siknerd.com - Home of the World Famous iRANT

'Nerd vs. Sprint--the battle continues.

I am appalled by the lack of customer service in this country. Really, the consumer is totally screwed. There's nothing he or she can do thanks to bureaucratic red tape, insane polices, and stupid dumbfucks employees (perhaps this is the most glaring example of how America's education system is failing our children). And the worst part is we--as Americans--put up with it. People just don't see to care. If others really were bothered by it, things would change (we speak with our wallets). Am I the lone voice--the one person willing to stand up and fight for what is right?

Sprint's customer service sucks. I've heard it many times before from many other people. But after experiencing it firsthand, I must say that those complaints are highly understated. I'm furious right now--truly steaming with anger. I've been treated poorly before by friends, enemies, and the occasional disgruntled coworker. But never in my life have I been treated so poorly by a company.

Well, maybe eBay.

I signed up for Sprint like three weeks ago. I picked my phone online and signed up for a plan. Unfortunately, that phone didn't work for me so I had to jump though about a million hoops to get it exchanged.

Two weeks ago today, I got the right phone--a phone I wanted. It came with all the gadgets and gizmos I needed. But from the very beginning, I noticed an extremely short battery life. Last week, I was on vacation and truly wasn't able to gage how severe the problem was. But now that I'm working and have a semi-regular schedule, I am better equipped to determine how short the batter life is--and it's downright pathetic.

The past three days I have yet to get eight hours out of a charge--not even a full workday. I unplugged my phone from the charger when I leave for work at nine. I notice the battery is usually dead before five.

Now I know I'm not exactly the hardest working guy around, but a cell phone battery should be able to last an entire workday. What makes my situation even more pathetic is I hardly even used the phone (or does that make me pathetic). One day, I made a 40-second phone call to check my voicemail. The other two days, not a single call.

Before I knew how bad the problem was, I called Sprint up. I told them last week my battery life seemed awfully short. I was still figuring out the phone and wasn't sure how bad the problem was. I was given hints to close the web browser on my phone and make sure I didn't have any IM programs running. While this was an incredible inconvenience for me (what good is a gadget phone if you can't do gadget-related tasks), I did what they suggested only to discover it didn't help. I must've called Sprint regarding this issue at least five or six times (at a minimum of 30 minutes per incident, I've spent more time on the phone with Sprint than The Girlfriend). Nobody could come up with a solution that seemed to work.

Monday night, I was presented with a solution that appeared to have teeth. The rep told me that Sprint would issue me an extended battery. Notes were made on my account and all I needed to do was go to a Sprint store to pick it up. A fair solution that sounded like it just might work.

Today I went to two Sprint stores and both gave me the same response: they didn't have the extended or regular battery in stock.

That was incredibly annoying. I decided enough was enough. I called Sprint (from one of the stores demo phones, of course--my battery was long since dead). This had to be resolved right here. If the store was out, then I wanted Sprint to mail me the battery. If they needed to talk to the store, so be it. But by being in contact with customer service and the store, I knew neither one could brush me off to the other one (as they had done in the past).

I talked to four or five different people over the phone and they all gave me different answers. One guy said he would get me an extended battery only to discover they were out of stock for a week or two.

"That won't help me now--my battery isn't lasting a full day."

"You could buy a car charger," he suggested.

"A) I'd need to be in my car for that to work. B) What kind of solution is that? Sprint sold me a phone that doesn't hold a charge and now I'm supposed to fork over another 30 bucks for a car charger?!?!? I don't think so. Besides, I have only two weeks to opt out of my plan or I'm stuck in a two year contract with you. I need to make sure all of my phone issues are resolved before I get stuck with a phone that doesn't hold its charge."

"If you're worried about the phone being dependable, you should sign up for our Total Equipment Protection."

I started laughing. Talk about being a trained monkey. Extended warrantees weren't gonna solve my problem. I realized this guy was a tool and asked to be transferred to someone else who could help.

If I had to wait two weeks to get a battery, that was something I could live with--after all, if they didn't have; the didn't have it. But I wanted more. At this point, I had been waiting in the Sprint store for 45 minutes. I had been on the phone for a half hour. When you consider all those other times I had to wait, I had probably wasted close to six hours of my life. I wanted restitution. They could give me a car charger. They could give me accessories. They could knock a few bucks off my bill. I didn't care. I had spent way too much time dealing with this issue with people who didn't seem to know what they were talking about. If Sprint was willing to throw in a car charger, it'd help with a temporary fix and show they were genuinely sorry for all the time this was taken me. Plus I needed reassurances that when I did receive an extended battery, I'd still have the option of canceling my account. After all, if it didn't solve the problem than I needed a different phone.

Basically I needed someone who could do something--someone who could provide answers and make it happen. Instead, I got�

A woman who also thought I should buy a second battery.
A woman who thought I should exchange phones.
A man who said I needed an extended battery.
A severe case of complete and total frustration.

At that point, I had spent 90 minutes on the phone. The Sprint store had closed and shooed out all of its customers a half hour ago (they were forced to stick around because of me). Plus, there seemed to be no definite resolution to my multitude of problems. The frontrunner was getting a new phone and I was okay with that. But I still was not happy with the way I was treated. I explained everything I had been through to a supervisor. I told her that my time meant something to me. That I've put way too much of my life into a problem that shouldn't be that complicated--that could be solved with better employee training and problem-solving plan. I told her that I thought I was entitled to something for my time. That Sprint had done nothing but jerk me around. It cost them nothing to leave me on hold forever--it cost me my life. I had walked into that store at 7:00--two hours ago. I thought I was going to be quick because that's how it was explained to me over the phone. That I wanted to go eat dinner when I was done and the restaurant I was going to was probably closed (okay, the grocery store was out of fried chicken). It was the right thing to do. Accessories, text messaging, a credit to my bill--anything to show me the Sprint cared.

