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Sprint Fires Customers

July 10, 2007

For the past couple of weeks I have been reading about Sprint’s decision to fire more than 1,000 high maintenance customers. Interestingly, most reports are critical of the move.

Evidently the average subscriber calls customer service less than once a month, but some customers call 40-50 times per month on average. From Sprint’s perspective these 1000 users took the same resources 40,000 to 50,000 normal users require. Who are these people? I can’t imagine anyone calling me 40-50 times a month for any reason, much less to complain. Sprint explained,

"Rather than continue to operate in a situation that was unsatisfactory for Sprint and our subscribers, we chose to terminate our relationship with those customers to allow them to pursue other options."

I praise Sprint for the move. If the relationship isn’t working it is best for everyone to end it.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog ·

Comments »

Although I think firing your customers can be a good move, Sprint did not handle the PR well.

Sprint: It’s not me, it’s you.

Comment by Tortilla — July 11, 2007 @ 10:00 am

I don’t know, these people are freaks. On average they called 40-50 times per month. Come on, how can you get rid of these crazy people without pissing them off?

Comment by Alexander Muse — July 11, 2007 @ 12:18 pm

If my relationship isn’t working out with Sprint does my contract with them allow me to terminate our relationship?

If that is the case then it seems fair that Sprint can do that. However, I think it’s unlikely that they have that as a rule.

The issue here is the same as always. The customer has to live by the company’s rules. Can the customer have their own rules? Of course you can choose to go to a different company but in most industries there are standards that consider the client very little. So the client is left to deal with one of the companies in that industry.

Comment by Billy — July 11, 2007 @ 3:20 pm

Billy - Sprint can terminate the contract without notice per the contract…

Comment by Alexander Muse — July 11, 2007 @ 4:20 pm

Hey Billy,

It looks like if YOU want to terminate your relationship with Sprint, all you need to do is call them 50 times in on month.

I think this was a get move by Sprint. I hope more companies do the same. The idea that the “customer is always right” is wrong. Because of this thought, they often abuse systems and processes and at the expensive of people needs.

Comment by Jason McMinn — July 12, 2007 @ 7:58 am

Society has this notion that the louder i yell, the more i complain, the more i will get. I work in customer service. I understand that it is difficult to deal with these types of customers. I understand Sprints frustration with all of this. However,no matter what, you dont go around firing your customers. Especially 1000 of them. This is seriously going to hurt their already tarnished reputation. I have learned that there is a way to get your point across and provide great customer service without giving away the farm, if you are well trained to do so.

Comment by SIS — July 12, 2007 @ 10:32 am

A lot of you are assuming the customers are wrong in this situation. When I was a Sprint customer, I had to call around 15-20 times over 3 months to fix a billing problem on Sprint’s end. They were supposed to credit me and every time I spoke with someone, I was told it would be fixed. I also had a couple of them hang up on me when I explained the problem I was having. It wasn’t because I was rude or anything, it was because my problem would have taken more than 10 minutes to fix. A friend later told me it was because the Customer Service reps are evaluated on a calls per minute stat. Also if your customers, assuming they aren’t all crazy, have to call you that many times a month, shouldn’t you look at your own company and anticipate these problems?

Comment by Tortilla — July 12, 2007 @ 10:45 am

Finally, I am proud of the company I work for. This takes guts to do.

And Tortilla, if all your customers , on the average, call Customer Service less than once a month and these select 1000 did it over 40 times (some of them over 300 times), it is not because the company can’t solve normal reasonable issues.

Your 15-20 over 3 months still averages only to 5-7 calls a month. I’d expect these people to leave the company by themselves if they had to call 50 times a month and not have their reasonable issue fixed. Again, I don’t get why they’re so mad about getting out of contract with a company if they had to call CS 40-50 times a month.

Comment by cloud9ine — July 13, 2007 @ 9:53 am

I’M SURE THE CUSTOMERS ARE HAPPY ABOUT THE SPLIT BETWEEN THEM AND SPRINT. From July 2nd to July 8th, I was on the phone with Sprint at least 2 to 3 times a day (except for the 4th of July) trying to order a phone. My Nextel phone, which I’ve had for about 4 years, fell apart on me and a new phone was needed ASAP. Nextel phones were a little too expensive for a camera phone, so I decided to try a less expensive Sprint phone. What a hassle that was. Customer service at Sprint/Nextel SUCKS. Some of the reps couldn’t speak English very well and each rep that I spoke to didn’t know how to resolve issues from different areas of the company. They didn’t know what the other hand was doing, especially any online issues and they LIE. It was a very FRUSTRATING week. To date, I finally got the phone, went to the local store to activate (30 min. wait time) and it took another 2 hours before my phone worked. If I was one of those customers who just got dropped by Sprint, I would be so happy. P.S.- I hope someone from Sprint reads this page. Maybe their CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT needs to be dropped!!

