Sprint Blames Economy for Customer Losses

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Even though other carriers actually picked up millions of customers over the same time period, Sprint blamed the economy for the loss of almost $600M and 180k customers.

Sprint reported a loss of $594 million or 21 cents per share, for the three months that ended March 31, a decline of 18 cents per share from the same quarter a year ago. Revenue was also down about 12 percent to $8.21 billion. Analysts had expected about $8.28 billion in revenue. The company lost a total of about 182,000 wireless customers during the quarter to end with a total of 49.1 million.
 
Bleh, Sprint support is abysmal. Our company has a 3-year contract with Sprint for mobile broadband laptop cards (and USB adapters) and when we have problems with the cards in certain areas, they give us the runaround more often than not.

Last month they had a huge DNS problem where websites weren't being found. It gave me a big headache when employees were bitching they couldn't connect to our office servers from their client locations.

I personally use an AT&T (Cingular) PC card for my laptop and it's reliability is worlds different from Sprint's.
 
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Sprint the one that sent away customers because they complained too much?
 
I've done pretty well with Sprint personally. My SERO plan is way cheaper than anything Verizon of AT&T can offer me. I haven't run into any technical problems (but then again if I did I have a Windows Mobile phone that I flash custom firmware with so Sprint technical support would not exactly be my first attempt to solve a technical problem) I even had Sprint call ME asking if there was any questions I had or if I needed anything a few weeks ago. (I didn't, but it's not often a company calls YOU asking if you have any problems)
 
Heh, the economy does make a good scapegoat.
 
I've done pretty well with Sprint personally. My SERO plan is way cheaper than anything Verizon of AT&T can offer me. I haven't run into any technical problems (but then again if I did I have a Windows Mobile phone that I flash custom firmware with so Sprint technical support would not exactly be my first attempt to solve a technical problem) I even had Sprint call ME asking if there was any questions I had or if I needed anything a few weeks ago. (I didn't, but it's not often a company calls YOU asking if you have any problems)


I'm in the same boat as you. I pay a LOT less than I would with AT&T and my phones are custom flashed.
 
really?

everyone knows they are over priced and under serviced.

smart people get att/cellular

alot of people get verizon but then pay 2x as att users then say, hey why am i donig that?
 
I'm in the same boat as you. I pay a LOT less than I would with AT&T and my phones are custom flashed.

Same here, I love my SERO plan and I have had no issues at all with my phone or service. Thee is no way I would go anywhere else.
 
Sprint is a joke. The only reason they introduced the SERO service is to get people to pay for their service. ANY company can give sero service, but the only issue is everyone else is doing good, while Sprint is in the shitter so they offer such cheap plans in order to get customers. Thats the funny part
 
Sprint is a joke. The only reason they introduced the SERO service is to get people to pay for their service. ANY company can give sero service, but the only issue is everyone else is doing good, while Sprint is in the shitter so they offer such cheap plans in order to get customers. Thats the funny part

What's wrong with that? Until Sprint goes bellyup, I am paying half of what AT&T would cost me every month.
 
i've been with Sprint for a year now. I also have the SERO plan AND I have a Blackberry on it with BIS.
$34/month total with unl. Text, DATA, and Pic Messaging. I only have 500 anytime minutes, but I don't talk that much on my phone during the day.
 
Oh, I forgot, I can Tether with the phone via Bluetooth as well with no extra fees.
 
What's wrong with that? Until Sprint goes bellyup, I am paying half of what AT&T would cost me every month.

even without it, I did a comparison of my plan versus TMobile, AT&T and Verizon.

I'm paying anywhere between $20-$50 a month LESS to have the same stuff as I do now.

My only real complaint with Sprint is that their smartphones outside of Blackberries are really lacking or underpowered. I like my Q9c and all, but there's times when i'll switch to another application, and then it just slows to a crawl. What good is a smartphone if it has to stop and think about what its doing?
 
funny, i love sprint and havent had any problems in the last few years
then again im on sero, run a service center and get a new phone every 2 months lol
but it all depends on who you deal with. i take care of all my customers and friends/fam
 
really?
everyone knows they are over priced and under serviced.
smart people get att/cellular
alot of people get verizon but then pay 2x as att users then say, hey why am i donig that?

