Sprint is fraudulent, untrustworthy and disgraceful…

Sprint is fraudulent, untrustworthy and disgraceful…

Hello, my name is Jerry and I would like to share my Sprint/Nextel
experience with you that I have had over the last 5 years in the hope that you will understand what you are getting in to when
considering Sprint as your cellular provider.

I would like to start off with my first experience almost 5 years ago, I entered a Sprint store in Redmond, WA (Overlake Plaza) and found a phone that I really liked, the customer service rep at the store was more than happy to tell me

about Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘B’ and explain the differences. At this point I felt they were doing a good job and wanted to proceed, they signed me up for the plan and told me it would be $39 a month and that would be reflected on my bill. At

the end of the month I received a $49 bill instead? I went back to the store and then the lady told me about the monthly this and monthly that and was very educated in what these fee’s were. Why on earth did she not tell me about them

when I asked about my monthly bill? I’ll tell you why, because I told her that I could not spend more than $39 a month at the time so like any used dealership she cooked the numbers to make buy. When I told her I wanted to get it down to

$39 she said I was already on the base plan and there was nothing they could do. This was strike one against Sprint and really put a bad taste in my mouth moving forward. At this point I would just say that I was annoyed at most.

The second incident that I had with Sprint involved getting my wife added to my plan, we went in to a store in Lynwood, WA because we both wanted the new PPC-6700 smart phone, it took 3 hours of us to get the store to give us both the

phone with the deal pricing since we were renewing a contract. He then claimed he could not do it and then all of the sudden he was able to do it hours later? Can you say used car dealership, at the point I told him I did not want to

change my plan I just wanted to add my wife too it and get the new phones and renew the contract (because it was required). After having the phones for a month everything seemed fine, that is until I received a $100 phone bill? Again I

called sprint (average wait time 15 – 20 minutes to talk to someone, sometimes more than an hour) and was not able to get assistance so I sent email though there website instead, after 2 days I received a response from Sprint that reads.

At this point I was pretty aggravated but at least they were able to correct the mistake and I didn’t have to pay the $100 bill. Accept guess what happened, the very next month I was billed again $25 more dollars for the vision pack

after they assured that it was cancelled? This time I had to go in to a Sprint store in Redmond Town Center, WA to get this issue resolved and the credit applied twice. This is absolutely insane, the customer service reps lie though

their teeth! Finally this was sorted out and I was able to move on with my life but realize that at this point I have spent well over days trying to sort out these problems and beyond simply fixing the problem Sprint doesn’t give me any

free months or credit to help offset the pain and frustration they have caused me.

The third incident I had with Sprint was much harder to solve and cost me weeks to sort out and risked my status on eBay. Remember how I said I got the PPC-6700 phone? Well I used to have a Hitachi H1000 phone which sat in the closet for

a month and I decided to sell it on eBay. Someone on eBay purchased the phone and took delivery of it and then claimed they did not receive the phone and I was in a battle with PayPal for the following month because the person signed for

delivery via UPS. That is not the point, the point is I contacted Sprint and retrieve the ESN number from the phone so that I could report it stolen and this is the reply I got.

I then sent them a reply saying the phone was stolen and asked them to flag that ESN so that the phone could be recovered if someone activated it. This is the reply I received.

So at this point I’m happy that Sprint as done the right thing, big mistake thinking that. I also contacted the local police department in the area where the buyer of the phone was located and asked them to look in to the incident, I

also looked up the home # number of the person that purchased the phone that said they did not receive it and called them up and started to question them. It was obvious that the person on the other end of the phone was getting worried

that he was caught trying to fraud PayPal and eBay so he came up with a story that his son signed for the phone and stole it and that is why he contacted PayPal to get his money back, he then returned the phone to me. So now I had the

phone back so I called Sprint and said the phone was recovered and was no longer stolen.

So I called the 800 number and I was told that the phone was not reported as stolen on the account and that my service was going to be terminated if I did not pay the outstanding balance on my account! I am completely shocked at this

point so I hang up and send another email since they seem to be the only people that can help me (the voice service is worthless) and here is the reply I get.

So now I have confirmation that he was able to activate the phone, run up a bill and then they screw up and try to pin his outstanding bill on me even though he should have been arrested for his crimes. This is completely uncalled for

and I could not believe what was going on. I was seeing red at this point! I sent a reply back to this email saying that I was really concerned that such a mistake was allowed to happen and complained about the massive inconvenience and

stress this has caused me. This is the reply I get.

