Sprint Nextel and the troops
A number of readers have e-mailed me about Sprint Nextel canceling troops’ cell phone accounts because of “excessive roaming.” A commenter at the Sprint Users forum first blew the whistle:
I have been a Sprint customer for over 5 years now. Just shortly after my unit returned from Iraq, we rec[ei]ved notification that we would be redeployed to West Point to train cadets over the summer. With almost 1/3 of the unit being Sprint customers, almost 200 soldiers, one of the first things we did was get online and consult Sprints coverage map to ensure that we would have service once we arrived. We where relieved to see that we would in fact have service and did not take any preventive measures in making sure that we would be able to maintain a reliable means of communication to our families back home. The area we would be staying in was actually cat[e]gorized as having “best” coverage.
After we a[r]rived however, we [were] disgruntled to find that the service was not “best”, there was no service at all. A few of us that used Sprint[']s free roaming feature informed others of this service Sprint offered, and many called and enrolled. Even with roaming, calls are sketchy at best, and very unreliable, but we [were] satisfied to at least be able to call home for a few minutes an evening and let our families know that we where well.
And now comes the kicker. Many of us Sprint customers rec[ei]ved a letter at the begi[n]ning of this month declaring that our Sprint account will be cancelled on July 30th due to the amount of roaming we are doing. The letter stated that they believe that another carrier will be able to serve us better and that we are recieving the boot. Keep in mind, we are not here permanently, or by choice. This is a two month obligation that we had to fulfil[l], and because of it, Sprint is telling us goodbye. We will be returning to our home station, where we have clear Sprint service, FIFTEEN days after the cancellation of our accounts. I personally know at least 10 soldiers that called and explained this situation to Sprint and was told everything was fine.
Because we recently came back from a deployment to Iraq, many Sprint users bought new phones in order to catch up the updates in technology that we missed out on over the 12 months we spent out of country. As we all know, Sprint phones are not interchang[e]able with other carriers, and these are basically going to be very expensive paper weights for many members of the unit. I broke my phone on a training exercise, and did not have insurance on it, so I called to order a new phone. Sprint sold me a new phone at full price THE DAY that thier cancellation notice was mailed to me. When I ordered the new phone, I agian asked the sales rep about the free roaming, and explained my current situation, and was told that everything was fine, and asked for my credit card information.
This is the icing on the top as far as Sprint Customer Service goes. Why on earth I can[']t get coverage at the United States Military Academy, 40 minutes away from New York City is a mystery to me. I had a cell phone the entire time I was in Iraq with a middle eastern company. I payed LESS to call home and keep in touch from the other side of the world than I do now with Sprint to call within the country. It also did not matter if I was in a major city or out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, I ALWAYS had full coverage. Never had a dropped call, and the customer reps of that company spoke better English than those with Sprint do.
This is just step one, next I will be contacting every news agency I can get a hold [of], with the support of 200 to be canceled soldiers, and then my Senator.
ZDNet picked up on the story here.
I called James Fisher at Sprint corporate communications this morning. He wanted me to share this statement:
Sprint Nextel will not discontinue service for active duty military customers because of excessive roaming. As part of a general enforcement of the roaming policies that all customers agree to under our terms and conditions, we have contacted some customers about violation of those policies, due to excessive roaming. We understand that military customers may have unique circumstances regarding roaming, and we will not discontinue service for those customers. Any military customer contacted by us regarding excessive roaming simply needs to contact us to confirm their military status to have the roaming issue waived and to ensure continued service, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
Sprint Nextel is proud to be a strong supporter of our employees and customers who serve in the military and particularly honored to have been named by G I Jobs Magazine for the past five years as one of the “Top 25 Most Military-Friendly Employers.” For our military customers Sprint Nextel provides assistance to military personnel who are sent overseas into active duty. Instead of having to disconnect their wireless service due to deployment, military personnel are able to temporarily suspend their account for 24 months and keep their phone number at no charge.
