Poll: What's wrong with Sprint?
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Jan 18th 2008 12:18PM
posted Jan 18th 2008 12:18PM
posted Jan 18th 2008 12:18PM
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i HATE TO SAY TOLD YOU SO, BUT.....LOOK AT MY PREVIOUS COMMENTS
I just had dinner with some friends, one of which (just an aqaintence) is Sprint employee who TOTALLY out to lunch. She started talking about how Sprint was turning things around and dismissing the customer service issue, not to mention the 30BILLION dollar loss posted by Sprint. She said the stock was down but that it would bounce back and many other CLUELESS comments. If she is any indication of the brainwashing Sprint is handing out - no wonder the company is circling the drain. I tried to explain to her that when a REALLY big company has stock that is hovering around 8$ a share, a consistent over drop in the last 2 years and a churn rate that is hemoraging customers - no rather forcing customers, with any business sense to go elswhere, how can you call that anything but LOUSY. One of the earlier threads had it dead on. The guys at the top running the company into the ground. I think Capt Jack Sparrow has more business "savy" than these guys. Rather than dealing with the churn through quality CS, these guys think they can pretend that EVDO is going keep people loyal to Sprint. I think they are ripe for a takeover. Someone should buy them out...fire the the top 3-5 layers and do something with this company. The sad reality is that the city of Kansas City will suffer greatly if this happens and already has. I just don't understand how a company can practice such bad business and stil be profitable. After a 30$ billon in losses, I guess they are not profitable.
I had sprint for 7 years and my experience is as follows:
1) Network - excellent (SF Bay Area, LA area), I had maybe 3 dropped calls a year (1500min/month usage).
2) Cost - excellent. I received loyalty discounts and my bill was always under $70 (1000/unlimited/n/w 7pm)
3) Customer Service - HORRIBLE. But here's the caveat. In the 7 years I was with them I never needed to contact customer service because my bill/service were always as expected. The ONLY reason I left was for the iPhone and that's when I discovered how ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE customer service is.
FYI my experience with AT&T is the exact opposite, constantly dropping call (if I can connect at all), over $100+ a month for comparable plan BUT customer service is great.
Customer service was terrible. Their 411 service would never pick up which is why I switched, cause when you are driving around looking for a place, having the call time-out even once is unacceptable.
They have pretty decent phones.
The other part was the Nextel merger, which was stupid. It was dead technology five years before the acquisition.
I'm still with Sprint after 4 years with them. I think their customer service is not good because they have inconsistent responses when you call back and speak to a representative. That's the extent of their Cus Service experience that I've encountered.
Other than that, I'm still with sprint mainly for the prices and the amount of services you can get with your plan and it still being 3x cheaper than AT&T. T-Mobile is a no-brainer of which I'll never run off to.
--James
I agree with the above comments, I worked for Sprint in an affiliate market 2-3 years ago and had to talk to customer service all the time. It was a nightmare, if i wasn't outsourced I was given to someone with a terrible attitude and not much respect for anyone. Customer service matters, you can't get by forever like that. Phones were solid, service was solid, price was good, just bad customer service and no real go to aspect that makes it better then Verizon.
I've had Nextel for about 6 years, switched to Sprint Jan. 01, so far no problems, love my phone, but like everyone above, customer service. I made my plan changes, got my phone, went to activate.... the problems started happening. This CS rep didn't know about any of my plan details, after an hour of the CS rep trying to find the details, she finally got it right. I think a lot of the problems are common though, you have two companies, two sets of employees... one may think their better than the other... so you have bad competition between sides in the same company. I work for a big company with several divisions, the same thing happens, one against the other.
I have been a customer of Sprint for 10 Years...
My main issues with the service are as follows:
1. lame phones (left them for iphone on personal line only)...I've had almost every pda phone they've put out.
2. customer service is ok...nothing spectacular and nothing horrible. They've upgraded a few phones for me so i'm giving them some props...
3. had some spotty coverage in chicago when i'd travel there.
hope this helps...
I have had Sprint for about 8 years or so. I have never had real problems that I did not cause myself, dropped phones, not protecting my phones, but the network is much faster and the rates are a lot less than AT&T.
I just tried to buy my Mom a Treo 680 to replace her cell phone and standalone Palm Tungsten for AT&T and the amount extra they want for a data plan for their smartphones is absolutely ridiculous. It was her time for an upgrade and we ended up going with a red RAZR.
I had sprint, they lie to their customers and up their contracts without asking, they have terrible service in a good portion of the country. They hang up on customers, they wont give out information.
