Sprint Cuts 1,000+ Customers For Excessive Complaining

Source: News 4 Jacksonville

Hundreds of cell phone customers are being given the boot, accused of being too high maintenance.

Sprint-Nextel is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers on grounds the clients call customer service too often and make "unreasonable requests."

The 1,200 people getting dropped will have to find a new carrier by the end of the month.

A Sprint representative said the average customer calls customer service less than once a month, but the 1,200 clients getting the boot call 40-50 times as often.

Read more: http://www.news4jax.com/news/13650557/detail.html

I wonder if Bush is going to drop us with half the nation complaining about him.

"Who cares what you think" and "The anti-war crowd is just a focus group" - Monkeynuts

harass customer service for a couple of months.

That seems to be the message.

which makes one think....why are these 1200 so bad that no one wants them?

I had bad service with my prior cell phone company...(I could not get service at my own home very well)...they apologized they tried to help but in the end I weathered the contract...

I got a new cell service with a new company and now I wish my cell phone didn't work at home...

I was joking and it may seem like a silly waste of time but if you're locked into a contract and not getting satisfaction it's probably worth it rather than putting up with bad service for months on end.

two calls a day and the waiting on hold...and then being moved to at least two different people before they commit to any call back.

In my case my service was good except for where I live (in a valley)...the guy with the cell company came to my house and verified it...they gave me a discount until my service contract ended...

Some customers are more trouble than they are worth...

Many times, they are flat out wrong but will continue to demand that you accomodate them. After a while accomodating them becomes cost-ineffective and you sever the relationship.

there are some people who are never satisfied and never happy...

and there are folks who think that they can get something for free ...so they harass you until you give them things just to make them go away...once they get something for free...look out...

I had a client once who bought something for $2000...he had spent months deciding on our $2000 product versus our $25,000 product....he wanted the more expensive product...but would not pay for it.

He sent tons of letters to our sales group...with question after question...and when he finally settled on the cheaper product...we were happy to have the sale ....BUT...in one of those questionaires...he had gotten a more inexperienced sales person to say that the $2000 product did something that only the more expensive item could do....

Guess what...he called every day to harass the sales group....and they gave him the $25K product for no extra charge to make him go away....and to this date he makes everyone miserable...

and when it broke down after about 10+ years and 170,000 miles she was SCREAMING to the dealer: "YOU told me this would last forever!!!!!" SHe wanted that car to literally last forever and because it wasn't without a lot of replacememts parts, she was threatening the dealer. She was red-faced telling me the story; I thought she was going to stroke out in front of me. She was utterly irrational.

I had a "customer" once who kept complaining to the CEO about one of our products. After spending a considerable amount of time trying to understand the problem, he mentioned that he hadn't actually bought it, but wanted service anyway because his company bought a lot of other products from us, so we should keep him happy.

In my profession, I was shocked to see conferencwe classes and articles in the trade journals, dealing with how to dismiss difficult clients

is not true.

Yes, the company should drop those people. Those people however had no choice and had to stay with the company or pay big penalties.

And you agree to the terms.

If you're a very confident person, you can try negotiating the terms to something more of your liking.

If more people told the contract sellers, "I don't like your terms," and walked away from the deal, we'd see better terms offered.

for my cellphone company. I told them I wasn't interested in paying it and I'd rather not sign up for their service -- the customer service lady canceled it right on the spot.

And you are completely right.

.. I don't want to pay higher phone bills to service someone who is abusing customer service. If they are so unhappy that they feel the need to call 50 times a month, they should go elsewhere anyway.

he worked in the billing department.

There were folks who called and complained constantly.

Some of them were so rude that if you accidentally referred to them by their first name...they would call another department to get you fired for not referring to them as Mr. XX or Ms. ZZ, meanwhile these folks were not paying their bills on time in many cases.

...They could easily have attached some kind of usage charge to customer service after a certain number of calls from the same user.

Bad business. Bad company.

Sorry, but sometimes you need to cut customers loose.

This doesn't sound too unlike the case where Best Buy banned certain shoppers because they would constantly buy products and then return them for refunds or store credits.

...stay with Sprint and pay those charges or find another carrier would be the customer's.

This would be much more professional than literally saying we don't want your business, go away, and would likely result in Sprint's retaining some of these customers who would modify their behavior to avoid the additional charges.