Could have fooled me. My Roommate's bill is always higher than mine and he's on AT&T... I also get more than he does for the base plan price. (He gets 200 text messages for $5 extra a month, I get 300. I have unlimited nights and weekends... he gets... Rollover minutes. His overage is $0.49 a minute. Mine is $0.10 a minute.)

AT&T is pretty shoddy in Chicago. Outages are expected. Since he runs his own business, he uses his cellphone all the time and is constantly dropped, to the point to where he's asking me how much my Sprint plan was. He's had enough calls dropped to where it's hurting his business relationships. (He now just uses VOIP for all calls, so he's paying for a cellphone service he can't reliably use.) And... we're IN the city of Chicago. No suburbs, no rural areas, no bumfuck middle of nowhere. We know the exact location of the GSM tower closest to us (about 3 blocks NW of us)...

If you're going to make a claim, at least show -some- attempt to support your statements.

Oh I'm sorry, this might be a bit much for you to understand.

Here's a summary.

DURRRR SPRINT ROX YOU SUCK LOLOL
YOU STOOPID FOR LIEKING AT&T
 
Could have fooled me. My Roommate's bill is always higher than mine and he's on AT&T... I also get more than he does for the base plan price. (He gets 200 text messages for $5 extra a month, I get 300. I have unlimited nights and weekends... he gets... Rollover minutes. His overage is $0.49 a minute. Mine is $0.10 a minute.)

AT&T is pretty shoddy in Chicago. Outages are expected. Since he runs his own business, he uses his cellphone all the time and is constantly dropped, to the point to where he's asking me how much my Sprint plan was. He's had enough calls dropped to where it's hurting his business relationships. (He now just uses VOIP for all calls, so he's paying for a cellphone service he can't reliably use.) And... we're IN the city of Chicago. No suburbs, no rural areas, no bumfuck middle of nowhere. We know the exact location of the GSM tower closest to us (about 3 blocks NW of us)...

If you're going to make a claim, at least show -some- attempt to support your statements.

Oh I'm sorry, this might be a bit much for you to understand.

Here's a summary.

DURRRR SPRINT ROX YOU SUCK LOLOL
YOU STOOPID FOR LIEKING AT&T

I work downtown Chicago and I have no troubles using my AT&T mobile broadband card and Blackberry.

It's too easy to criticize other people's choices and opinion and overlook your own because all you hear from other people is complaints about their service.

You'll never hear "my God, I just got off the phone with my girlfriend and AT&T service was fucking wonderful"

No, but rather you would hear "$%#!!$%^^%@$ AT&T dropped my call when I was talking to my girlfriend!" more.
 
think the economy can be blamed for low sperm count?

You have to "train" it to output more. You're not "training" hard or often enough.

They sound like the RIAA/MPAA. Blame someone/something else for your woes.
 
think the economy can be blamed for low sperm count?

Sure, why not? The economy is causing some people to lose their jobs and homes and become stressful. So, why not tie that with low sperm count? Although, if you lose your job and home you should probably rethink having children.
 
How about their shitty customer service?

The only issue I have with Sprint's customer service is not everything is resolved the first time around, so it may take a second call to get things done. When you point this out to them, they go a bit above and beyond to make sure the issue is rectified... Which is far better customer service than I used to get with both AT&T and TMobile. They were willing to pricematch a phone upgrade for me after I explained the situation, which resulted in an extra $100 taken off. They allowed me to keep an older plan that I preferred to have when an online phone upgrade would have forced me to switch to a different plan that was 'compatible' with the phone. Hard to say they aren't being helpful or providing good service when it comes to that. Even when it isn't about customer retention, I've had no issues dealing with their customer service to reverse charges due to abuse (someone spammed me text messages to run up my bill) and offer to block that number from being able to contact me again.
 
"It's Sprint, stupid..." or words to that effect. They're horrible, they really are. How some people slip through the cracks and never have issues with them I'll just never understand. Here's my "Sprint sucks" story:

Few years ago I grabbed one of their wireless broadband cards (PCMCIA version, this was in 2006), signed up for service, coughed up the $150 deposit (yes my credit was pretty bad at that time, a bit better now), and made sure the CSR at the kiosk - this was in a mall here in Vegas - specifically stated that what I saw on the TV commercial was true:

"14 Day No Questions Asked Return - Return the hardware and cancel the service within 14 days of purchase and there's no charge, none."