So that’s it, I get a little apology but no free service, or compensation for this mistake that has wasted me a ton of time? This is typical of Sprint at this point and I don’t hold my breath. So I want to leave Sprint but I’m under

contract so I cannot leave and they have already refused to cancel my contract at this time even though they have obviously breached the contract by giving me such horrible service (and everyone else I suspect).

So now on to the fourth incident, this one is a big one and cost me the most time and frustration by far. I dropped my PPC-6700 and shattered the screen. I decided it was too expensive to fix the phone so I decided to sell the phone on

eBay for parts costs. A gentleman in Arizona won the auction and received the phone from me because he said that he could get the parts to fix it. I was thrilled that someone wanted the broken phone. About two weeks after I sold the

phone I get an email from the gentleman completely upset saying that he went to the Sprint store to activate the phone and the store manager confiscated it and told him to leave the store or they would call the police. So now the guy

thinks I sold him a broken, stolen phone. I give the man my phone number because he is threatening to give me bad feedback on eBay and talk to him in person on the telephone to calm him down. I told him the phone was not stolen and that

this had to be another one of Sprints notorious mistakes. I told him to go back to the Sprint store and have the store manager contact me directly. He returned from the store later that day and called me saying they would not call me and

told him if he entered the store again they would call the police. At this point I had the gentlemen give me the phone # to the store so I could call them and sort this out. The manager would not even speak to me; they pushed me off on

to a service rep. So at this point they will not even allow the person that legally owns the phone (me) according to their system to sort this problem out. Again I decided to send mail to corporate since I could not get anywhere on the

phone. This is the response I received from sprint.

OH MY GOD! So all this time they had my own phone that I was actively using flagged as stolen and they never followed up and the phone that was supposed to be flagged was actively in use! OH MY GOD. I cannot believe that a company can

make so many mistakes. If this is happening to me I wonder what is happening to other people out there. So now we know the problem is the phone is really marked as stolen and that is why it was confiscated. So I call up the person in

Arizona that purchased the phone and explained what happened, I told them I would receive a callback from Sprint to get this sorted out in the next day or two and told him to just sit tight. So I get the call back from Sprint, you are

not going to believe this but there solution involved me getting on a plane and flying down to Arizona so that I could enter the store and recover the phone from the store manager. I told the person on the phone that they were insane “I

seriously did” and said that I was not going to jump on anything and go anywhere and that they better sort this out or I’ll take legal action. At this point they agreed only to remove the stolen flag from the phone but they could not do

anything beyond that. Here is the email confirmation.

WHAT!!!!!!!! They removed the flag from the HG1000 which never was flagged in the first place, I call them up again and listen to the nice elevator music for 20 minutes and find out it was just a type-o and that they removed it from the

PPC-6700 and not the HG1000. OMG, Is there software really that bad that when 2 phones are on the same account they can make this many mistakes? So I call the guy up in Arizona and he goes back to the store and asks the manager to look

at the account again to see the stolen flag has been removed. The store manager refused so he had to call me back from the store and hand the cell phone to the manager. The manager would not talk to me at first but I told the gentleman

from Arizona to tell her this verbatim “If you do not talk to this person on the phone you are guaranteed to lose your job tomorrow, do you really want to risk it?”. At this point the manager decides to take the phone call and simply

says “Hello”. From that point on I pretty much talked for 5 minutes straight, completely furious and ended in “You better give that man his phone and apologize to him while I’m on the phone to witness it or I’ll have your job tomorrow

one way or the other. “I think it sucks that I have to resort to threatening people to get them to do their job”. At this point the store manager seemed genuinely concerned that they have screwed up and proceeded to check the account.

Low and behold the flag was removed so she gave the phone back to the man, at the point I said “Apologize” and she did but in a completely insincere manner. I cannot believe this experience. At this point my stress and frustration level

is absolutely though the roof. I have never in my life dealt with a company that makes as many mistakes and is as arrogant as Sprint. So after a few weeks this incident was cleared up and the gentleman in Arizona got his phone back and

was able to get it activated. So my $50 sale on eBay in phone parts lead to 8 hours talking on the phone 2 – 3 hours reading and writing email and the frustration of having to threaten someone in Arizona over someone else’s cell phone.

