Sprint boots 1,000 phone customers for talking too much
So long, annoying people
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
Sprint-Nextel has terminated the accounts of its 1,000 most-annoying customers. After a recent internal review, the U.S. wireless carrier gave at least 1,000 people the boot because they've been making far too many calls to the company's customer care centers. Of course, the real shocker is that the company has agreed to waIve their termination fees.
The selected customers have until the end of the month to find a new wireless carrier, the Associated Press reports.
According to the company, each of these account holders has been phoning customer care "hundreds of times a month" for a "6 to 12 month" period.
"Over the past year, a small number of our customers - 1,000 to 1,200 – have made frequent calls regarding account information which we have been unable to resolve to their satisfaction, despite our best efforts," Sprint said. "While we have worked hard and will always work hard to resolve customer issues and questions to the best of our ability, rather than continue to operate in a situation that was unsatisfactory for our subscribers and Sprint, we chose to terminate our relationship with these particular customers to allow them to pursue other options."
Sprint goes on to say that these customers continue to hound support reps about account issues even after the issues "appear to be resolved." We can't speak for everyone, but here at The Register, we've often had disagreements with support reps about whether they've actually done their job. When this happens, all we can do is keep calling.
Of course, Sprint's announcement is good news for any of the terminated customers who are sick and tired of the service they're getting from the company. Sprint is cutting them loose without penalty fees - and they don't have to pay their final bill. Now that we think about it, 1,000 people must be very happy. Or is it 1,200?
In any event, a company spokesperson told the The Register that the decision "impacts less than 2/1000ths of 1 percent" of its customer base. And we thought no customer was too small.®
COMMENTS
"There are some customers out there who simply are unreasonable"
If you work in IT support role, that would be everyone then (BOFH taught me everything I know)
Mangled English
In the US, "impact" is sometimes said to mean "to have an effect upon."
Actually, if you visit http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/impact one of the definitions of impact is "to have an impact or effect on; influence; alter"
Indeed Sprint will Kill you!
I had exactly the same problem. I was a loyal customer for many many years. One day I thought "this is going so well i'm tired of writing them a check each month so i'll autopay the bill".... since the bill was exactly the same every month (with a few $$ here and there) I was not concerned. Three months later Sprint charged my bank account $674!!!!! They said that, when they added another phone to my contract (I got married) they accidentally set the new phone to be the main phone on the account, and then set that phone in a different "home region" (with the same Area Code).. Not until someone called to tell us they had had to pay long distance fees to call my wife did I know something was weird. When I had them check they said "no problem it's all fixed right now sir". It turns out that the second person wiped the plans out entirely so we were paying PER MINUTE for long distance calls for about a month and a half. After 2 months on the phone (without my money back by the way) they fixed it and said that they felt SO BAD they would COMP me a new phone at no cost (as mine was old at the time).. this was offered out of the blue, without me asking.
Guess what?? Next month they charged me a setup fee + $595 for the new phone... It took two more months, and asking to be given the phone number of their legal counsels office.. they credited me the money back.
At the end, Sprint overcharged my account by almost $1500 in four months. Then they wanted their Quit money when I quit because "when we gave you the new phone we renewed your contract"....
Everything anyone says about Sprint overcharging is true their have been class action lawsuits against them that showed that they overcharge almost every customer at some time because "most people won't call for a credit"... I believe they said at one point that they make millions in profits each month from false or over charging.
Nice eh? Bastards.... I live near Sprint and have a dozens of friends and employees that worked for them... they really are the most crooked mess of a company ever seen. I hope Nextel (which I hear is running the joint now) clears a lot of this up.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
Data control in the cloud