That's what it said on the commercial, that's what it said on the brochure I had in my hand the whole time we were talking, etc. He agreed, signed off on it with the paperwork and I left with the card. Got home, installed it, worked fine for the first day or so then it just tanked and never worked right again. Bandwidth wasn't there, and I live about 450 feet from a cell tower that sits on top of a Sprint central office building in downtown Las Vegas - I'm literally line-of-sight and also almost the same height off the ground as the antenna. If I had a high powered BB gun I could probably shoot the damned thing...

But...

I returned the card after 4 days of ownership. The total amount of "bandwidth" I'd used was less than maybe 100MB, and I did sign up for the $79.95/month unlimited plan (I don't use them for cell service, I have NET10 which is more reliable) so I wasn't worried about that in any way.

Return the card, expect my deposit to be refunded - a deposit I paid IN CASH from my hand to the CSRs, as noted on the receipt, PAID IN CASH.

And that's where everything fell apart. The CSR (same guy that sold it to me) would not issue a refund of my deposit, regardless of how much complaining I did. Even when the actual Manager arrived 20 mins later, I couldn't pull my refund from 'em, even considering I did everything on my end of my "agreement" with Sprint and was well within the 14 day return policy.

I left after 40 mins with the refund of the first month's service but not a dime of the deposit because I actually got to the point where if I didn't leave then and there, they'd probably have called mall security and had me thrown out of the whole building. Bleh.

Get home, call Sprint, dead end. Get hung on up 3 times during the call - and I was on a hardline, so I can't blame a bad cell signal. They literally hung up on me when I made my requests for the refund I was legitimately owed with some bullshit about they'd have to spend time doing research into how much bandwidth I had used and what they were going to charge me for it. Boy I got pissed like you wouldn't believe but I kept it cool and asked for a Supervisor which gets me the "Fine, sir, please hold" and then 10 seconds of clicks then a disconnect.

Call back, same cycle, 3 times this happened.

Waited a week, called back, got hung up on twice - my god, Sprint is the phone company here in Vegas and they can't keep me connected? What does that say about their landline service? Geezus...

To make a long long horrible story short:

I didn't get my deposit refunded for 68 days even though I made about 30 calls, several a week, until I just gave up listening to their bullshit and hung up on them before they could do it to me yet again.

68 days to get a deposit on hardware which was returned 3 days after purchase... I'll never figure that one out, nor will I ever use Sprint nor recommend them for any reason whatsoever as long as I - and they - exist.

Idiots...
 
picture3.jpg

:p
 
I'm happy with my Sprint SERO plan; I use a HTC Diamond with a custom ROM. Who cares about customer service? I never talk to them. The only time I talk to a Sprint is when someone calls me trying to sell me another line or upgrade my plan. I never have to worry about my minutes; 500 is plenty...
 
"It's Sprint, stupid..." or words to that effect. They're horrible, they really are. How some people slip through the cracks and never have issues with them I'll just never understand. Here's my "Sprint sucks" story:

(snip)

68 days to get a deposit on hardware which was returned 3 days after purchase... I'll never figure that one out, nor will I ever use Sprint nor recommend them for any reason whatsoever as long as I - and they - exist.

Idiots...

During a bad period in my life, I was couchsurfing and lugging a laptop around to get work done. Dialup was still all that was really available to myself and even then... I wasn't always able to have a dedicated line for the amount of time I needed to be online to get some things done. So I signed up for that TMobile Wifi Internet access that was being offered in Starbucks. Could get some coffee, work on my stuff with the laptop and use a high speed internet connection and get out of the house I was crashing at (and relieving the stress of who was putting me up at the time)... all good, right?

30 day trial, cancel within 30 days and you're fine. So I try to cancel on the 26th day. No dice. They said because I had already crossed the MONTH in which -they- metered the service, I was already due for a second bill for services as the first was prorated. They managed to dig up some small print that was not in the terms of service when I read it on my laptop in the coffee shop before signing up that the '30 days or before the end of the first billing period, whichever is first' (nice tricky wording there, since by that logic it could NEVER be 30 days unless you knew exactly when the first day of their billing period was) was the wording of the cancellation policy. Slight problem, I didn't think to cut and paste the TOS as I saw it. I do that every time now because of this one situation.