There are certainly easier ways to make money.

At this point I contacted Sprint and told them for the 2nd time in my contract that I wanted to be cancelled without any penalties for the gross misconduct and again they refused on the grounds that the contract was still valid and there

is nothing they can do. They did however offer to cancel the account and send me a $300 bill for cancellation; boy isn’t that just sweet of them. At this point I have no choice but to continue to take Sprints abuse and recognize that the

"Where our customers come first!" slogan at the bottom of their replies is simply lip service.

Now for the straw that broke the camel’s back. Incident number five is the final breaking point at which I decide to spend my entire Saturday morning drafting up this novel of a forum post to help the community understand the pain Sprint

is capable of inflicting. About three months ago my wife and I entered the Sprint store in Redmond Town Center, WA and asked the representative when our contract end date was and to ensure it was cancelled when it hit. He told us the end

date was September, 5th 2007, my wife and I was thrilled it was only a few months ago. Well yesterday I went in to the Sprint store to finally cancel my contract and I was told the end date was actually November 11th, 2007. So here we go

again, the sprint rep that told me my end date was obviously looking at the wrong account and gave me misinformation. This is just fantastic, so at this point they recommend that I visit another store up the street and talk to the store

manager to get this sorted out. I proceed to go to the other location which I just realized was a tactic to get me out of there store and told the person at the front desk I would not leave the store until my contract was null and void

and that I need to speak with the highest manager in the store. The person at the front desk went away for a few minutes and came back saying there was not a manager on duty at the time to speak too. I paced back and forth for 20 minutes

and finally realized that one of the employee’s had manager on their little shirt tag and approached her (her name was Patty, at the Redmond, WA location) and asked “Are you a manager”. She replied, “Yes, I’m not the store manger

though”. It’s starting to sound a lot like avoidance to me and it seems clear that they get a lot of angry customers; I didn’t see one happy customer come in during the 2 hours I was there. I told the manager my story and she said she

would like to help me but the store cannot handle cancellations, only activations. I find this kind of a weird business model that you can activate a phone in 10 minutes at a sprint store but you cannot cancel a contract without calling

and using up about ~1 hour of your time. She said I needed to call customer service. I told her that I was not leaving the store until my contract was null and void so I called the customer service and it said Estimated Wait time 15 – 20

minutes. After 50 minutes I took the phone over to the manager and said “This is ridiculous” and showed her the cell phone readout that the phone call had been 50 minutes. She said there was really nothing they could do, then after a few

more minutes of waiting I heard another employee talking to customer service activating an account. I said “Are you talking to customer service” and she said “Yes”. I told the manager “How the hell did she just get though when you said

you have to call the same number as me?”. The manager got nervous and told me that they can call the activation department directly but the cancellation department they have to get in the queue. Every minute I’m in the store I hear more

lies. I finally get upset and start raising my voice and talking to other customers in the store and she agrees to call the activation department and have the call transferred to cancellations. So at this point it is clear they were just

wasting my time because they had the means to get me in touch with Sprint the whole time. I finally get on the phone with a guy named Eric (Sprint Employee # ER305935) and he said he would like to help me. I explained my circumstances

and my request and he told me that he could not cancel the account because the contract is still valid. I told him it was not valid and sited many reasons. He then proceeded to tell me he does not even have the authority to cancel a

contract without sending out the $300 fine. I told him to transfer me to someone that could and he told me that nobody that can be reached by a customer is capable of doing this. I was so frustrated with Eric that I started repeating

myself. Eric tried to stay in character but I kept asking if he would want to be a customer with Sprint after what I have been though and I asked him to read the notes on my account from the countless mistakes that were made. He told me

in a nut shell that he would not want to be a customer either but there is nothing he could do about my situation. I was very upset at this point and told him that he better get someone on the line or else I would send out my customer

experience with Sprint to the world (what you are reading right now) because I don’t think what Sprint is doing is lawful or trustworthy. He again said “For the last time Jerry there is nothing I can do, is there anything else I can do

for you today”. I said “No, the only things you can do for me would get me in deeper with sprint”. Just to clarify he had offered to renew my 2 year contract at a lower rate to keep me as a customer. There is nothing they could do to

keep me as a customer, Sprint treats you nice when you come in the door but the second you sign on the line your soul belongs to them and they will treat you accordingly. Sprint as a corporation has put in safe guards to prevent

customers from performing any actions at the store that do not end in more money being paid to Sprint. This is very unfortunate and if you go sign up with sprint or have signed up with sprint you will know that they will not tell you any

of this upfront. You will leave the store thinking you can do all business though the store front when in reality once you sign you’re in for an unpleasant experience.