Honestly, I think that the biggest problem that Sprint has is its phone selection.
I really wanted to go with Sprint last February when my Cingular contract was expiring. The SERO plans are great, and the service is purportedly wonderful in my area. Plus, Sprint has arguably the best 3G network out there.
The only thing that kept me from taking the leap was the phone selection. I couldn't find a single device that I really liked.
Were my contract to expire today, I'd probably go with Sprint now and pick up an 8830 or a Pearl, but their phone selection last February was abysmal.
Even today, their line-up is definitely not up to par. When the Centro is your centerpiece, you know you're in trouble.
The reason I switched to sprint was the phone selection/ price. Sprint has what is probably the best CDMA phone selection. And sprint doesn't kill their phones by putting crap software on it like verizon does. That with the cheapness of the SERO plan made sprint a unbeatable selection. I have only dealt with customer service a few times, just for activating my phone/ swapping phones, and both times everything went smoothly and the service was excellent. Maybe i just got lucky.
I had sprint for 5 years and had no complaint what so ever. I loved the service. I dont have them any more for my phone service because my new hobby involves importing the highest-end phones from overseas (HTC Universals, XDA IIs and such) and flashing them with custom ROMs. As we all know you cannot do that on CDMA networks (Sprint and Verizon, and another one new one with those funny commercials that I forgot the name of).
However, I still have Sprint for my air-card. The service is actually so good that I cancelled my home internet connection, because I cannot appreciate the difference in the speeds. Im a Network Admin and on call 24hrs a day and work part time 2hrs away form my place, and most of the work is outside so I absolutely need the Sprint air card and they have the fastest data network (according to their commercials)
Therefore, I am with T-Mobile but I would rather be with Sprint.
My experience with sprint is mainly a service issue. Started with sprint through a merger of a company called primeco. Primeco was dead easy to get a no deposit plan with, which is why I started. As I grew up, the need for a no deposit plan waned, and about that time I needed to switch jobs. My new workplace had ZERO coverage unless I stood on the roof of the building. I fought with that for about a month and a half and couldnt take it anymore. Sprint offered me a roaming package add on at low additional cost, which worked, but it drove up the cost to to other carriers. I took advantage of the trial periods with other carriers and tried em all out and went to what was then ATT wireless (predecessor/competitor to todays ATT/Cingular). that was an absolute mistake, while it worked at my workplace, it didnt work anywhere else. As soon as Portability struck, I switched to nextel that same day. Was with them for quite some time until I noticed the network starting to degrade. Areas where I used to get coverage didnt get coverage anymore. the only thing this time that sprint could offer me was a phone that worked on both the sprint and nextel network. I said no, and bought an Iphone. I get dropped calls, my bill is higher, but frankly I couldnt be happier. I get coverage everywhere, I do get dropped calls, but in my experience no more frequent than the lack of coverage drop outs I got with nextel, sprint, and the old ATT. I had verizon as a work phone as well, and they dropped calls to.
So right now, I can pretty much say that everyone drops calls, but where I live, Sprint had a poor coverage map to begin with, but couldnt spend any money to upgrade the nextel or sprint towers or maintain what they had because they spent too much money saving nextel from utter distruction.
I first had a nextel from my business, then gave it to my wife, and got a treo on sprint, then after the nextel merger I traded in for a nextel blackberry 7100i, and finally added a 3rd line on a family plan. the PTT is very convenient to yell at family members when they won't answer their phone:)
However all the subscribers from Nextel have been royally screwed by the merger. No innovation on the Iden end, no "Wide Iden", no integration with sprint's broadband, no PTT or SMS interoperation, ridiculous antique handsets. The 7100i browser is useless, and better blackberries are not offered nextel's net.
"Retention" called yesterday to offer a discount and 4th line. I said I want to hand my blackberry down, and get a PPC phone like the touch or mogul (wifi/keyboard), even without PTT. However, sprint and nextel billing are STILL unintegrated, so my choices after an hour were to dump all the nextel phones and go to sprint, or have two separate bills, one with sprint and the other with nextel. If I need a second bill, might as well be for an att Iphone.
So I think the hemorrage is likely to be from the nextel side, which was a cash cow with lots of small business accounts. Sprint milked the cows and didn't grow any new grass, and now it shows.
sorry for venting.
I just switched to sprint (SERO) from att/cingular a few months back. switched from 8125 (HTC wizard) to the sprint touch...absolutely love it!
