what happened to retention?

"tom ronson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Bob Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
> > Curious, as it's right on for all three of my phones.
>
> Perhaps they batch feed the application? But Phylisis' acertion would say
> its in greater than 3 month bites? Oh well.
>
> Do you still use the 4700? That was a great little phone you recommnded to
> me quite a while ago.
>
> --TR

Yup. My wife has the 4700. Works like a champ.

Bob::who still has an unactivated 3500 in the charger ... ::

---

› See More: what happened to retention?

"Robert M." <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> So why wouldn't have that been done when he called?

A few reasons (and I'm not saying that any of them apply to Mike- I don't
know his situation)-

- poor payment history
- low credit score
- low revenue potential (based on account history)

You asked why it wouldn't have been done- there are three reasons- they're
could possibly be more.

Scott Stephenson wrote:

> "Robert M." <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>>So why wouldn't have that been done when he called?
>
>
> A few reasons (and I'm not saying that any of them apply to Mike- I don't
> know his situation)-

I appreciate that.

> - poor payment history

Traditionally perfect, a little sloppy during the "great screw-up" when
I got a $640 bill for adding a second line to my account in
September/October. Bill went up, bill went down, I let it sit until I
was happy with where it landed. I didn't ignore it - I made regular
calls to customer service - but I didn't send in a payment until it
could be explained in such a way that it made sense to me. There was a
ripple of adjustments and mis-applied corrections that extended into
January, so each of these bills were paid later than the due date, and
notably, customer service gave me credits for late fees.

> - low credit score

Definitely not, I'm a zero-deposit, five line customer that got an
upgrade in the past year to 10 lines.

> - low revenue potential (based on account history)

Maybe. My largest plan has been $65/mo with $20 AAP $15 Vision and a
handful of downloads. These days I'm getting some sort of $50 retention
plan. I'm a sucker for the non-voice features that operators are
pushing. I'm a heavy data and text user, and usually overrun my download
allotment. I send lots of photos.

> You asked why it wouldn't have been done- there are three reasons- they're
> could possibly be more.

In article <[email protected]>,
Mike <[email protected]> wrote:

> I got a $640 bill for adding a second line to my account in
> September/October

Sounds like there's a story there some of us might find educational to
learn about.

Robert M. wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Mike <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>>I got a $640 bill for adding a second line to my account in
>>September/October
>
>
> Sounds like there's a story there some of us might find educational to
> learn about.


I can't for the life of me be sure of when I started with Sprint, it was
probably 1997. I bought a Z-Phone and Sprint cleared me for 5 lines.
Later that year, I bought a QCP-2700 for my mother. Times got a little
tough, so I disconnected a few months later. This was before Sprint
started contracts. I reconnected and disconnected phones off and on
until 2002 when I signed a one year contract on my Treo. In September of
2003 I decided to activate a second line for my mother again. Earlier in
the month, I accepted a contract extension, a new rate plan and a 5%
discount. Sprint wouldn't give me a free phone for my mother unless I
agreed to a two year contract, so I activated the QCP-2700 again. A few
days later my billing cycle passed, so I called to check that my new
rate plan with the extra minutes had take effect - it hadn't. I called
customer support and they changed my rate plan for the current billing
period, something I didn't think they could do. I have to say, they were
gone for some time. Seems when I activated my mother's phone, they took
the then current information and applied it to the account, overwriting
the pending changes from my rate plan change days earlier. The old
Qualcomm had some issues with battery life (had to be an age thing - it
had 5 min. 55 sec. on the lifetime timer) so I deactivated it 12
calendar days after I activated it. During the call, I lost the
connection to the customer service center, but we had pretty much
finished canceling the line. I called the next day to confirm and a CSR
decided to try to save the sale. He offered to send me a 3585 for free
if I would activate the second line for a year. I wanted to check some
things, so I asked him to call me back. Later in the day, he called me
and I agreed. An hour later, he called me again and told me that the
3585 was out of stock and all that he had was the 3588i, but that was a
more expensive phone. He told me that he could give me half off the
phone and would give me service credits to make up the difference. I
told him that that would be okay. A few days later, the new phone
arrived. The problem was that it had been programmed with the wrong area
code. I was in 985 and it was programmed for 504 - I called and we
reprogrammed the phone to a 985 number upon my insistence.
When my bill arrived it reflected the full price of the 3588i ($149) the
ETF for the QCP-2700 ($150) the ETF for the 504 number ($150) and an
activation fee for each of the three lines. (I was promised only one
activation fee total) The problem was that the five or six people I had
spoke with during this ordeal had built of this shaky tower of
discounts, adjustments, credits, and other crap, so it wasn't as simple
as it should have been to get the bill back where it should be. What's
more, some of the credits were applied to my October bill and some were
applied to my current service and some were applied forward of that. Add
to that some overages in the months leading up to that bill, and things
were very confusing. I still barely understand their math, I just know
that when I added it up with a calculator, I would get pretty much the
same numbers they reached.
-mike