Looks to me like Sprint screwed up, but responded quickly to Internet-fueled customer pressure. Let’s hope they keep good on their promises to military customers. If you are one of the affected customers, keep us updated.
***
Related: Sprint is not having a good week…
“Find another carrier!”
That’s the message Sprint Nextel Corp. sent to more than 1,000 customers in a bid to weed out habitual complainers who clog up customer service lines.
Consumer advocacy groups are calling it a case of David versus Goliath, while others say it’s a smart move to wipe out customers who cost the carrier more than they’re worth.
Sprint Nextel — the nation’s third largest cell phone provider — has decided to literally hang up on the 1,000 customers or so it deemed habitual complainers by canceling their accounts.
Sprint broke the news in a letter, telling these now-former customers that “the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs & after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service.”
Michael Tereul was one of the Sprint customers who received the Dear John letter.
“Customers service is there in the first place to help customers with issues,” Tereul said. “If we can’t call customer service, what do we do?”
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Let me share a secret thing that we Americans enjoy. If you don’t like a particular product or service, don’t use it. You have a choice. Go find another service.
Stop whining like a socialist.
Kudos to Sprint for a rapid response. However seems like the challenge lies in making that initial phone call to Sprint re roaming. Since Sprint knows which customers are Military why not elevate their customer service to the next level and anticipate this problem for our Military and have some way alleviate the problem once Sprint knows which customers are Military so our men and women defending our nation don’t have to deal w/this nonsense???
I can’t remember where I read this a few days ago (perhaps Ars) but Sprint was also contacting customers to inform them that their account was going to be cancelled because they called customer service too many times (something like 45 times a month). Sounds like our troops and those interested in customer service need to take their phone service else where.
Under normal circumstances, yes, you’re right. Except, we’re talking about our soldiers, who protect our freedoms and way of life.
Not so fast…Of course you can find another carrier, IF your contract is up…if not, the customer is forced to buy their way out of the contract, and in the mean time is also forced to put up with shoddy service…
What does socialism have to do with this?
It was on the wires yesterday:
Sprint Hangs Up on High-Maintenance Customers
These wireless providers can / should provide 400 free minutes a month to any soldier stationed outside of the USA. Any overages at a 50% discount and a 50% discount on any plan for those stationed inside the US. They give at least this much of a discount on their Goverment Contracts.
Can’t wait to see how bad they screw up the “Sprint Cup” series in NASCAR now that they have replaced the Nextel name from it. There is already one big lawsuit in the process of be settled because one of the drivers who was sponsored by Cingular wanted to change the logo to AT & T when they merged and was blocked from doing so. So far the team has won round 1 but of course there are many more to come. For those not aware no other tele communicatins company is allowed to sponsor any vehicles in Nascar’s top series since Nextel/Sprint took over. They made exceptions for those already in the series but will not allow any new ones.
Of course this story coming on the heels of the Verizon issue with them canceling service to anybody who lodges too many customer service calls sure isn’t making the wireless phone service industry look very good in the publics eye. Lets hope Sprint/Nextel keeps it word and doesn’t just do a phased withdrawal under the radar instead of turning everybody off all at once.
This is inexcusable. There’s no reason for this kind of stuff. I think military members need to tak their service elsewhere.
I understand they “apologized”, but it never should have gotten this far. These guys explained their situation to Sprint and were told that everything was okay.
Jim C
Time to go to AT&T and get an I-phone. Just don’t tell allahpundit at hotair.com.
There was a recent survey that showed Sprint topping the list of companies with bad customer service.
Any large corporation will have its share of idiots in middle management positions who are too dumb to realize the consequences of actions like these.
You have to hand it to Sprint for correcting the situation so quickly – or maybe they didn’t want a certain blogger breathing down their necks until they got things squared away.
Ah! The power of the blogosphere!
Sprint’s behavior is, unfortunately, not a surprise. Does anyone remember some 15 years ago when “Sprint Spectrum” phones and service were being pushed at every Radio Shack? Well, those things sold like hotcakes for a couple of years because they were the first cellular that didn’t have a lengthy contract and strict credit check before activation.