High maintenance, pain in the ass, customers get assessed some kind of charge or fee directly connected to the pain in the ass behavior is the best way to handle these situations.

Likewise, with Best Buy they could track returns as a percentage of total purchases and if that percentage gets above a certain level there could be a return fee attached to discourage this behavior. Again, whether to modify the behavior and become a reasonable customer, continue making many returns and paying the fee, or taking one's business elsewhere is left to the customer.

Unnecessarily driving away business is foolish. People will often come around and start being more reasonable (a decent customer) when they see fees and costs directly associated with their unreasonable behavior.

This, of course, does not apply to extreme cases where some nut case is making threats of violence or something of this sort. These are matters for the police.

that I would love to drop in a heartbeat.

Folks that do not know how to do their jobs who make my life miserable at times.

One person who constantly called me about a project she was working on was pissed when I told her that she had exceeded her contracted support with our group and that it would be $200/hr for any further consulting...I had records of every call..eventually her boss called to bitch me out...but when my boss showed her the records that this woman had called every day for four months and sometimes 2-3 times a day...and the topics we discussed...the boss fired her employee because she was actually not supposed to be doing that and...this was a special project that was not to be discussed outside that company's walls...which proved that I had been doing her job and that she was unqualified...

I have been lucky to have good bosses who stood behind me in these cases...

No complaints from customers because those who complain are no longer customers

They must have been pretty damn bad if a company is willing to get rid of money like that.

Spock once said: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

Sprint couldn't continue to justify the expense of continuing a customer service operation just to hold the hands or bear the assault of a few customers to the disservice of the rest of their paying customers.

As much as we hate corporate America, you still have to consider the act of doing business and the goals of business.

there seems to be a couple of different messages going on here. Anytime I call a coporate customer service line I get jerked around constantly. this is one of the main reasons I do not have credit card or deal with anything corporate period. since the article doesn't describe what the company determines as excessive complaining, It is hard to know exactly what is going on. It is bad enough that any corporate company has become nameless and faceless with no one taking responsiblity, but then to tell people that they complain too much and will be dropped is so incredibly dangerous. You pay your money for a service and something doesn't go right, you could be dropped as a customer. BS.

That means you're calling more than one time a day on average and that you're not giving people a reasonable period of time to reach a resolution to your problem.

Since the average is actually under once a month, I found out that Sprint claims these 1,200 average 25 contacts a month not 40-50. Sprint is known for being completely shitty customer service, and practices that are complete crap. Actually this also means the average Sprint customer calls Customer Service 8 times a year, which seems very high, I have had T-mobile for 4 years and never called them ever, maybe it's because Sprint sucks.

Personally I think this is so shitty, that people should call their 800 number and ask why they are breaking contracts and not paying these customers money for breaking it.

:eyes:

I've worked in customer service for a number of years, not with Sprint though, (currently I'm with a major credit card company) but I can tell you that for every lazy asshole working the phones there are 100 who are happy to have jobs not outsourced and sincerely want to help customers. I'm one of them--and I seriously don't appreciate when an irate customer is cursing me out AS I AM TRYING TO ASSIST THEM. I've never once raised my voice or copped an attitude with a customer. I've never done anything but acted with integrity, professionalism, courtesy and respect not just because that's my job but because as a liberal and as a person, that is how I believe people ought to be dealt with. I offer empathy, apologize, and try to find a solution. Where I can't find one, I send them to someone who can. Despite that I can't tell you about the sheer level of abuse people hurl at me on a daily basis. I have been called everything from a stupid cunt to a cracker to a nigger to a raghead to a bitch (my professional voice is so perky and non-descript no one can pick out my true ethnicity, apparently), told to go fuck myself, literally screamed at, had sexually obscene comments made, ad nauseum. My job sucks but I do it because for every asshole like that, I get people the woman who called yesterday who was fleeing an abusive husband that put her 20k in debt, and I removed him from the account, changed the address on file to the safehouse she was going to, and got her copies of her credit reports so she could shut down the other accounts he falsely opened in her name. People that literally cry in relief when they get off the phone with me because I made their lives just a little bit easier and gave them some peace of mind.

