My dad recently received a call from someone at Sprint saying he had a free phone offer. My dad is a tough guy to convince when it comes to paying for anything, but when it comes to free stuff, like most of us he said to bring it on. Yup, everything was fine and dandy until the free phone arrived a few weeks later. First of all, as expected, the phone was a simple feature phone with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. That’s not bad for the price, right? Wrong! If you look at my dad, a big guy with big hands who works on automobiles all day and thinks he can use a phone with tiny buttons, you will only get a very frustrated customer. So what phone did he get you may ask? It was an LG Remarq, the 3.5″ by 2.5″ slide phone. I am not saying it is a bad phone, but it is not the right phone for my dad. This is where things went really wrong! Keep reading to get more juicy details about Sprint.
Like anyone who has issues with what they bought, we decided to call Sprints Customer Service department to sort things out and get a different phone since we didn’t activate this tiny one. The first problem we ran into was the fact that there was no contact information in any of the two (2) pieces of paper in the package. So I went to sprint.com and found this at the bottom of the page “Order by Phone 1-866-866-7509” and called it thinking I would get their Order department and they would be able to help us.
The support representative who answered the call greeted me and went straight to offering me an additional line of service with a free phone without asking me what the heck I am calling about. I understand I may have called the wrong number but I would at least expect the representative to ask me what I am calling about before offering something to me. So after I gave her the order number and told her the issue, I was put on hold so she could look it up and understand it. When she came back online, she said okay which phone would I want to exchange this one with. Fair question, so my dad and I quickly hopped online and looked at other free phones on Sprint’s website. We decided to get him the Samsung Seek touchscreen phone. Now she says, she needs to get her Order Management department on the line to process this information for me. Okay, so another few minutes of holding and she comes back saying she is having a hard time getting someone online because of high call volume. I called at 7:33 PM so maybe I can buy that excuse. But she starts offering me the same deal again that she pitched in the beginning even after I told her that everyone else in my family already has cell phones or smartphones. So after another couple of minutes of holding we finally have another person on the line from Order Management. They verify account information and put us on hold again.
A minute later, I am sorry Mr. Chand but we cannot process this exchange because this order was placed by a “third party dealer.” This was the point where the conversation turned from polite/casual to frustrated/pissed off/confused/irritated/tired. She says I have to contact the dealer we spoke to process the exchange. Fair enough, so I ask for the dealer’s Name, Address and Contact information — I think that is a fair question on my part since the Packing Slip and Activation sheet that came in the package didn’t have any information about this so-called “third party dealer.” The reply I get just confused and pissed me off even more. She says, I am sorry sir, but we don’t have that information. So I said, let me get this straight, you (Sprint) share my (Customer) information with your (Sprint) dealer so they (Dealer) can call me to offer me some deals and place orders to you (Sprint), but you (Sprint) don’t have any information about them? “Yes that is correct sir” replies the representative. Now my head is just smoking with anger because what kind of company doesn’t keep information about their own dealers?
The above two pieces of paper were in the box that the phone came in. These are pictures of the pages that I took using my Motorola Droid X because I wanted to capture exactly what it looks like. Looks like photocopies or prints from some cheap, dying printer. I don’t mind, but at least put your contact information on it somewhere! I removed my dad’s contact information for privacy’s sake. Notice that the “Read This First” sheet says to go to sprint.com/returns to exchange the phone if we don’t like it (within 30-days). Just try going there and see if it is clear on how to do an exchange. There is no information that I could find on the site about how to actually go about exchanging the phone, so that’s why I called them. Now back to the conversation.
So, I firmly ask to speak to a supervisor and was transferred to him after a few minutes of holding. So he asks what the issue is and I again explain everything from the beginning. He again says that they don’t have any information besides the name (Streamline Communication) of the “third party dealer” and again I am annoyed and ask why not? This simply does not make any sense to me. How can you not have any contact information about your dealers, but allow them to place orders for your customers? On top of that, you share your customer’s information with those unknown dealers so they can call and offer deals? So he places me on hold again and says he will be back after trying to find their contact information.
What he says after he comes back really, really, surprises and pisses me off. Here is how the conversation went:
Supervisor : “Sir are you in front of your computer?”
Me: “Yes”
Supervisor : “Please open up a browser and go to Google.com.”
Me : Thinking to myself, why is this guy having me to Google? Then I said “OK” to see what he wanted me to do.
Supervisor : “Type in Streamline Communication and hit Search”
Me : Really pissed off, “So you want me to do a Google search for your dealer?”
Supervisor : “Yes sir!”
Me : “Okay, I just did it and I get about 8,520,000 results, which one do you want me to pick?”
Supervisor : “—” complete silence!
Me : “Are you still there?”
Supervisor : “Yes sir, but I cannot help you any further and unfortunately you would have to contact someone tomorrow.”
Me : “Okay this is really pathetic, how can you not have more information about the dealer that placed the order and give me that information so I can contact them? It is getting late so I want someone from Sprint to call me tomorrow with the contact information.”
Supervisor : “Okay sir, I have taken down your phone number and I will have someone call you tomorrow.”
That’s how the conversation ended after 46 minutes and 19 seconds of going back and forth and left and right. Now, I am still waiting for someone from Sprint to contact me. I will update this article after I do get a call or not. Or if I call them back. I think this will ultimately result in my dad switching to Verizon and giving the finger to Sprint for good.
Okay, that’s a huge load off of my chest. Did you have similar experiences with Sprint? Do you have any suggestions on how I should proceed? Please leave a comment below and let me know.