Well, Sprint knew that the system that carried the signal for those “Spectrum” phones was a short-term thing and would be going the way of the dinosaur, but they didn’t mention that to the consumer when they were plunking down up to $150 per phone. They sold those things up to the last minute knowing full well that the phones would be doorstops in a month or two or six.
I believe there was some kind of a class action suit and subsequent settlement. I remember receiving a check from them at some point.
Sprint is notorious for bad customer service. The customer service agents have given me more than once incorrect information. It sounds like that is what happened with these Soldiers. The agents kept saying it was okay, but they 1) either didn’t know what company policy really was or 2) didn’t bother to take the customer service one step further and make sure the accounts were flagged as military.
Sprint has always been lousy, but becuase it offers its services to those who cannot get service elsewhere, and I am not saying that is the case of these soldiers, but this is a truth regarding sprint. As well as their 2 year contract stranglehold that prevents you from changing service without putting out in some cases close to $600.00. That is a steep amount on a solider’s income, I am sure.
Yes, it is true, they can eventually cancel the service by waiting two years or paying the fee. But, is it too much to ask that customer service really mean customer service in one of the largest companies that offers this product?
Who are they kidding ? They didn,t care if they were in the military . Someone saw a storm approaching and got out of the way . Have to give them credit for that .
We did not go with Sprint because the service is too limited in the areas where we are and/or may wind up. We are with Verizon and so far we have had excellent customer service, and we can put several phones on one account so that when we are moving around our family can call mobile to mobile and there is no charge. Free minutes after 9PM helps when you have a loved on in Iraq (It’s early morning their time so it works out!) We also did the USB modem on our account so that we don’t have to transfer phone or internet… nothing is more awesome than portable utilities!
You do have to shop around and take action when you are not pleased, but believe me when you are dealing with deployment, details like this are hard to deal with. It’s not like you have the luxury of calling whenever you would like to in order to deal with a matter like this. If your training schedule keeps you in the field for a month then it’s just tough cookies. You can’t call in sick in the military to take care of private business like you can in the civilian world — nor can you count on an 8 hour day all the time.
Wasn’t Spint’s spoke persons the likes of Danny Glover and Whoop-dee-do Goldburg (and other leftists)? Glad to say after Danny-boy, I never chose Sprint again.
However, this is not surprising.
I’m glad Sprint has said they will fix the issue in regards to military personnel but don’t think they should be pulling this with any of their customers. I’d be really mad if I laid out the money for a new phone only to have the company not honor the contract that they are so insistent that every customer have.
I am not sure but I think the Army uses Sprint, they have a contract? The Army uses Dell for computers again I think a contract. I know my husband’s govt phone is a Sprint, he is in the Army, his govt computer is Dell.
You ROCK, Michelle. Thanks for drawing attention to this and getting Sprint to own up to their actions.
I like seeing free enterprise and free speech work toward a greater good for a change.
I’d be willing to bet that one reason that Sprint (Full disclosure: I’m a customer) is having all the “Customer Service” issues, and these frequent flyers is that they employ Pakistanis for their service line.
I just got a call from one last week who wanted me to change my plan. I finally had to say no in Arabic for her to understand (that would be “laH”, with a gutteral H; only one of maybe 10 words I know). I hung up on her three times on three seperate days because I couldn’t understand her awful attempt at English. I wonder if they want to cancel me, because they called me multiple times
Laree: Army has a comms contract that allows multple vendors. In your area, the Prime must be Sprint/Nextel. Dell is definitely a military favorite for non-hardened equipment. Gotta love the world of the lowest bidder!
Sprint, for a little while now has been working on their customer service…notorious for bad service. Their investors know this and it’s a big push to correct this (to appease investors which is of course a big deal). I think they see this issue and have done the right thing to correct this. The thing is, with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, the terms are the same as Sprint. If you are on these carriers, and use excessive roaming they will also give you the ax. And they are well within rights to cancel anyone’s contract based on the contract you agree to (for all carriers). The real problem lies in Sprint’s lack of coverage at this military base. And Sprint has done right to suspend these terms for military personnel.