In article <[email protected]>,
Mike <[email protected]> wrote:

> When my bill arrived it reflected the full price of the 3588i ($149) the
> ETF for the QCP-2700 ($150) the ETF for the 504 number ($150) and an
> activation fee for each of the three lines. (I was promised only one
> activation fee total) The problem was that the five or six people I had
> spoke with during this ordeal had built of this shaky tower of
> discounts, adjustments, credits, and other crap,

Easy to understand: they only have 6 minutes to do all this.

Robert M. wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Mike <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>>When my bill arrived it reflected the full price of the 3588i ($149) the
>>ETF for the QCP-2700 ($150) the ETF for the 504 number ($150) and an
>>activation fee for each of the three lines. (I was promised only one
>>activation fee total) The problem was that the five or six people I had
>>spoke with during this ordeal had built of this shaky tower of
>>discounts, adjustments, credits, and other crap,
>
>
> Easy to understand: they only have 6 minutes to do all this.

Can't say that I know what you're talking about.

In article <[email protected]>,
Mike <[email protected]> wrote:

> Robert M. wrote:
> > In article <[email protected]>,
> > Mike <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>When my bill arrived it reflected the full price of the 3588i ($149) the
> >>ETF for the QCP-2700 ($150) the ETF for the 504 number ($150) and an
> >>activation fee for each of the three lines. (I was promised only one
> >>activation fee total) The problem was that the five or six people I had
> >>spoke with during this ordeal had built of this shaky tower of
> >>discounts, adjustments, credits, and other crap,
> >
> >
> > Easy to understand: they only have 6 minutes to do all this.
>
> Can't say that I know what you're talking about.

CSRs are supposed (they're often strictly held to this) have an average
"handle time" of just 6 minutes. Doesn't allow them time to page through
your account and see what's happened. And SprintPCS is so anxious to
collect $150 ETF's that many functions trigger it automatically in their
software (as you experienced).

Mike wrote:

> Robert M. wrote:
>
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> Mike <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> When my bill arrived it reflected the full price of the 3588i ($149)
>>> the ETF for the QCP-2700 ($150) the ETF for the 504 number ($150) and
>>> an activation fee for each of the three lines. (I was promised only
>>> one activation fee total) The problem was that the five or six people
>>> I had spoke with during this ordeal had built of this shaky tower of
>>> discounts, adjustments, credits, and other crap,
>>
>>
>>
>> Easy to understand: they only have 6 minutes to do all this.
>
>
> Can't say that I know what you're talking about.
>
Oh wait. Are you talking about the 6 minute call quotas? In my
experience it's either not there or they don't enforce it - or maybe I'm
just getting people that aren't good at meeting their quota. I've had
problems, but feeling rushed has never been one of them. I guess I'm lucky.
-mike

[email protected] (Mike) wrote:
<<Oh wait. Are you talking about the 6 minute call quotas? In my
experience it's either not there or they don't enforce it - or maybe I'm
just getting people that aren't good at meeting their quota. I've had
problems, but feeling rushed has never been one of them. I guess I'm
lucky. -mike>>

Actually, its just a typical non-response from Phillipe. He asks you to
post your story, which you do in great detail... and then he finds
nothing really useful to him in it, and responds with something that is
completely out of left field and not what you were talking about.

In the end, did that giant bill get all worked out? Was Sprint at fault
about it?

Eric

"Mike" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> >
> Oh wait. Are you talking about the 6 minute call quotas? In my
> experience it's either not there or they don't enforce it - or maybe I'm
> just getting people that aren't good at meeting their quota. I've had
> problems, but feeling rushed has never been one of them. I guess I'm
lucky.
> -mike
>

Nobody other than Robert has ever posted anything about this 6 minute limit.
He has it confused with the six minute AVERAGE call time the reps are
expected to meet. Your calls have easily averaged out with the hundreds of
one and two minute calls they take every day.

