Sprint immediately back in our bad graces

First, we were ticked at Sprint for what we thought was heartlessly dropping some of its customers. It was a great bandwagon while it lasted. However, it came to an end recently, as the company satisfactorily justified the move. We’ve had ex-girlfriends call us four or five times a day, so we understand where Sprint is coming from. These problem customers were ruining customer service for everyone else, and in order for Sprint to move forward, they had to make the experience more pleasant for the customers who don’t constantly complain. Now, however, they’re back on our s-list. In order to further clean out their subscriber base, Sprint dumped a number of customers who were deemed to be roaming far too often. In itself, that’s all fine and good. You know those exorbitant roaming charges you pay? Yeah, well, the company isn’t making much money off that. When you roam, you’re using another company’s network, and your provider has to pay the provider on which you are roaming. Here’s where the story turns sour. About 200 of these “dropped for excessive roaming” customers were soldiers who had recently returned from Iraq. They were temporarily in West Point, where they were perpetually roaming. According to them, Sprint said that West Point “was in an area of ‘best coverage’.” Maybe it was a “best coverage” area, but that would have to be for another provider. So now, as they prepare to head back to their regular bases — where Sprint works — they’ve been dropped by Sprint. Worse yet, many of them had just ordered new phones from Sprint, seeing as they’d been in Iraq for a year. And, of course, those phones are locked to Sprint, so the soldiers are SOL. We expect Sprint will allow these users to continue their service — it would be a terrible PR move not to. However, we would strongly urge them not to. After hearing story after story about their terrible customer service, we’re thinking that Sprint isn’t particularly necessary in the wireless world. Hey, let’s auction off their spectrum and get more open-access airwaves. Wahoo! [Switched] via [Blogging Stocks]]]>