Comment by jazzyg — July 16, 2007 @ 1:03 pm

Insurance companies have made money year after year, decade after decade for over 3 centuries by firing 5-10% of their customers every year. Its risk versus reward in its purest form.

Comment by Lee — July 17, 2007 @ 1:56 pm

If I had to call customer service once every two months to resolve a problem or get assistance with a product, I’d want out. Obviously Sprint has a serious problem.

Comment by curious_vic — July 18, 2007 @ 1:32 pm

not anymore…

Comment by Alexander Muse — July 18, 2007 @ 11:49 pm

Have you ever dealt with sprint? I can totally see why they are calling so much, i personally wish i had the time. With sprint, most times you get some untrained person on the phone to make your life worse. Many times calling, and getting frustrated, hang up on person and call back again to get someone more trained.

Its them, not me.

Comment by Me — October 24, 2007 @ 12:51 pm

I have been a customer of Sprint’s since December and it has been the most horrible experience I have ever had with a company. Nothing ever worked, noone ever knew how to resolve the issues. I could never understand the customer service representatives because they did not speak
English very well. That one I’ll never understand. How can a company put a person on the TELEPHONE to try and solve issues with customers when they can’t understand each other. Duh!!! Knowing I am on social security with a limited monthly budget I purposely chose a plan that would not exceed over $200.00 yet each month Sprint SOMEHOW finds ways to charge me for every little thing, hidden charges, surcharges…whatever they can find to increase my bill by an extera $200.00 a month. My Sprint bills are always $400.00. I am constantly on the phone with them wasting my time trying to resolve these issues to no avail. It’s so frustrating and so annoying. I so wish I had the $300.00 to cancel my service, but I don’t. They’ve got me and they are screwing me hard. It really sucks and I get sick to my stomach just thinking about how horrible thye are. I hope they go out of business for the way they treat their customers. They are not the first company I have been with. Verizon, I never had a problem with (2 YEARS). US Cellular…awesome company. The billing never ever goes over and the customer service is wonderful. SPRINT SUCKS!!!!

Comment by Susan — July 16, 2008 @ 2:18 pm

Guys i worked with sprint customer finance before, well a lot of complaint that we have a worst customer service ever, for those customer who are unsatisfied and very irresponsible on their usage and will ask why the bill so high I’m tired damn explaining bills over the phone, will its true that sprint terminate customer contract due to violations, its not easy guys to spend too much talking over the phone for the same issue which has been already resolved or answered past issues, so if you are one of those irresponsible customers normally sprint will terminate your contract for some reasons, customer abusing our system kept asking for adjustments and credit back amount etc. my only suggestion if your concern has been properly handled so please stop calling sprint care coz your eating their holding time.

And even be nice to customer agent coz the customer finance itself are the best department can resolved your issues if your very nice over the phone, admittingly a lot of my colleagues wont focus and help your concern if you are ironic and irate over the phone though we understand your concern coz its money involved, I m no longer connected sprint coz I myself was terminated illegally/fired for helping my customers to restore his service and that customer owe sprint 3 months bills non payment but still I restore his phone just to be satisfied.

Comment by Joey S. Regis — January 20, 2009 @ 7:24 am

Is your customer always right?
While I think it is a good sentiment that states, “The customer is always right,” I think that we have to be very careful. If the customer is a drain on resources, cause problems or otherwise causes us to lose money, then the customer may not be right. We can’t be afraid to politely ask the customers to leave that we can not make happy… there are plenty of people that you can’t make happy. You have to remember above all that you can’t be everything to everyone. If you try, you’ll end up being nothing to noone

…] it is time to understand that customer may not be right at all the times. It is time to consider a way to fire a customer. If customer is vocal and rude, it is pretty easy to gently encourage that customer to go rather than to kept them [...]

Comment by joey s. regis — January 20, 2009 @ 8:18 pm

SPRINT SUCKS!!!!! I seriously am considering calling sprint 40-50 times a month if thats what it takes! they are getting worse and worse! when I first got sprint 3 years ago, they were awesome, customer service was very helpful, now you gotta nag them for hours to take care of things like, the weather channel showing up on my bill for 6 months, even though I dont have DATA PLAN! and now they taking all the roam only settings off thier new phones,……….very stupid move sprint just so u know

Comment by tony — March 14, 2009 @ 6:31 pm

hahahah if u cant afford a a plan or if u dont habe enough bain to handle it why dont you just buy a prepaid phone

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