Sprint Admits It Is "Unable Meet Your Current Wireless Needs"

I have posted in the past about the customer service at Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) since the merger. Here is another shining example of what has turned from incompetence to what can only be described as self-flagellation? If I was a shareholder, I would be seething. Since I am not, I am still laughing.

The site Blackberry Cool has posted a letter from Sprint "cutting the cord" with a customer and this apparently is something Sprint is doing more regularly. Here is the line that made me laugh out loud: "the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine we are unable to meet your current wireless needs."

Like what? Connecting their calls and billing them properly?

Just in case I was not laughing hard enough they then informed the customer that they would generously "not require you to pay an early termination fee." Honestly, you cannot make this up!!

To put the icing on the cake, they then told the customer if they had any questions they should . . . you guessed it . . . "call the customer care department." Isn't that why they jettisoned them in the first place? AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) must be smiling watching this implosion.

This is a stunning admission from a company bleeding customers on a quarterly basis. I think they have the whole "customer service" thing backwards; it is not we who are supposed to serve them . . .

S 1-yr chart:

Comments

[Phil Ketchum]

I think it's proper to jettison the few for the benifit of the greater good. Who needs the complainers anyway? I once met someone who used Sprint's service and they were incredibly unhappy so I told her that Sprint surely wanted her business and she should ask to speak to a supervisor, and that the phone rep. only had limited responsibility/descret... in handling her problem. Later, I thought "Does Sprint really need a customer like her who wouldn't listen to reason? Maybe Sprint would be better off if she took her phone somewhere else?"

Phil

[huangjin]

Sometimes the customer is wrong. If customers are calling customer service 40 to 50 times a month, which is what these people were doing, then either they're bad customers or Sprint really isn't the service for them.