Cancel Sprint Account By Writing to the CEO

Successfully resolve customer service issues by writing intelligent well-crafted emails to Gary Forsee, the CEO of Sprint.

20-Apr-2006 00:02:05,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The purpose of this letter is to explain my recent experiences with Sprint. I feel that by conveying this information to you all, I can help Sprint become a better company in regards to customer service. First off, please let me introduce myself. My name is Jason XXXXX, and I have been a Sprint customer for 4 years.
In the time that I've been a customer, I've had to call various departments within Sprint, well over 100 (one hundred) times - with the bulk of them being to customer care - in order to resolve many, many different issues. In many of the cases, one of several things would happen when I called.

1)I would explain my problem to the first level representative, and after some time discussing the issue, I would be transferred to a second level supervisor.

2) During the aforementioned transfer to the supervisor, the call would be disconnected, or incorrectly routed, and I would end up back at a first level representative.

3) The representative would purposely disconnect the call.

4) The representative would refuse to transfer my call to a supervisor.

5) The call would get correctly transferred to the supervisor, who, often after an hour (There was at least one instance, where it took nearly three hours), would eventually find and fix the problem.

Sadly, it almost always resorts to #5 before the issue is resolved. There have been very few cases where a first level representative has managed to a) fix the problem, and b) not incorrectly enter information (such as the mailing address I had updated last night...which I had to do again today - but I digress).
Let us elaborate on the 5 previously mentioned call flows. The most common scenario involves #1, #3, #1, #2, #1, then finally #5, or some combination thereof - that is 3 calls, with a usual minimum of 15 minutes for each of the first two calls, and at least 30 minutes for the final call, which adds up to at least one hour per issue, half of which is to a level 2 supervisor.

I'd like to break these figures down for you. Assuming that a first level representative earns $10/hour (which is perhaps a little high, until you include benefits, etc) and that a supervisor earns $20/hour, we can estimate that each issue will cost Sprint a minimum of $15 in salary costs. I have at least one issue every two months that results in the above scenario. If even a small percentage of other customers have the same experiences that I do, it doesn't take a business major to realize that this doesn't make financial sense. On top of, and due to that, I've been highly considering canceling my account once the contract period expires. I'd also like to explain my most recent issue. Last night, at about 8:00pm, I attempted to pay my bill online at sprint.com, as I do every other month. There were technical difficulties with the website, so I called customer care to pay the bill instead.

Since the difficulties were technical in nature, the representative was nice enough to waive the normal fee that is charged when customers pay their bill with that method. I also asked the representative to change the mailing address on my account (which I had changed several months ago), and after several questions like "How do you spell 'South'?", he assured me that the change was made successfully. This afternoon, I received a call from Sprint, to tell me that I was close to my spending limit (of $300), and that if I did not pay my bill immediately, I risked being shut off. There are two problems with this.

1) My bill as of yesterday, was only $83.07, and even if another bill of ~$83 were to post, that would only put me at just over half the $300 spending limit.

2) When I pressed "6" to speak to a representative, I was assured that my current balance was, in fact, $0, and that I should also speak to customer care to verify that. After much effort (see #2 and #4 above), I was finally informed that the call was made in error, and that I should simply disregard it.

When prompted, the supervisor also informed me that my address had not, in fact, been changed.

In short, there are a few places where Sprint may have some room for improvement.

I would appreciate a call at your earliest convenience, so that we may discuss this more fully. I can be reached by telephone at XXXXXXXX.

Thank you for your time,
Jason

Gary Forsee, CEO Wrote:

I apologize for any inconvenience you may have encountered and thank you
for contacting me. I've asked a member of my team to get in touch with
you to resolve your issue. We appreciate the chance to earn and keep
your business.

Sincerely,
Gary Forsee
Chairman and CEO







Sprint writes:



Dear Mr. [Jason]:

To completely resolve your billing concerns, I applied a credit of
$77.79 to your account to offset the final balance. As a result, your
account is closed and reflects a zero balance.

If you have any questions, you may contact our office by calling
1-877-875-7505. We are available Monday through Friday between 7 a.m.
and 5 p.m., Central Time.

Sincerely,

/Claudia Poe/
VIP Executive Analyst
Sprint Nextel Corporation