I know I’m not alone on this issue. Do you get the sense that so many companies are being underhanded or sloppy in their approach to doing business?
As a customer of PCS Wireless Sprint since 1999, I just recently had to make a change in my phone service. Three factors caused this shift. My TREO600 was about to die, my son’s phone had died, and I was getting a tremendous amount of dropped calls on their system.
With phone in hand, I started to scout the phone stores looking for the best plan.
Verizon’s Carla offered me free activation on the three lines plus the fourth for my other son, great deals on our TREO 700s, and incredible clarity in the way she approached our deal and follow-up that should make other companies cringe. After I asked about a phone, she immediately asked me what I types of uses I needed the phone for.
A competitor’s Regional Sales manager was working right across the street from the Verizon store on this particular day. When I entered he went right into what I should be using without even questioning my intent. After about 20 minutes, I asked about the differences between the broadband he’s offering and the broadband Verizon and Sprint offered. To this he, to some degree bashed the competition with a product that, according to every web site I visited, was truly a slower broadband than the one he was marketing. The biggest benefit was overseas calling.
Sprint store was quite different. The first store I visited, they ignored me. I left. I traveled 25 minutes up to their regional Sprint, not reseller store, and they were closed with three people inside watching me drive up to the window only to look away. The next visit was no better. The line for customer service tied up the floor people for at least the 20 minutes; I waited around.
With three options to choose from I made the switch to Verizon. I switched for several reasons with the strongest being that Sprint PCS had been losing customers at a significant pace. In a major newspaper report, the stats showed how Sprint had half the customers that Verizon and this third competitor did. I also knew that Sprint had made some poor strategic decisions with the purchase of Nextel. They purchased an old outdated system. From a customer-service perspective, the entire company was having huge problems.
From my perspective as a customer, if you’re losing customers, you can’t invest in infrastructure. A catch 22.
In the switch I also know I would take a hit of $150 for my son’s phone as his phone was activated in January of 05 and we are now nearing the end of 06.
At 12 years old he had decided that he wanted his own phone and that he’d be willing to pay for it. How could you argue with a child that spends very little of his money on anything wasteful and then requests that he purchase his own phone and pay for the calls.
Then everything hit the wall. Sprint sends us a bill for $450 as if we had canceled 3 phones at $150 each. Having been with Sprint for 7 years, I figured that there must have been a mistake. There obviously had been a mistake.
We called to ask about the bill. The lady on the other end of the phone reprimands us, saying we should have called her before purchasing the new phone. How should we have known that after 7 years as a loyal customer, we’re considered early terminators? We tried to visit one of their stores.
I then jumped into the game.
The first operator could not even read our bill. Could not figure out taxes or what was open. I asked for a manager. After 9 minutes and 37 seconds, the phone call was dropped.
I called back again asking to speak with a manager. DROPPED AGAIN.
Finally I was able to get a manager on the phone. Her response was that the money was due because we made an adjustment to the plan when we added our son. Their representative had added a feature which allowed our son to start calls from 7 PM as free from our previous 9 PM starting time.
We thought we’d save our son some money. Besides the franchise store we purchased the product from did not tell us that this new program would change our entire plan. It was just an added feature.
Come to find out that that modification constituted, even though it was for our son, another two year agreement. I told this manager she was nuts. That adding a feature is not the same as a new plan. She begged to differ.
I asked for another manager and told the story again. I even offered her three options. First I would be willing to give her a credit card for $150 at that very moment and we can both walk away from this entire situation. Second, I could write a letter to that attorney general in our state outlining the scam that appears to be part of the “new plan versus added feature.” Third, I could let this bill sit forever as open.
She told me she did not care what I did. The bill was still due. After seven years, a feature sold to us to help our son became the basis of our disagreement.
I guess my argument is at what point does a 7-year customer, that changes a feature, now constitute a new customer? At what point does the lack of ability of a firm to service customers on location become the responsibility of the customer? At what point does someone, who knows what should be done, make the right decision?
It’s time for management to step up and do the right thing.
Last week I returned home from a short trip to North Carolina only to find that my Dell monitor was black. Having some knowlege of computers, I played with several options only to come to the conclusion the product was dead.
I heard an interesting statistic the other day about manufacturing while listening to a segment on Caterpillar. Caterpillar is the number one heavy-equipment manufacturer in the world with over $7 billion in exports annually.