And Robert- where do these experiences fall on your Customer Service scale-
sounds like they have treated him well. There seems to be more posts of
this nature these days- I guess things have gotten better.

Eric wrote:
> [email protected] (Mike) wrote:
> <<Oh wait. Are you talking about the 6 minute call quotas? In my
> experience it's either not there or they don't enforce it - or maybe I'm
> just getting people that aren't good at meeting their quota. I've had
> problems, but feeling rushed has never been one of them. I guess I'm
> lucky. -mike>>
>
> Actually, its just a typical non-response from Phillipe. He asks you to
> post your story, which you do in great detail... and then he finds
> nothing really useful to him in it, and responds with something that is
> completely out of left field and not what you were talking about.
>
> In the end, did that giant bill get all worked out? Was Sprint at fault
> about it?
>
> Eric
>
Yes, they were pretty apologetic about it. The night the bill arrived a
gentleman at the call center spent about forty-five minutes on the phone
with me taking care of everything and explaining how the charges were
supposed to have worked. He took off a few other things that were wrong
and told me his supervisor would have to adjust the ETFs off the bill
later. (which was done as promised) Some parts still didn't make sense
to me (we didn't get the extra activation fees and the 5% discount of
AAP fees) but I got most of it done on that call. A couple of later
calls took care of the extra activation fees and some billing errors
related to the in-month change of plan (they billed for both levels of
service at a later time, IIRC). I'm not sure it was right, but it was
close, and if it's wrong, my math puts it a little in my favor.

As far as Phillipe, I've been here a little while, off and on... I don't
really care about him one way or the other. I've seen him post some
helpful stuff and I've seen him commit some logical fallacies. It's
usenet, what are you gonna do? I thought about putting filters in for
threads that contain the words "blind Sprint PCS apologist" but I
decided it wasn't worth the effort. I just have my newsreader ignore
silly threads ("K" shortcut in Mozilla) and move on.
-mike

In article <[email protected]>,
Mike <[email protected]> wrote:

> > In the end, did that giant bill get all worked out? Was Sprint at fault
> > about it?
> >
> > Eric

And how many phone calls did it take him, when it shouldn't have
happened in the first place?

You happy now Eric??, SprintPCS was at fault. Now go back to BestBuy and
look for Horror Movies.

In article <[email protected]>,=20
[email protected] says...
> Rob, I've explained my situation to little avail to people at Sprint.=20
> I'm in a similar boat. I have had my handset replaced many times over=20
> the last 19 months or so by my Circuit City warranty. Circuit City has=20
> been great about it, but it's killing my rebates. Is there someone that=
=20
> I can talk to over at Sprint, or something I can say to the CSA to get=20
> them to think of this as a situation in which I should qualify?
>=20

Ah, you used Circuit City's return policy. Sorry, I didn't catch=20
that. My understanding from back then was that Circuit City would=20
indeed issue a new phone. And that, in turn, doesn't show in our=20
systems as a warranty replacement.

That's a tough one. Partly, it's because stores like Circuit City=20
included satisfaction guarantees within their extended periods, while=20
ours is just the manufacturer's warranty.

End result: yeah, I think the other reps were right after all. Your=20
phone doesn't qualify until it's been active for 18 months.

--=20
R=D8=DF
O/Siris
I work for Sprint PCS
I *don't* speak for them

In article <[email protected]>,=20
[email protected] says...
> A few reasons (and I'm not saying that any of them apply to Mike- I don't
> know his situation)-
>=20
> - poor payment history
> - low credit score
> - low revenue potential (based on account history)
>=20
> You asked why it wouldn't have been done- there are three reasons- they'r=
e
> could possibly be more.
>=20

Feasible, certainly, but none of them are applicable under Handset=20
Upgrade Program. As long as the account is *now* in good standing,=20
it either qualifies or it doesn't. Mike brought up Circuit City=20
replacements, which I hadn't noticed before today. Those would count=20
as new phones in our system.

--=20
R=D8=DF
O/Siris
I work for Sprint PCS
I *don't* speak for them