paragiraffe I love arugula.

customer service

Everyone seems to like to bitch about their cell phone company and their received level of customer service. While I am not saying they are wrong, I have come to have low expectations of cellular providers in general, so I mostly take it all with a grain of salt. The two-year contract thing—they all do it. The crappy equipment thing—this is America, people, we don’t build or buy things to last. Do a lot of things about having a relationship with a cellular provider suck? Of course. Now get over it.

I have Sprint, and I have always had Sprint. They’ve never done anything terribly wrong to me, they let me have a new phone with all of the rebates every 18 months, their coverage suits my needs, and I am on that flexible plan they have. Recently (actually quite a while ago—I’m just lazy) I decided to drop the “Vision” (internet) from my plan because I rarely use it, and it is an extra 15$ a month. (I used it at first, but, like with many things, my interest faded.) I called tonight to see what kind of hassle it would be, and, to my surprise, it was really easy. I was on hold maybe a minute and then spoke with a polite and professional woman who spoke English clearly. She did not try to make me keep it or sell me anything else.

And, thus, Sprint gets two thumbs up today.


8 Comments

When I switched over to GSM with AT&T, I started using their mMode internet service once in a while. If you don’t sign up with a plan, it’s 3 cents a KB. I was getting 3-4 dollars in charges a month. After 4 months or so, I just signed up for their 1 MB mMode plan, for $7.99. I generally use about half of that. I’ve already used 600 kb of my june/july billing cycle. For me, it’s worth it.

Posted by Eric on 30 June 2005 @ 11pm

i use centennial and they haven’t done anything too satanic to me. their service sucks from time to time, but whatever. it works when it counts.

Posted by Kayleigh on 30 June 2005 @ 11pm

I’ve been with Verizon for years and years…and I’ve only had one problem. When we first moved to Tennessee, our roaming was all goofy—because our updates were still coming from Ohio and I never bothered to switch (Okay, I didn’t switch on purpose so my family could call me and not have to dial long distance). They fixed it and even credited me money for stuff that was, in all honesty, my fault. That’s pretty cool.

Posted by Erika on 1 July 2005 @ 12am

fido phone card thumbs up

actually, any phonecard would be okay :D

Posted by SAFFE on 1 July 2005 @ 12am

I’ve had Sprint employees hang up on me and lie to me, I do think of all the companies I deal with on a regular basis, they have the worst customer service of them all. And yet, I stay because I like having my nights start at 7.

Posted by C on 1 July 2005 @ 8am

I’ve been trying to get my voicemail set up with Cingular to no avail for 2 weeks. It shouldn’t be hard. I’m generally good at menial gadget tasks. Every time I call Cingular, they have no idea why it’s not letting me set up my voicemail, but their trick to tell me to call from another line instead of my cell phone. I DON’T HAVE ANOTHER LINE!

Posted by Jason on 1 July 2005 @ 10am

I’ve had Verizon for a long time (going on over a year now with no Contract in fact). I have never had any major problems. Sometimes i’ll get crappy reception inside of certain buildings but with as many electronics that my work and the campus has i figure that’s probably more our fault then Verizons.

I will say that one time my father did have a problem. He had neglected to notice that the plan he signed our family up for had 200 extra minutes a month for the first year of the contract but afterwards it did not. Of course the first month the bill came without it we had used way more then our allotment and we had a HUGE bill. He called and even though it was my father’s fault they credited our account for those extra minutes and we didn’t have to pay. So far no problem i have ever had has been enough to trump that piece of goodwill.

Posted by David on 1 July 2005 @ 11am

I switched to T-Mobile a few months ago after the worst service ever with AT&T Wireless after the worst service ever with Verizon after getting pretty good service until AirTouch got bought by Verizon. I have to say, I love T-Mobile. The one time I had to call customer service, I didn’t even have to hold in line to wait for someone. It rang straight through to a human being. Plus… only one year contracts and you get a new phone every year.

Though, I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get a date with Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Posted by Shaun on 1 July 2005 @ 7pm