There is a certain subset of American consumers (a minority to be certain) with an unbelievable entitlement complex; they want it yesterday, they want it free, and they don't want to have any strings or responsibilities attached. They behave like spoiled, overgrown children. They're bullies, as as someone who's dealt with bullies from the time I was a four year old in pre-K and had my life basically ruined by them, I don't take kindly to them being rewarded for their shitty behavior as adults. I applaud Sprint for doing this and wish more companies (including mine) would take the lead.

Please don't mistake this for blind support of corporations; I hate them and I wish I didn't have to work for one, I'm inside the beast to try to do as much good as I can precisely because I know about the shit that goes on, including at my own company. What I'm saying is, too often people blame the pawns when they ought to be concerned with the bishops, kings and queens. The poor woman or tired 20 yo father of three you call up when you dial customer service has absolutely zero control over corporate policies. Hurling abuse at them accomplishes absolutely nothing except making the human being (yes, we are human beings with mortgages and car payments and children and significant others to support, too) on the other end of the phone feel like shit.

I work in a call center too. We have a set of customers who's accounts are marked because they're either screamers or chronic callers. They call and bitch and complain over the least little thing. I don't know where they get the time in the day to do it. They must not work or have any other responsibility.

I hope these people got a lesson from Sprint cutting them loose but I doubt it. They'll deny any of it was their fault. Then they'll go to Verizon or T-Mobile and harass the reps over there, just because they're borderline psychotics who should be on meds.

Know what I mean, Vern?

for a competing company.

She was just promoted to line supervisor, which means she gets passed all the really wacko calls.

Many of the calls make absolutely no sense. They're phoning because:

• their favourite TV show was cancelled (reminder: it's a cell phone carrier)
  
• they're phoning someone using their landline and they won't answer (reminder: it's a cell phone carrier)
  
• their power was cut off (reminder: it's a cell phone carrier)
  
• their cell phone service was cut off because they haven't paid their bill in six months (NO SHIT, SHERLOCK)
  
• they don't understand how to dial a telephone (if you can't dial, how did you reach this number?)
  
• they hate cell phones (but they're calling on their cell phone)
  
• their phone doesn't work (but they're calling on it)
  
• the CIA is making calls on their phone
  
• space aliens have infested their phone
  
• the phone is changing the channels on their TV
  
• the phone is making them do things
  
• they want a refund for a year's cell phone use because one call was hard to hear
  
• they want a refund because they dialed a wrong number, repeatedly, day after day
  
• they want a refund because they dialed dial-a-porn, repeatedly, day after day
  

1,000 sounds low for that size of company.

And Sprint should pay its share!

Seriously, Sprint has the worst customer service in the world. Their billing and collection policies are (or were) outrageous. Once, after they withdrew unauthorized money out of my checking account and told me it would take 3 weeks to correct, I had my cell phone service dropped by one of their representatives just to spite me (yes, I was irate, but not any worse than the jerk on the line). He fixed it so I had to go to a Sprint location to get it back (could not even reach Sprint customer service; a major inconvenience, but not as bad as being stranded out in the boonies, and lost, trying to find a location for a business meeting.

Sprint is the absolute worst! I've been with AT&T/Cingular for a few years now, and they have been great to deal with.

Absolutely true.
A few years ago I was working for a cctv/security alrm company.We got a contract to upgrade the security alarm and camera system.I could understand upgrading the alarm system as the existing ones were old and starting to malfunction.
However the all we were doing with the security cameras was adding additional cameras,none of which were focused on the obvious places like cash registers and merchandise.All of the new cameras were being focused on the customer service desk.
After upgrading a few stores I got curious and asked a sprint manager why we were covering a non-cash or merchandise section of the stores.
His answer surprised me.
It seems that irate customers were actually getting violent with the customer service reps.They were putting the cameras in to catch them on tape so they could be prosecuted.
After listening in on a few customers complaints I could understand why the were flipping out.Sprint was fucking them over in a myriad of ways and then basicly telling their customers to fuck off.
Fuck sprint.

Crap! Those phone company guys are really hard-nosed!!

I'd dump them too.

By far, no contest. I had one delightful fundie woman (I know she was fundie because she gave oodles of cash to the freakin 700 Club every month with her card) call me a fucking whore when I wouldn't waive her 9th consecutive late fee, and she told me to kiss her ass when I offered to change her due date to something that would be more convenient for her.