As a result, I got stuck with a $200 early termination fee. For wifi access. That is now free everywhere. Arguing with them over the phone, all TMobile's reps had to tell me was to try going to Starbucks more often. I ended up relocating and they continued to tell me (when I called to tell them I had no service in the new area, both with the wifi AND cell) that I could just drive to the Starbucks that was 10 miles from my home to use a service that was more than the cost of DSL.

I continued to argue with them over the phone over the misleading wording that I had come across, they continued to brush me off and give me excuses. Being in a bad situation (essentially homeless before I went back to California) and trying to prioritize what was needed most... I ended up just paying the early termination fee and telling them to go fuck themselves. When my contract for my TMobile cellphone was up, I called them explaining exactly why I was no longer continuing my service with them. Sure. They were "apologetic" and even offered to give me a "credit for one month's service" ($45 versus $200 plus 12 months of non operative cell. Fuck you.)...

Yet so many people I know praise TMobile and tell me how great they are.

Their suggestion for how to mitigate GSM/Hearing Aide buzz and interference? "Hold it further away from your ear."
 
Notice how all the Sprint horror stories begin with "a couple of years ago." Sprint has really upped its customer service quality in a ton of respects. And their prices, even on normal plans, can't be matched by any other carrier. I have Sprint and have been very happy with my service so far. The more interesting part of the story is how the amount of loses they are suffering is a TON less this quarter. Which is a good sign that the company is starting to turn around.
 
In all honesty, all cell phone services suck, with their obsence fees for texting, the only question is the fact that you like the phones and whose service has the phone you want so that you'll end up having to buy into their shitty service.
 
In my experience, they're fine given that your content w/ your product. But should you have any complaints or issues w/ the service, don't expect anyone to give a damn. It's almost like they figure if you have anything to bitch about you're just costing them CS money and figure good riddance. Needless to say, the numbers don't surprise me in the least.
 
Sprint lost me as a customer in 2006 when they refused to do a simple thing for me:

1. Change my ph to a local one while allowing me to keep my current plan.

So I went shopping around and I went to T-mobile and never looked back
 
I have tried different carriers such as ATT, Cingular, and Verizon. They have all been terrible mainly with the most important thing for having a cellphone and that is reception!!!!

I transferred over to Sprint and they have been excellent. I have never had any reception problems at work, my house or on the road. I guess this depends on your area. I have been confident enough with Sprint service to cancel my landbased home phone and just use the cellphone.
I have had no problems with Sprint customer service either. I think they have changed because of all the complaints in the past. Also the pricing is a lot less than Verizon.
 
Im sure it has nothing to do with the hundreds of teens forcing daddy to switch to AT&T for the family so that they can have the iPhone.
 
HAHAHA, the downturn of the economy...... i left sprint because they had errors in my billing. I called to fix it and they gave me a run around. One excuse was, "they couldn't make outbound calls" to call my CC company.

5 letters from my attorney including some help from the BBB finally fixed the issue after 1.5 years. I was so extremely close to filing a civil suit.
 
Sprint BLOWS BALLS!!!

At the begining of the year my family wanted to save a few bucks and move from AT&T over to Sprint (since more phones the cheaper). I got a Samsung M320 (free phone), since January my phone overheats within 10minutes of talking and have to hold it away from my face, the phone is ALWAYS roaming, if its ever in sprints network it has 1 bar, 2 if i'm extremely lucky, battery is usually dead withing 24hours or less from charging when I talk on it maybe 1 hour or less per day. I've taken the phone in and they just give me a replacement every time, I'm on my 4th replacement phone and still does the same shit! My last time they told me they would just replace the antenna on the phone and said to wait an hour, so I waited, they gave me the phone saying it had an antenna replaced. I left and went down the street to 5 guys burgers. I was gonna call someone but noticed all my contacts were gone, all my settings weren't there, so I ate my burger and fries and had to travel back to sprint, I was like WTF!! the dumb asses then tell me that they couldn't replace the antenna and gave me a new phone but did not tell me, if your are gonna lie to me, at least try to cover it up and transfer my information to the new phone!

