July 7th, 2007

Time to boycott Sprint over its customer treatment

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 1:04 pm

Categories: General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Telecommunications, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Customer, Sprint Communications, Sprint, Larry Dignan

Sprint Nextel is booting customers that call customer service too much and tossing soldier accounts due to excessive roaming. All potential customers should just boycott Sprint–after all you may have to call customer service once in a while or even roam (gasp).

Now let’s add this up. As Russell Shaw notes the soldier treatment is ludicrous. Tossing customers (even high maintenance ones) also isn’t a good move. Why? These moves make any potential customer–notably me–say “@#$@# Sprint.” Maggie Reardon was the first on Sprint’s case and the fiascos just keep coming. Now the Wall Street Journal is on the case. Meanwhile, some of these booted customers were just trying to correct Sprint errors.

Sprint’s moves–and all the press that goes with them– can’t be good for business. Not that Sprint does much of anything good for business. Customer service is known to be weak anyway and coverage in my experience (Sprint wireless user for two years) is spotty.

Here’s what Sprint’s customer tossing says to me:

• Call centers are so maxed out that it can’t deal with a few stray high maintenance customers. Can the network be in much better shape?
• Sprint is simply idiotic about public relations.
• The customer isn’t always right.

What’s truly comical is that Sprint is trying to court higher-margin customers. You know the ones that keep up with the news and are now stunned at Sprint’s customer treatment.

Russell nails it when he asks how CEO Gary Forsee has a job. Got me. But alienating current customers–not to mention potential ones you may get–can’t be good. Boycott Sprint and watch those churn rates jump.