You are are lucky one TraderGary.
Thanks HawaiiD. I hear about things like what happened to your sister way too often. I was also told the same thing and I felt very very deceived. I try be be a realist when it comes to being a consumer. I know the company was designed to make money so it is personally hard for me to gripe about those types of things when it comes to plan changes etc. However, to keep my business (and everybody should feel the same way) I want mistakes to me taken care of. If it is a small mistake just try to fix it and say sorry. If it is a larger problem (I can't call what Sprint did a mistake) then not only do you have to try to fix it and say sorry but you also need to compensate me in some way. Compensating a customer for bad services/products etc. is the keystone to good customer service. It hits them in the pocket and is a big motivator to change things for the better. I spoke to around 30 reps, 10 first level (?) supervisors, and 5 other people that were way up the ladder in 13-14 months. Only one of them (1 year ago) gave me a credit on my bill. I was literally telling one of them (the last one to call me back) that I was in the Verizon store and she gave me a $50 credit. It is the overall culture that is the problem at Sprint...people don't like it so they are leaving in mass numbers.
My final opinion...
1. Years back they made some very very bad detrimental decisions. Buying Nextel (I worked for a company that was bought out by Nextel and left before the buyout) was part of the problem. The main problem was picking the wrong technology (WiMax).
2. Then after being so late to the game with LTE their roll out was hideous on a grand scale. Every industry publication was intune with Sprint as far as the launch dates. Those dates were very misleading because when something is usually luanched you would "turn in on", work out some bugs, and then add to it a little. That usually doesn't take a very very long time. In our case (Phily area) it is still sub par after a year. Thier biggest mistake is next and this is what really got them. They refused to be transparant with thier customers and also lacked product knowledge as far as services. I mean really added on a 2GB hotspot and not a single person up a Sprint (after the many times I called) knew to tell me that my phone had to be in 3G mode "only" for it to work?
3. Finally they made the same exact mistake that many many companies make when they face financial problems. They simply abandoned the subscribers/customer service by not giving credits etc. for their missteps that I mentioned in the later part of "#2". These are guys being paid millions a year and are supported by what you would think are savvy investors and they kept permitting this behavior. That is because at that point they were only looked at $ losses and wanted to protect their bottom line. I would expect this from a start-up but even a slightly seasoned business man should be able to see the correlation between profit losses and subscriber losses. It was just really bad and very stupid business tactics.
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