There was also a sixth incident that occurred with my Sprint Long Distance on my home phone, sprint added this when I did my last contract renewal years ago and I recently wanted to cancel it, you have to call sprint directly only to be

told to contact your phone company to have the service removed, once you do this you have to also call sprint back one month later to have the service cancelled a second time or else they will continue to charge you even though you

cannot physically use the service anymore since it was disconnected my your home land line phone provider. Yes another tactic by Sprint to ensure they can bill you as many times as possible. I would just love to be a fly on the wall in

the Sprint Executive Board meetings. I’m sure it 100% about profit and not about making customers happy, that is why they do 2 year contracts and not 1 year contracts in the first place, to ensure that they can rake you over the coals

for 24 months before having to even try to make an effort to retain you for another two years.

I would suggest looking in to T-Mobile or Cingular as I have heard more good things about these companies then bad things. Also the price point is way better, Sprint will lead you to believe that plans are a certain cost but when you get

your bill you will be paying much more! My friend with T-Mobile said his bill says to the penny what they quoted him in the store. Also do not sign in to an extended contract > 1 year even if it means you get a sweet deal on the phone.

Whenever a company has you locked in to a contract they will spit in your face until the renewal date. Sprints problem was that they not only spit in my face, they also cost me massive time, money and stress from their mistakes.

All of the email segments are cut and pastes from actual emails from sprint dot com customer service reps and all of the accounts in this story are 100% true and can be backed up with evidence (emails, phone call logs, etc). I spent nearly

3 hours of my Saturday writing this message and I’m sure I’ll spend even more time signing up on forums that need this message and posting it. I do not commit to an action like this lightly, this company has done wrong by me to the point

where I find it absolutely necessary to alert the public at any expense to myself to ensure that companies like this cannot just keep moving forward with business conduct like this. I am going to record my future phone conversations with

Sprint so that I can include them in an upcoming youtube video to help further educate the public. Also if you have had a good experience with sprint and have been with them longer than 2 years please also reply to this thread as I would

like to know if anyone is getting good treatment from this company. If you were a past employee or even a current employee of Sprint I would love to hear your response to this and please realize you will stay anonymous, you can contact

me at deadnick2002 at yahoo dot com or just reply to this thread and I will revisit the forums over the next few weeks to answer questions and read your responses.

Sprint is a dishonest company and I hope that people see it for what it is and conduct research after reading my story. I also hope that other people will come forward and reply to this thread and talk about their own personal

experiences. Sprint need to be reminded that customers can and will use freedom of speech to ensure they are not treated unfairly and the greater impact we have on them the more they will be forced to re-vamp there model to support their

slogan and stop giving lip service. I also urge forum moderators to sticky this thread if they feel it is justified for their respective forums so that more people will see this moving in to the future so they can make more educated

decisions.

Overview
======================
- Sprint cost me more time and money fixing mistakes than any other company I have ever dealt with in my life including the IRS.

- Read the small print, Sprint is a completely dishonest company that pays there sales people strictly by commission and does not put any safe guards in place to prevent there representatives from lying to you to get the sales (Used Car

Salesmen Tactics)

- Sprint will not make exception on your account for any reason, so matter how bad they mess up

- Sprint only has a few people handling there customer service line and you end up waiting 30 – 60 minutes on average to speak with a representive, and if you need to cancel something they will put you back in another queue for an

additional 30 minutes.

- Customer service has no authority, there is no person you can reach by phone or in person at a store that can help you resolve issues on your account, they can change your service contract if they made a mistake but realize that if

they do this it will auto-renew your 2 year agreement without your prior knowledge, very dangerous. This actually makes it in their best interest to make a mistake because it forces you to come in and try to resolve it which ends in them

getting a contract renewal out of you and more money.

- Email is the only way to contact Sprint and solicit any kind of useful actions, dialog *2 from your cell phone often ends in the battery dying before you get to speak to a customer service representative

- Sprint stores do not have any ability beyond your own to contact corporate; they might as well be a guy on the side of the street with a cart. They cannot perform any action you cannot do yourself by sending email or calling them.

