July 6th, 2007
OUTRAGE: Sprint said to cancel nearly 200 military accounts for "excessive roaming"
Update: We have some new info. Check out this post.
Things are really heating up on the SprintUser.com Forum.
According to Shafted_Sprint, Sprint has been cancelling accounts due to “excessive roaming.”
Some 200 of these cancellations are military accounts.
Uh, last time I checked, “roaming” was in the job description of a soldier.
You don’t have to be a fan of the Iraq War to support these men and women who are putting their life on the line for us.
For Sprint, though, it would appear that “life on the line” is an inferior meme to “bottom line.”
Are you ready to get really, really pissed off?
Here’s what Shafted_Sprint writes:
I have been a Sprint customer for over 5 years now. Just shortly after my unit returned from Iraq, we recieved notification that we would be redeployed to West Point to train cadets over the summer. With almost 1/3 of the unit being Sprint customers, almost 200 soldiers, one of the first things we did was get online and consult Sprints coverage map to ensure that we would have service once we arrived. We where relieved to see that we would in fact have service and did not take any preventive measures in making sure that we would be able to maintain a reliable means of communication to our families back home. The area we would be staying in was actually catagorized as having “best” coverage.
After we arived however, we where disgruntled to find that the service was not “best”, there was no service at all. A few of us that used Sprints free roaming feature informed others of this service Sprint offered, and many called and enrolled. Even with roaming, calls are sketchy at best, and very unreliable, but we where satisfied to at least be able to call home for a few minutes an evening and let our families know that we where well.
And now comes the kicker. Many of us Sprint customers recieved a letter at the begining of this month declaring that our Sprint account will be cancelled on July 30th due to the amount of roaming we are doing. The letter stated that they believe that another carrier will be able to serve us better and that we are recieving the boot. Keep in mind, we are not here permanently, or by choice. This is a two month obligation that we had to fulfil, and because of it, Sprint is telling us good bye. We will be returning to our home station, where we have clear Sprint service, FIFTEEN days after the cancellation of our accounts. I personally know at least 10 soldiers that called and explained this situation to Sprint and was told everything was fine.
Because we recently came back from a deployment to Iraq, many Sprint users bought new phones in order to catch up the updates in technology that we missed out on over the 12 months we spent out of country. As we all know, Sprint phones are not interchangable with other carriers, and these are basically going to be very expensive paper weights for many members of the unit. I broke my phone on a training excercise, and did not have insurance on it, so I called to order a new phone. Sprint sold me a new phone at full price THE DAY that thier cancellation notice was mailed to me. When I ordered the new phone, I agian asked the sales rep about the free roaming, and explained my current situation, and was told that everything was fine, and asked for my credit card information.
This is the icing on the top as far as Sprint Customer Service goes. Why on earth I cant get coverage at the United States Military Academy, 40 minutes away from New York City is a mystery to me. I had a cell phone the entire time I was in Iraq with a middle eastern company. I payed LESS to call home and keep in touch from the otherside of the world than I do now with Sprint to call within the country. It also did not matter if I was in a major city or out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, I ALWAYS had full coverage. Never had a dropped call, and the customer reps of that company spoke better English than those with Sprint do.
This is just step one, next I will be contacting every news agency I can get ahold, with the support of 200 to be canceled soldiers, and then my Senator.
Hey I feel like doing the same. I mean, being dumb is one thing. Messing with our men and women in uniform– so beyond the top of the scale.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