They believe that the world "owes them."

so that they can go it at&t to get an iphone.

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I'm sure another carrier will be happy to pick up the 1200.

You're talking about 1200 customers out of a nearly 20 million strong customer base. If these 1200 were so bad that Sprint doesn't want them anymore then I'm sure no other company would want to be saddled with these constant complainers.

I'm in KC and have Sprint pcs service. They have been trying since the Nextel merger to increase their customer service. This will only help them. Maybe now I can get through when I need help.

They (sprint customer service) used to call me at 7:30 AM on Sundays, once a month, two weeks before my bill was due, to harass me. They would call up and try and corner me into letting them know when, and where I was going to make my next payment.... and they were rude. It was awful. I ended up getting a t-mobile phone, (which I am very pleased with) and just letting the contract run out. Never again will I deal with them.

have such whiny customers. Or maybe if they started providing some good customer service.....Now there is a concept.

I worked for in customer service and people would call daily, and you could tell they had nothing better to do. Or they didn't know any better because they were mentally challenged. Usually we'd tell them to make all requests in writing and hang up.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/10/ap3901076.html

Reacting to news that Sprint has told about 1,000 customers they will lose their wireless service on July 30, the New York State Consumer Protection Board suggested the carrier pay those customers $200 each - the amount the customers would have had to pay if they had prematurely ended their two-year contracts with the company.

Elsewhere:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/07/sprint-gives-ne.html

"These customers were calling to a degree that we felt was excessive," explained Sprint spokeswoman Roni Singleton in an interview with Reuters. "In some cases they were calling customer care hundreds of times a month for a period of six to 12 months on the same issues even after we felt those issues had been resolved."

IOW, Sprint was paying more in labor costs on those customers than they were taking in.

as well.

Customer service usually involves dealing with lots of unhappy or confused people. That goes with the job. If you're good, you're able to keep your cool and actually help both the customer and your company's rep.

If you're more interested in poor you, you're not likely to do a good job. You need to be a diplomat, with a long fuse, to provide proper customer service.

The company also ought to look at the reasons people are calling. Are they not communicating things well to the customers? Is there a way to educate people better and therefore avoid more calls? Are their policies bad enough to make for angry customers? Would it be better business in the long run not to be sneaky about things?

I don't understand the purpose of a contract between two parties that one party can break at will, and the other must pay a penalty to break.

We can't cancel because of their crappy service, so they shouldn't be able to cancel without penalty for canceling!

there comes a point where the hits to employee morale just are not worth the customer's business - THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT

of customer service is to help customers.

There are some you won't be able to help. But if employee morale is suffering, I think there's a case to be made that the employees lack sufficient training or the right attitude.

Personally, I'm getting more than a little tired of dealing with snippy and rude "customer service" reps. (And always after three-zillion phone prompts).

I've seen it for myself - how about a guy who calls and rants about having to talk to "n***** reps"? No rep should have to put up with that sh**. The rude reps you refer to just might perk up a bit if the chronic f***tard customers are eliminated - not to mention the reps would have more time to deal with the regular folk that call.

But as a business practice, and as a legal matter, Sprint should have to pay to break the contract.

In cases like that, it should be worth the money in order to spare its employees from truly abusive behavior.

They knew how to play the system. Probably got plenty of credits too, just to get their ignorant asses off the phone.

Sprint owes them nothing.

Your job is to maintain a level of professionalism that puts you above whatever petty stuff the customer says. I have had customers call me all sorts of things, even threaten to hunt down my family and I stood tall and dealt with it.

Your job is to let them vent for about 30-60 seconds and then see if you can help them with their problem. If a supervisor is needed, fine, if you are the supervisor you do what you can. There is no way to please everybody and there is always a chance you can lose a customer.

I don't particularly enjoy taking abuse or spending the whole day arguing with people but after a particularly stressful call I put the phone on ACW (After Call Work), take a deep breath and let it go.

Personally though, even with the angriest most insulting customer I have found, letting them vent, empathizing with their situation and stressing your interest in solving their issues to your best capabilities goes a long way in diffusing the customer and having them leave your call much happier than they were beforehand. The calls you turnaround actually are very rewarding.

