Sprint doesn't back down, justifies dropped customers

We’ve been having a lot of fun with this one, but it appears our fun may be coming to an end. Yes, we absolutely love sticking it to big companies who oppress their customers, because we are huge advocates of the “customer service is king” philosophy. So when Sprint went and dropped what we now know to be 1,000 subscribers, we thought: “hey, this is simply terrible business.” And we weren’t alone. So it only makes sense, then, that Sprint would send out some kind of message that would justify this decision. Yesterday they did, and we have to say that if they’re telling the truth, it’s pretty satisfactory. We actually love the way this article was constructed. It gave a quick lowdown of the situation, which probably raised the ire of the reader. After all, we are all consumers, and to see our brethren treated like this can be appalling. So now we’re all down on Sprint. Then we get a revelation: this wasn’t a simple method. It wasn’t a computer program that tallied calls, and if you made over a certain number you were dropped. No, this decision was made by actual human beings. Okay, so the ire is receding at this point. This is where they drop the bomb: the 1,000 that were dropped made an average of 40 to 50 customer service calls per month. Seriously? We mean, there’s no way to verify that, but man, that’s an absurdly large number. And if the average is 40 to 50, there have to be people bringing that average up, meaning some people were calling nearly twice a day. We wouldn’t like that, either.

She said the internal review also found that the subscribers often were calling about the same problems over and over after Sprint officials felt they had resolved the issue. She said some callers were repeatedly asking for information from other customers’ accounts, which customer service workers aren’t allowed to divulge.

So yeah, we can actually understand the situation now. They say that the average customer calls less than once per month, so 40 to 50 is nearly unfathomable. We don’t think we make 50 calls, period, during many months. Now, if Sprint had issued a press release last week regarding this matter, they wouldn’t have faced so much scrutiny. Further, we feel that it would have made for a much better story. Instead of rumblings on the Internets for a few days, they could have headed this problem off at the pass and issued a press release — or at least a statement — alongside their “Dear John” letters. [The Kansas City Channel]]]>