- Sprint store managers are rude, condescending and quick to blame the customer for mistakes made by the company and or store (one in the same).

- Eric (Employee # ER305935) proved to me that the only thing sprint can do at its highest customer service level is sell you another contract or change your service (but only at a gain for them)

- Sprint can make mistakes on your dime, they prevent there reps from giving you credits or change your contract without auto-renewal to ensure their customer support people cannot give you what is due no matter how much they might agree

with you on a personal and professional level.

- The employees at the store look like they just came out of a timeshare training seminar. They only know how to pump you for the maximum amount of money and they don’t care about anything else. I was very sad to see a Mexican fellow

that could not speak very good English get entrapped in to a plan that was way over what he needed. The lady said “Do you want the 1000+ minute plan” and he didn’t say anything because he did not realize she was talking to him and then

she just nodded for him and put it in the computer, I was completely ashamed that I didn’t go over and try to make him understand but I was already flustered with my own issue (This was at the Redmond Town Center, WA location).

- Sprint does not trust customers at all; they do everything in their power to prove you wrong. A gentleman brought in his phone and said that he dropped it on the ground and it stopped working, they spent 15 minutes running a PH

analysis test on the phone to ensure it was not dropped in water because they suspected the guy was lying. Whatever happened to trusting customers, the guy was dressed in a nice suite and was very polite, and to fix or replace the phone

would have been minimal considering it was an older phone.

- Customer service people will ignore you for long periods of time without warning. When I entered the store the rep that was talking to me would eventually get flustered and say they had to go get a printout or something and then

disappear for 15 minutes in to the back room (with key coded locked door).

Thank you,
Jerry (Very upset Sprint Customer)

Wow bro... wtf...

Sorry for the incredibly long post but after 5 years of this crap I finally decided it was time for me to dedicate a day to ensuring the public knows what Sprint is capable of. I understand if people dont read the whole thing because it is so long but I hope they atleast scan it and see how bad sprint really is. Focus on Incedent 3 and 4, they were the most stressful.

Dude just switch providers and stop complaining. Some people just can't be satisfied.

Oh... and get a girlfriend or another hobby... the time you spent writing all this stuff could have been better spent.

1) I can't switch because Sprint is threatening to charge me $300 if I do and the pricipal behind that is what I'm fighting, not the amount.
2) I am Married so a girlfriend is out of the question
3) If you actually read the story then you would understand this is not a matter of "Some people just can't be satisfied", more like "Some people really get screwed"
4) Why even bother replying to my thread if your not going to read it or sight a valid point in your reply?
5) It only took a few hours to write this story and it was worth every word. A lot of good replies have come from it on a lot of forums both in favor and against it and I value both sides.

Just out of curiocity do you work for Sprint or are you a Sprint customer? Also please understand that I enjoyed writing this letter and posting it to so many forums because I enjoy seeing the replies too it (The ones that actually sight points in the story or the story as a whole).

Edit : Nevermind, I just noticed looking in your profile you are a Sprint customer and 44 years old, wow. I must say I have not encountered that many men your age that reply to threads in this manner, at any rate I would still like to know if you actually work for Sprint.

Edit : Dirty-Harry is two faced, read his post on this thread Sprint's "New" website he also thinks Sprint sucks and agrees in other forums yet chooses to trash me here? Why!

Thanks for the reply.

You're helping me prove my point. Apparently YOU did not read my post and it was VERY short.

First off I don't understand how I'm helping you prove your point? And second of all you modified your reply so now my response does not align well, lucky for me I quoted you before you made the modification so my reply is still valid. And I did appriciate the PM you sent to me appologizing for your behavior in my thread however I do not understand why your still saying that I'm helping you prove a point after appologizing, I'm very confused

This has got to be by far the longest and the funniest post I have ever seen on this forum

Wow, your a Moderator and you take a dump on my thread trying to inform people of my experience over the last 5 years? Thats not very cool.

Ummm....I'm sorry....but I have to agree with camstuf, and basically everybody else that has posted.

WOW!!!

Oh...and just to save you some time.....I happen to be a Super Moderator here.

hey dawg I put out a mass email with your whole story. I bought out of my sprint contract years ago. And even tho boost is a division of sprint, I don't get shafted like my f