She wouldn't do it.

She said she couldn't--it was Sprint's policy. She could offer a genuine apology but that was it.

"You can crap in one hand and apologize in the other but at the end of the day, all you have is hand full of crap," I said to her.

The woman wouldn't budge. She kept repeating herself over and over. I demanded to talk to her supervisor and she insisted that there was no one higher than her.

"There has to be. There has to be someone who can give you raises or fire you--there's someone higher than you unless you own the whole company."

She offered to give me an address. I could write a letter.

"That doesn't solve my problem. Letters get ignored."

"They won't ignore your letter."

"Even if they do respond, by that point my trial period is up and I'm stuck in a two year contract."

She was getting annoyed. I wanted to talk to someone who could do something--she clearly was a woman who didn't want to do anything.

"I thank you sir for being a loyal customer and since there's nothing more I can do for you I wish you a good night."

"DON'T YOU DARE HANG UP ON ME," I screamed. I was probably a few seconds away from her dumping me. After eBay hung up on me, I certainly wasn't gonna allow it to happen again. No business should ever hang up on its customers--not when the customers isn't being belligerent or threatening. Every possible step must be taken to allow the customer to hang up on his terms. "If you can't help me, let me talk to someone else--another supervisor on your level."

So I spoke to someone else. I'll give this guy props for being more personal than the usual corporate drones, but an amicable solution was not reached.

He immediately said a new phone would not solve my problem. The battery itself was terrible on that phone for everyone who had it (something I coulda told you a week ago). Jose said he had the same phone and didn't go anywhere without the charger because battery life is so poor. He offered to get me an extended battery and could have it to me in a couple days.

"Jose, it's nice to talk to someone who is capable of getting things done," I said to him. And then I asked him for restitution.

"Restitution," he asked. Clearly he didn't know what the word mean. I gave him the same lengthy speech I gave the other gal. That I felt like Sprint didn't care about me. That I've been jerked around. That I've wasted too much of my life trying to solve this problem. That if that battery was an issue from the get go, their employees needed to know that so people like me didn't hafta jump through hoops to fix it.

But he wouldn't budge. He said that he was giving me restitution in the form of an extended battery.

"Jose, that's not restitution--that's simply solving the problem. If someone offered to ship me an extended battery the first time I called about this issue, I would have been perfectly fine with it. Unfortunately it took me five phone calls and six hours of my life to reach this point. If Sprint had properly trained its employees in the first place, it would have been offered to me and we wouldn't be here. But Sprint hasn't and now I demanded compensation for my time."

"I am offering you compensation in the form of an extended battery--most people have to pay for that."

"But you said yourself the phone has a lousy battery. An extended battery is just fixing the problem in the first place. Sprint is selling poorly designed phones that are unable to carry a sufficient charge. I thank you for giving me the extended battery--but that only solves the initial problem: now I should be compensated for having to suffer through Sprint's lack of R&D, poor employee training, and overall incompetence as a company.

But he was unwilling to compromise.

"I'm unhappy," I said. "What is Sprint going to do to make me happy? This is my 30-day trial period and Sprint has shown me no reason to stay with them. What is Sprint going to do to ensure me this will be a relationship I like?"

"We have no relationship," he said to me. "You've been with Sprint for less than a month--you haven't even paid a bill yet. Sprint has no reason to go out of its way for you when you've only been a customer for a month."

"But after this month, I will be locked into a two year contract--then I have no power. No recourse or ability to do anything. You can treat me as poorly as you want by that point and there's nothing I can do. I want to be shown by Sprint that they are genuinely sorry for this incident and I want something more tangible than an apology."

Alas, all I got was another apology.

My throat was starting to hurt from talking so much (if I had yelled at anyone like I desired, I would be as hoarse as 80-year old cigarette-smoking woman). It's was pretty clear I wasn't going to get anywhere with him or anyone. Sprint's customer service was a farce and those people weren't equipped with the power to solve any problems.

I hung up dejected and beaten. This is the second time in three weeks I've gotten screwed over by Corporate America. I tried to fight for what is right and got stonewalled. There was nothing more I could do. I could send a letter but all I would get is an apology letter in return--a form letter at that. That days of appeasing angry customer are over--this is the world we now live in. Consumers are powerless--there's nothing we can do. We just sit and take it.

Maybe that's why people don't fight back. I'm a fighter--I don't like being wronged and try to correct it--I stand up for what I believe in. Most people don't feel this way (it's a wonder how we ever broke away from the British in the first place: maybe Americans today are too coddled--no one knows what it means to fight for anything anymore. I was talking to friend and throughout her 20 years of teaching, she noticed students seem to have a stronger sense of entitlement the longer she teaches. Kids were given everything and never knew what it was like to work for something or how to do much of anything on their own. But I've gotten way off-track).

Consumers speak with their wallets. I have a decision to make. I can forget Sprint and return to T-Mobile--a company despite its stupid employees knew how to treat a person (with T-Mobile I rarely waited longer than ten minutes: with Sprint, I've never waited less than 20). Sure, sticking with T-Mobile means paying a cell bill that's double what it would cost at Sprint. But I've always stood up for what I thought was the right thing. My whole life I've been willing to bite off my nose to spite my face. Stupid? Perhaps--but I've always been able to sleep at night (well, not really--but you know what I mean). I'd be saving myself a lot of money but at what cost? I might only be one customer Sprint loses out on. They probably won't feel the slightest bit of a sting. But at least in my heart, I'd be doing what I know is right.