEO Dan Hesse bragging about this move while strolling through black and white cobblestone streets.
Companies spend a lot of money on marketing, but ultimately, a brand is what people think it is. Meet Brandtags.net — a site where you can tag brands with one word or phrase that best represents how you feel when you see their logo. It seems that Dell has its work cut out for it–some of the top tags people are using for that brand include:
Sprint is hemorrhaging both money and customers as it searches for a way to stop the financial bleeding. The company lost $505 million in the first quarter alone, and watched helplessly as over a million of its customers defected to other wireless carriers.
Reader Richard says he came home this summer to angry parents “because of our sprint bill with the family share plan was insanely high.” Of course, it turned out to be the same typo we’d written about before, but we really enjoyed the polite but firm manner in which Sprint asked Richard’s parents for $39,952… “today.”
Jessie opened his Sprint bill and nearly had a heart attack. Staring back at him was in big bold letters: COLLECTION AGENCY ALERT. After recovering, Jessie looked at his bill and nearly had a second heart attack. It said the amount due was $32,669.00. Huh? Had his cellphone been hacked? Used as a call-home payphone for a neighborhood of Tajikistan émigrés? Used by NASA as a Space Station communications channel? Take a guess and then see the answer inside…
Interesting, completely unverified, tidbit from an anonymous Sprint employee: “We’re no longer allowed to quote the customer in our notes [on the account] because if they’re subpoenaed by a judge then they’ll be evidence proving they’re telling the truth regarding their situation.” Any Sprint insiders care to comment?
This is Round 28 in our Worst Company in America contest, Sprint vs Hewlett Packard. Vote which sucks more, inside…
Robb spent almost two and half hours with Sprint CSRs trying to find out why his phone had stopped working, and eventually he was told that it had been ported to AT&T, and that it would “take 4-5 days to try and get this number back if at all.”
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