On July 10th, 2007 at 12:41 pm, Laree said:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

Peejz said:

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?

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.

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.

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!

I like seeing free enterprise and free speech work toward a greater good for a change.