Sprint: When You Want Your Poor Customer Service Taken to a Whole New Level

WARNING: This post is dripping with sarcasm

Today I googled "poor customer service". The first link was a comprehensive, behind-the-scene look at bad customer service that only the news team at MSN.com can give you. Well, actually it was a simple, gimmicky article from 2007 that listed all the crummy customer service companies according to an MSN poll. (SURPRISE! The list included many MSN competitors!)

What did not surprise me was the company at the top of the poor customer service list. Whom do we Americans loath the most? Sprint-Nextel. How could something come from Kansas City be so terrible? Everything else- Carrie and the rest of the Cranes, college roommate Brad Borchert, delicious BBQ, Jazz, etc. has brought nothing but happiness.

All these pollsters did was ask people how they would rate the customer service. FORTY percent of Sprint customers said their customer service was "poor", while the second worst company (Bank of America- a company I feel that has MANY policies designed to suck extra money unfairly out of poor, stupid people like myself in college) only had 30%. Since the article is a year old, there is a 2008 update, and do not fret Sprint scraped their way into being only the third worst customer service company by improving from 40% "poor" ratings to 39%. How did they manage to turn this sinking ship around?

"The wireless carrier says it has stopped its automatic contract extensions and now rewards agents for solving customers' problems rather than for ending calls quickly."

How novel. Well, I still contend that they have a long way to go. I signed up for Sprint service this summer because they gave 15% discount to employees at Spherion, my employer. When I signed up over the phone, I made it very clear that the discount was the critical reason for me signing up. I was told that, unlike the flier I had read a mere 10 minutes beforehand, I could use the corporate discount after 2 billing cycles. Apparently clicking that computer button is too hard to do right away. Well, it has been five months, and I am still not getting my discount.

I called today again. It's the fourth round of calls I have made to their customer service to remedy this problem. After being put on hold, and I felt that putting me on hold was his strategy to get me to hang up, for 20 minutes, I was told that they had messed up my corporate discount request, and he would have to apply for me again, and it would take another 2 billing cycles.

Sprint embodies everything wrong in the world. Boy, this is the most cathartic blog I have ever written.