My only complaint so far is with sprints picture mail...or lack there of. With the touch, the only way I can send a picture out is by my email account. and when someone sends me a pic, instead of receiving an mms (which WinMo is obviously capable of) i get a text from sprint with a link to a sprint website with the pic on it so i have to see it through IE. And video mms does not come through at all, but sounds will.
I considered taking it back the first month just on principle, but i dont send/recieve mms's very much, and I love the phone/service/price so much its still worth it to me. Just hoping/waiting for that supposed update in Q1 08 that enables third party program use of the aGPS ship!
I have been with Sprint since I got my Treo 700P I upgraded recently to the 755P, and now my Gfriend has the 700P, and my kids two samsung flip phones. I've never had a problem with customer service. They have been helpful, fast and very efficient. And I have deactivated the 700P activated an e-bay purchased 755P, added and deleted a samsung phone as a modem, and consolidated two plans into one. I think the new CEO is kicking butt to cleanup bloat and create a leaner company. I had nothing but bad experiences with ATT. Customer service, price, and reception were lousy
1) worst customer service EVER of any carrier (mostly outsourced from my experience)
2) worst phone selection
i signed up for sprint many years ago to try it out because i was sick of la cellular, or so i thought. it was a hassle to even sign up for sprint back then, and their whole wap/mms/sms setup/plans were very confusing. i finally selected a package that included all of them, but my wap didn't work. i called customer service (and back then they BILLED AIRTIME FOR 611 CALLS!) and waited on hold for like an hour of my airtime just to be told to power cycle my phone. keep in mind they ALSO BILLED A $3 FEE FOR TALKING TO A LIVE REP! when i said i wanted a credit for it, they said they cannot because the only way to not have a fee is to do self service online or through the automated system. but they had no brain and could not think of an answer when i asked them how i was supposed to fix my wap not working by myself if i already have the feature on my account. several calls later my wap was still not working, i had racked up lots of customer service fees, and was out of airtime from calling them. (cell phones have been my primary phone for many years now). i was sick of it and wanted back to la cellular! i went back to the sprint store just to be told they were not a "returns location" so i had to go back another day (because they were closed already) to the store several cities over that was capable of taking returns. what a fking joke!
fast forward like 10 years to a few months ago. i signed up for SERO with 2 lines. sms is free, and i DID checkmark the sms box at signup, yet it was not added to either line. i noticed this when i registered for online access and reviewed my account. i called twice and got outsourced reps. neither one even understood my problem. the 3rd time i called in i finally got a US rep who took care of it in like 1 minute. but then i wanted to add the child locator service. i was told i had to add the $10 feature to both lines. come to find out later that was wrong and only one phone needed the $10 fee. then i tried to go on wap and guess what... it didnt freakin work! 10 years later and my damn wap still didnt work! i called in several times and got outsourced reps. they all walked me through "programming" my phone that did nothing. i even went to 2 stores and had the people there try to fix it. no one could resolve the "invalid username/password" error. i also chose to have new phone numbers at sign up, but decided later that i wanted to port in. talk about a nightmare! no one knew how to do a teleconversion! i finally got someone who "submitted the request form" but when i called a couple days later to check on it i was told nothing was ever submitted. the information then got submitted but no one knew how to make the phone numbers active once my old carrier released them! i told them to just forget about it! i canceled the port, took my phones back, and once again canceled with sprint.
sprint has the worst customer service i have ever dealt with! they should just get rid of the outsourced reps. they are completely pointless! nothing gets accomplished! they never even understand the problems, let alone have the capability to fix them! things only get accomplished once you reach a US rep. my friend has sprint and she said she noticed the same thing.
as far as the phones, man maybe i shouldnt even get started again. i love importing phones or swapping out for different needs (thin phone for the club, high megapixel camera phone for trips, cheap bar phone for the beach, etc) and thats obviously not possible with cdma. its convenient to just swap my sim if a battery dies or something. but even beyond that, sprint has crappy cdma phones. first of all how does the katana dlx have a louder speaker than the friggen "muziq" phone?! its the muziq phone for cryin out loud! the person above in this thread is on crack! verizon has better phones by far. and sprint does modify the os on them.
ok im rambling. basically, damn i want sprint because of the prices but i can never get it to work and the reps are morons. Voce is actually the best of the best, but thats a whole 'nother thread...
I'm paying to break my contract early for 3 reasons:
* Their billing system sucks and routinely overbills me by $50-$100 (no, that's not a typo) for various reasons. This month, they "lost" my unlimited data plan. $100, right there.
