Tuesday, September 23, 2014

What Mobile Phone Company has the Worst Customer Service?

When you look at Cellular Service, you usually make your decision based on Data Rates, Signal Strength, the Plans they offer, sometimes how good a deal you can get on the Smartphone you want, but how often is it you're trapped in your cellular contract before you realize how bad the customer service is?

Some things to think about when choosing a Cellular Carrier:
Will I get a signal at my home or my office?
How do the plans compare to everyone else's?
Do I have to pay for my phone myself, or is the upgrade included in my plan?
One of the things we forget is...
How angry is the customer service going to make me? For example, "How Bad is Sprint's Customer Service?"

I've been a customer of almost all the big, and some of the smaller carriers out there. I've had complaints about all of them, but by FAR, the absolute worst Customer Service I've experienced is with Sprint PCS. It appears I'm not alone. In a short survey I conducted of people who have used or currently use Sprint, when I asked what the worst thing about Sprint was, the answer was almost Always "MY GOD THEY HAVE AWFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE"

What set me off thinking about this was an experience I had with their customer service department this week. I am used to not having great experiences with Sprint's Customer Service, so Before calling I steeled myself for the worst customer service Experience from a cell phone provider i could possibly expect. Once Again, Sprint Exceeded my expectations.

I was calling because I saw on a pending charge to my account that I was about to be overcharged by $111. I had recently changed my plan back from what I had switched to to my old plan because the savings I was promised just weren't there. When they changed my plan, they switched all three of my phones not back to the Family plan but all to individual plans, $111 more than It was supposed to be.
I hadn't noticed the month before because they had applied a credit they ALREADY owed me from a previous screw-up to that bill. The Credit covered the mistake...I saw the charge the month before and thought they had just forgotten the credit.

Now I work at a small company, and we occasionally make billing mistakes, and when we do, and we acknowledge that it's a mistake, we reach into our little credit card processing system and reverse the charge. You see...I'd not our money. It's our customer's money.

Apparently Sprint believes that when they overcharge a customer, that the best way to deal with that is to keep the money they overcharged the customer for as long as possible. Because of course, Sprint needs that more than the customer does, right?

More importantly I dont' like it when a Cell Phone Company I'm doing business with lies to me.

First, when the charge was still pending, Saturday, I called Sprint, Pointed out the error, and they agreed that they had overcharged the last 2 months by $111, so agreed that would Not complete the pending charge, and that I would be able to call in Tuesday after the proper credits had been applied to the account and make the correct payment.

I don't' like a Dishonest Mobile Phone Company. I don't think anyone else does either.

Of course, I looked Tuesday Morning and the charge had gone through, $150 more than I was expecting, on a very tightly budgeted account, about to cause massive overdraft problems. I called Sprint again, and asked that the charge be reversed.

Now nothing against the poor Customer Service Agent who took my call. He was perfectly nice and only able to work within the confines of what he was able to do. And nothing against his supervisor who I also treated to a very bad morning. But when you look at the last two months and clearly agree that you overcharged me by $111 per month 2 months in a row, You're REALLY telling me that my little roughly say 5 million dollar company has the ability to hit a button in our credit card processing software that can reverse the charge, but a $28.6 BILLION company doesn't have the ability to do that?

Perhaps Sprint felt like they needed my $222 more than I did, so instead of reversing the charge, and letting me pay them what I actually owed them, they want to go through about a MONTH LONG PROCESS to Verify what they can already see in front of their faces and Process a claim that will get me "Credit on my next bill."

NO. Here is how this works. You Charge too much money for something. You Look and see that you charged too much. You therefore have money that does NOT BELONG TO YOU.  Without QUESTION, and IMMEDIATELY, you GIVE THE MONEY BACK!!!!!

I could put up with the fact that every time I make a change to my account they screw SOMETHING up that ends up costing me an extra $100 or so the next month. But you really mean to tell me that You have my Money...You make $28.6 BILLION a year, and you don't' have the means to say...oops. Sorry. My Bad. Here you go, Hope I get it back to you before it causes a couple hundred dollars worth of overdraft fees.

The Main lesson Learned I guess, is that Great reception is one thing...(Wait...I don't' really GET Great reception from Sprint) Good plans are another..(OK, My Plan is pretty good when they're not overcharging me by 36%.) But Being able to actually TRUST your mobile phone company with an Auto-Debit, and Expect not be overcharged, or to be able to expect them to do the right thing when they DO make a mistake? That's worth a heck of a lot in my book.



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