I talked to the manager but the D-bags said I'd have to pay another re-activation fee (like $18) and resign a 2 year contract, I'm like hell no, your F-up, you pay up! They won't do it like POS's they are!

I swear, I had lowered expectations going to sprint by hearing about them, but they continually fail to even meet them! I'm so tempted to take the phone and throw it at one of the managers head!

This doesn't even take into account my mothers phone, its a sanyo and the first one had a bad battery, replaced battery, lasted a month. They think its the phone, they send out a replacement phone and had to wait a few days. The new phone which was a newer model since the last one was discontinued had battery issues, then the phone would start hard locking up, now she is on her 3rd phone and that battery doesn't last for crap.

Sorry to take my frustrations here but I HATE SPRINT!!!
 
One thing I can add, when you want to sign with Sprint or need help, find a Sprint Store thats also a Service/Repair store. From the one or two I've dealt with, they've been great to work with and are willing to get stuff done for you no matter what, whether you're trying to fix a problem, upgrade phones or open up new lines of service, they can swing some deals the corp. Sprint stores won't bother telling you about!

Now ... Sprint, stop advertising like you're the s**t and that you have the best deals in town (funny how they don't mention T-Mobile), and get off your butt and improve the data service, I'm used to Sprint's voice service, which by the way has gotten much better since about 2005, these days, there's rarely much to complain about. Though the data coverage around my area just keeps getting painfully slower and slower! I often get dropped to 2.5G signals, this never happened 2-3 years ago, and no I don't think my house has shifted significantly since!
 
I'm in the same boat as you. I pay a LOT less than I would with AT&T and my phones are custom flashed.

Well being better than AT&T is like being better than Satan, not exactly a big accomplishment :p

As always though, this stuff can vary wildly depending on the area you live in, and even sometimes from customer to customer.
 
So, Sprint... It can't be because your network sucks? Ever since my brother and his wife switched to Sprint they miss half of everybody's texts and people only get half of theirs.
 
Sprint can burn to the ground. Their customer service is the absolute worst I've ever dealt with before. I had a family member pass away who had their land line long distance service. It took 1.5 years to get it taken care of.

Me: Sent legal documents showing that I'm the executor of the estate, death certificate, and requested to close the account.

Sprint: Don't worry about it, we'll close the account. We'll also credit the balance.

*receives another bill the following month.*

Sprint: Please ignore it. It takes time to credit/close the account.

*receives collection notice*

Sprint: Don't pay the collection agency. We'll get it taken care of. We apologize for the inconvenience.

*several months later receives another collection*

Me: Paid collection agency so I can close the estate and resolve this issue completely, or so I thought.

*Started receiving new bills again, this time it's under the name of the estate*

Me: Calls Sprint to inquire how they can put the account under my legal responsibility without my permission. I thought the account was closed?

Sprint: We don't need your permission to put the account under your legal responsibility(WTF???). We're sorry, but somehow when you paid the collection agency your account was now in good standing and reactivated (WTF??? X 2)

Me: Could you please credit the account and close it again?

Sprint: I'm sorry, but you're not authorized on this account under your responsibility(WTF??? X 3).

Me: But you have copies of legal documents proving that I'm authorized to act on the deceased family members behalf. I've been working with Sprint for over a year, why is this all of a sudden an issue. You can even see in your call records that I've been talking to someone. I even quoted numerous calls including the name, date, and time. Can I speak to a manager?

Sprint: Those countless other CSR's you spoke with shouldn't have given you any information about the account.

Sprint Manager: We can't help you, you're not authorized on this account.(WTF??? X 4)

Me: Files complaint with BBB.

*Apparently Sprint has a special CSR division to handle BBB complaints. I was assigned a specialized Sprint CSR who was eager to help resolve the issue.*

It's been almost 2 months without any Sprint bills. Maybe this issue is finally over. As I said before, I hope the company joins the failboat and goes under.
 
On the other hand, Sprint's Boost Mobile subsidiary has so many new subscribers that their IDEN network is overwhelmed.
 
Back
Top