* Customer service is terrible: they either blame me, or they just say there's nothing they can do to reverse the charges.
* Even with Customer Retention's discounts & incentives, it's still cheaper to pay $175 to cancel my service and buy a new Blackberry somewhere else, than it is to upgrade my phone to a Blackberry as an existing customer.
I have no reason to want to stay, and the billing issues are just getting worse lately. CS is so bad, it's actually easier to just pay the bill than it is to waste hours of time trying to fix it and wind up paying it anyway.
Bigname,
Although I feel your pain, I truly do, most of what you said is currently untrue. The main issue with Sprint is they decided in 2006 to integrate billings systems. Like everything else they've done, they did it backwards. Sprint had been leasing their billing system Premier for years and decided that since Nextel owned their billing system they'd move the 43 million plus Sprint Subscribers into the 7 million subscriber Nextel Billing System(to cut costs). If retail reps would stop activating new subscribers in the old premier system that integration would be complete. Regardless, at this time you can have a Sprint, Nextel, Hybrid, or EVDO Data Card all on one account in the existing billing system for Nextel Subscribers, there new Unified Billing Platform. However, it has been this process of integration they have driven postpaid subscribers away. Also, there has been no IDEN or Nextel innovation because IDEN is dead. Nextel will cease to exist by 2012 (That's a company directive by the way) because they have developed QChat (a new PTT technology that allows Sprint to Nextel Direct Connect)-Launching sometime first half this year. Why do you think Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are racing in the Sprint Cup this year? The bottom line is like everyone has said previously. If Sprint would have coughed up the extra dough to buy Alltel instead of Nextel they would have improved their coverage in the southeast where it is the most lacking and had a compatible network will little integration difficulty. If they had keep their call centers on US Soil. But give Sprint credit they have been dealing with two consumer billing systems, separate systems for call centers, and entirely separate order system for online/telesales, and another system for 3rd party retailers trying to keep all that straight while talking to one rep on the phone might be difficult. If I were you I'd be buying Sprint stock like crazy because now they are almost over the hump so its smooth sailing, in another year of two it'll be back to 20+ a share. They have some really innovative stuff coming up...Xohm, Treo 800, Samsung M800, etc.
I just use them for data ie my PC Card modem. (They can't touch T-Mobile's voice and data plan rates, and 2.5 G is okay on my phone, for now.)
I love their network, and they pioneered the lower priced ($59.99) unlimited 3G service plans. Gotta love that! I just wish they wouldn't renew your 2 year contract every time you sneezed!
I was a loyal sprint customer for six years, from 1999-2005. We moved to a new area and all of a sudden, our service was completely black...whether inside or outside the house. We called them about this numerous times and they insisted that we had coverage in our area (apparently remaining completely motionless in one spot for 10 minutes before the call is finally dropped is considered "coverage"). Because of shoddy customer service, excess hidden charges (a surplus dual-tax charge that we ended up getting prorated and removed after about 6 calls to customer service) and overall poor device quality, we skipped away to T-Mobile and eventually AT&T (my wife gets a corp. discount) and haven't looked back or regretted it since. The biggest thing holding sprint back at this point, frankly, is the network. I'm a strong proponent of GSM, but notwithstanding that I've used verizon in the past and it still blows sprint out of the water.
I had sprint for 3 years, i noticed everything went downhill when they merged with nextel from my perspective. I could never I live here in boston and i kept noticing that i'd get less coverage at fenway park when i was at red sox games. All my friends had t-mobile and AT&T and they never had any problems at all, i wanted a my faves plan from t-mobile cause no one here in the states can beat their plans IMO, and also their unlimited data is only 20 bux vs alot more money on any other network. The problem was the amazing iphone was on ATT and not t-mobile, so what did i do. I went to the Apple store and i bought an i phone!!!!!! i went home and me being an RF engineer for one of the 4 major cell phone carriers in america and being from boston i knew a bunch of software engineering students FROM M.I.T that interned for my company and i had them unlcok it for me!!! and then had them show me how!!!!! so i signed up with t-mobile and got a free phone that could set up my faves, because you apparently need a my faves phone to re-confirm with the network of your my faves selection. so as soon as they were confirmed, i just rocked out with the iphone. I get unlimited calling to my top 5, free nights and weekends, unl sms, mms and instant messaging, unlimited e-mail, and unlimited internet and for less than $80 bucks a month, any other company would charge me around 120+. and it works when i go to europe and tmo has awesome international rates. i could never travel on sprints cdma crap. GSM all the way.