Rp

(in the property tax section) and I found the same thing. Customers were actually very happy that you were willing to listen to them and attempt to help solve your problem. Sometimes they just call to vent about policies and just getting someone who will listen was enough. I ran into very few that I couldn't placate.

That's dealing with someone who goes into the exchange assuming you won't listen and/or don't care about helping them.

And when these idiots tie up the phone lines and screw up the rep's Average Handle Time?

These people are most likely NOT ones with legitimate complaints. They're chronic whiners and bullies. If they're not calling their cell phone company, they're probably calling cable, or the electric company or somebody who has to sit and listen to them because they have no choice. They tie up the lines and keep people with REAL problems from getting through to someone who can help them.

One more beer-swilling swaggering Texas asshole thanks me and the Almighty that I speak English and am not in India, calls me "little lady" and then cusses me out because we didn't re-instate his promo APR despite the fact that he's late EVERY MONTH and refuses to sign up for automatic payments or take advantage of the 15 billion other payment options we have available and then proceeds to declare he's a citizen of the Yoo-nighted-states and is going to sue us...I'm hanging myself by my headset from my cubicle.


Can you tell I had a bad day today? :cry:

where all the outsourced customer service reps are working.

You can't understand a damn thing that they are saying.

understand the foreign customer service reps.

will have an ad stating they are the company with the least customer complaints.....Look for it soon....
I do thank you
Ben David

I'm sure many companies would love to do this but they don't because if it gets out, it could hurt business.

It will be interesting to see how Sprint fares after dumping so many customers in such a majorly public way.

I'm glad I'm not with them.

(By the way, the word on the street is that Sprint has absolutely horrible customer service.)

...and Nextel has been no exception. I dropped Nextel for lousy service and my sister did as well.

I found this survey interesting--it mentions Sprint as having the worst customer service:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/TheCustomerServiceHallOfShame.aspx

(I'm not sure if I linked correctly)

:rofl:

I was a Sprint client for over 10 years. A few months ago, while paying my bill online, I mis-keyed my payment. I misplaced the decimal. By A LOT.

By the time I realized my mistake, the payment had already gone to Sprint. I spent the next three months trying to get them to give me back money THEY ACKNOWLEDGED I had overpaid. Despite agreeing that the excess was in my Sprint account -- and that there was really no way other than my having paid that amount to them that it could shown up there -- they refused to refund my money without providing them copy of my bank statement that showed the payment in question. (Incidentally, I had to spend two weeks explaining to them that I had paid via EFT, not a check. And that was why I couldn't send them a copy of the canceled check.)

They lied to my bank. (I have a copy of the email where they did this.) They lied to the BBB. (I have a copy of this email as well.)

And for those of you saying, "Why didn't you just send them the statement?" I did, but not until I knew I could redact any portion of the statement not pertinent to that transaction. My bank actually sent them a copy of the transaction where I paid them, and they said it wasn't enough. How dare any business demand access to my personal financial information?

And during my sojourn in the bowels of Sprint "Customer Service," I was denied access to the Billing Department. The Billing Department where this should have been solved. And they will never allow you to speak to the same CS person twice, so every time I called about this matter, it was starting at square one.

By the time I got to Billing, I was at the end of my rope. I finally found one sane person there who would allow me to redact my statement -- NOT THAT I SHOULD HAVE HAD TO SEND THE DAMN THING TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE! They admitted the money was there. They admitted that it was obviously had to be a keying error on my part. They admitted that the money didn't come from someone else's account. (As if there was any other reasonable explanation for the money being there.)

I finally got my refund. And I dropped Sprint the day after I deposited their check. (Amazingly, it didn't bounce.)

During my super-fun time with Sprint "Customer Service," I went online and did a "Sprint Sucks" Google search. Not only was I not the only one that this had happened to, but the length and breadth of Sprint's lack of any customer service is shocking.

Hell will freeze over before I use Sprint again. They are lying, evil sacks of shit. And I doubt that the people they're dropping were just folks that couldn't be satisfied. They were probably customers who couldn't get decent CS from Sprint.

They claimed I was roaming too much, despite the fact my home calling area is a solid sea of orange on their coverage map.

Although I got a manager to aknowledge the problem was that Cingular wasn't maintaining the old AT&T towers and I was roaming on T-Mobile because of it.