As far as the discount, it’s not 50% it’s 27% (I know because I have it). And it is available to all military personnel you have have to call and ask for it (many military people don’t know this because you just can’t get it set up at the Sprint Stores.)
As for the people that axed for calling customer service too much, I say bravo. These people are why the wait time is so long and improving customer support is so difficult. The details released by Sprint says these people were calling 50x more often than the average customer. That’s almost twice a day! They also said that many of the calls were people asking about other subscribers accounts, not their own. I think Sprint is on track with the excessive CS people.
Just an FYI, what I do when I have to call customer service is always ask for the next level up. The first people you talk to only know what their computers tell them and cannot do anything about it. I’m told that the fact that more people won’t talk to these lower-level service reps is sparking more work at Sprint. Forcing them to increase customer service’s abilities.
Another FYI, get a business card from the Sprint Rep and sign up for Sprint service at their SERO site (Google it). No contract and cheap plans.
Also, as far as the NASCAR series goes. If I remember right back when it was a tobacco sponsored series, I think tobacco companies couldn’t advertise on cars either unless the advertised their non-tobacco related products? Don’t quote me on that but I heard that from somewhere…wish I knew for sure now.
You can still get another service if you are under a current contract. This ain’t a marriage. I can’t believe you conservatives are getting riled up about this. You guys usually accuse the left of acting this way and now you guys are doing the same thing.
This is what conservatism is all about…a free market, isn’t it? You guys are whining like you guys are slaves to Sprint. That is why I stated you guys are whining like a socialist.
Another thing that is special about America….
Companies CAN CHOOSE whom they want to do business with or with whom they want to market to. A pretty novel idea, isn’t it?
Now why don’t you guys go back to doing something important like boycotting Akon.
My wife and I had nextel service for awhile and sprint as our home phone carrier. All I can say is that sprint/nextel SUCKS!
Exactly!
But, these choices are not without consequences.
If anyone here were talking about bringing the government in to regulate the cell phone industry and force them to have this contract option or that contract clause, I’d agree that it wasn’t a very Conservative thing to do.
However, this situation involves a company freely choosing to cancel contracts, people freely protesting what they see as bad customer service and a company freely weighing whether it’s better for them to take the PR black eye and save the money on the roaming or to polish their image & make a bunch of current/potential future customers happy.
It’s the free market at work. It’s a beautiful thing. And there’s nothing un-Conservative about that!
On a different matter I spent over 90 minutes on the phone with Sprint this morning. I was transferred at least 8 times and they hung up on me once. When I finally got what I thought I needed the information was wrong and I had to call back, and was transferred 2 more times. Then I was transferred to an ‘Account Manager’ because they thought they were in danger of losing my business. Well… they are. The problem, it turns out, is that they changed my account number without telling me. So every time I inquired about something they’d transfer me to the wrong place. This will also make it difficult when I transfer my phone number to a new provider.
Remember what it was like dealing with AT&T before the break-up? That was easier than dealing with Sprint. And the original reason that I was changing to a new provider? Because Sprint contributes to Planned Parenthood for customers who choose a special plan. This treatment of our deployed military members is just one more reason to leave.
I’m gone.
Another thing, anyone complaining about not being able to get out of their contract with Sprint has an out…just call customer service twice a day for stupid stuff and then BOOM…freedom!
freedomamerie,
I would believe your “you guys are whining like a socialist,” IF they were advocating the nationalization of cell phone service, say like Hillary’s health care, or having the goverment intervene directly, say like the “Fairness” Doctrine.
Ah, I wasn’t even thinking of issued phones. I was thinking these were military personnel with private phones (that they took with them on deployment). If these were the military contract phones then I would hope that the Army would do something about it.
CNN won’t cover this angle……..they are just saying that sprint is dropping people that call customer service too often.