@Eric
That's incorrect about having to have a myfavs phone to use myfavs. Kind of makes me wonder about the whole team of experts from MIT story. The truth is you can setup your myfavs clearly online just by logging into your account. You do at times have to tell the system that your phone is one that's compatible with the service that you want. For example; I have an E61 with myfavs and unlimited data with push email. I have 2 lines, 1000 min, 10 myfavs for about $70. $6 of that is for the unlimited data, the rest is taxes. I've never used any other phone but the E61 with T-Mobile. service is excellent and customer service is the best customer service I have ever experienced period (over the phone). I used to be with sprint.
why the hell did apple sign up with ATT. They should have done with verizon. I have ATT and its by far the worst. They need to put more freakin towers instead of spending money on stupid samsung motorla toys. they havent done shit to give customers better service. Sprint is the only company that has service over in my house, they have coverage almost everywhere unlike att.
I've had Sprint for about 5 years and At&t for a little over 1. As soon as my At&T contract is up I'm ditching it and sticking with Sprint. Love their phones, and their EVDO netowrk. I have an AIR card that works wonders, for when I'm out and about, can't wait for XOHM though. Customer service isn't always great, but if you got the time, hang up and call back till you get what you want. Not everyone is going to be great on the first try...
I'm on SERO now, and I love it. Also they discount my Data Card too. I'll admit in recent years it seems like Verizon and AT&T have picked up alot more neater handsets including a ton of PDAs (Iphone not included, no 3G WTF? It's 2008, and edge should be dead) But hey, Sprint I'm sure will make a come back.
Sprint made some major billing mistakes with our account and refused to correct.
We left them and have our 6 lines on verizon - haven't looked back once (except maybe glanced in ATT's direction with the iphone)
Customer Service was horrible.
Main Sprint Retail store = waiting forever. People had their whole families (small children, other children, etc.) there, the reps weren't efficient, and some barely knew what they were doing.
It almost required you to make an appointment to talk to someone because there was a never ending nexus of people.
Sprint's problem is the people up top don't know how to run a company. When was the last time one of the VP's up top actually talked to a customer?? They 'merge' with Nextel (who by the way had the highest ARPU, and most loyal customers in the US)and then got rid of the Nextel people. That was Stoopid. Nextel people knew their stuff. They had to. They outsource a lot of their customer service to companies with no incenttive. They won't even hire former Verizon Wireless drones in the company stores. On the good side, the rates are very competitive, the data speed is top notch and the coverage is pretty good. Now if only they would get rid of the guys at the top (just the top four layers)
I have been a sprint employee for almost 2yrs. The biggest complaint i get from customers and my biggiest complaint is our customer service. And i understand why. Half the people that work there don't want to help and transfer u four times until u find some one that wants to do there job. Then u have the ones that have been out sourced and u have no clue what there a saying because its not english or spanish it something alright tho. And i agree with the customer 100% other than that, that is or biggest down fall. I like my palm centro better that any verizon phone that i have had, and the evdo speed is great, rate plans cheaper than the other big three,7PM NIGHTS. Not much else can be said.
I have been a sprint employee for almost 2yrs. The biggest complaint i get from customers and my biggiest complaint is our customer service. And i understand why. Half the people that work there don't want to help and transfer u four times until u find some one that wants to do there job. Then u have the ones that have been out sourced and u have no clue what there a saying because its not english or spanish it something alright tho. And i agree with the customer 100% other than that, that is or biggest down fall. I like my palm centro better that any verizon phone that i have had, and the evdo speed is great, rate plans cheaper than the other big three,7PM NIGHTS. Not much else can be said.
I have been a Nextel subscriber since 2002 and loved the Nextel service UNTIL Sprint and Nextel merged. The quality of service declined horribly, no signal, dropped calls, etc, to the point that I had to switch to a hybrid phone (i902c, nice phone) to get decent phone service. Sprint just stopped any iDen expansion that was supposed to continue when they took over. It's amazing to see how much NO WLK-TLK notifications pop up on the display while I have full Sprint signal. I only keep the Sprint Nextel service because of business and Volunteer Fire Co contacts. Once this new government contract kicks in with AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, I'll have to see what plans are offered to the municipalities. That's how I wound up with the Nextel, looks like it may be a switch to another provider if the Fire Company switches, too. Sprint has royally screwed up Nextel and it will take them down because of it. They say they are staying with NASCAR, but I doubt they will be able to afford to keep that up with the loss of the Government contract. Too bad, Nextel was a nice system...