To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 13:30:03 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: cell phones
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:54:47 -0400 Liza Kessler <LKessler at lharris.com>
writes:
> I had the second worst customer service experience of my life with
> Sprint PCS. They are extremely attentive when you go in to buy a plan
> and/or
> phone. Have trouble with the phone, and you are more than likely to
> be treated like a not-too-bright 8 year old. I was so outraged by the
> condescending humiliation-tactics used by their staff that I filed a
> complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and paid the $150
> termination of
> service fee.

I've had a more fortunate experience with Sprint customer service.  Back
when they were using Ericsson GSM phones, before they switched to a CDMA
system (before they became Sprint 'PCS'), I had an intermittent in the
battery such that the phone would power down when the battery was pressed
against the phone at a certain spot.  I went in to the store and
demonstrated this by connecting the bad battery to the phone and showing
that it cut off when pressed in a certain way, then subsequently
connecting a good battery (which I had with me) and showing it did not
cut off when pressed in the same manner.  Thus the problem was with the
one bad battery, not the phone itself.  They readily gave me a new
battery in exchange for the bad one, and did not even ask for my name,
account number, nor sales receipt.

Businesses often use a canned 'by-the-book' troubleshooting procedure
which is designed to identify and isolate the problem when the procedure
is run by non-technical customer service people.  The procedure assumes
little or no technical knowledge or even common sense on the part of the
employees or the customers, so it might seem condescending as applied.
Verizon is that way with its DSL service - customers with DSL problems
sometimes have to be 'escalated' through layers of increasingly schooled
support people until the problem is solved.  It took me two weeks and
hours on the phone with technical support to get my DSL problem resolved
that way, but when it was finally corrected, by switching my home phone
line to another cable pair, the connection has since been nearly
trouble-free, and I have not had to call DSL technical support in nearly
a year.

Last October, my Qualcomm 2700 Sprint PCS phone was run over by a car and
damaged (the display screen, at least, was partly broken), though
remarkably it still 'worked' in the sense that it could still make and
receive calls.  I bought a used replacement phone (same model) from a
private party, then called Sprint customer service to get my service
switched over to the new phone.  The procedure took only a couple of
minutes, and there was no charge for that.

Also, I found out that Sprint PCS has 'unpublished' pricing plans which
may be better for some people than the published plans.  Last summer, I
had considered switching from Sprint PCS to Nextel, which would provide a
lot more minutes for not much more money than my Sprint plan, though my
preference would have been to pay even less money for minimal minutes,
but I already had the lowest monthly cost Sprint plan.  I went to the
Sprint store to find out how much they would pay me for my used phone and
charger (they would pay nothing, it turned out), but they did direct me
to go into a glass booth there with a 'red phone' direct line to customer
service, so I could call and arrange to cancel the service.  When I
explained my concerns to customer service, they offered to cut my monthly
charge in half, and more than double my minutes, under a 'new' plan.  I
took the deal.  Just now, when I checked the Sprint PCS website, I found
the plan I was offered is less than one third the monthly cost of the
plan now listed there with the lowest monthly charge.

More generally, it is a good idea for cell phone users to check their
provider's website every so often for new plans.  Old customers tend to
be left on old plans, even when newer ones become available which provide
more minutes for less money, or much more minutes for the same money.
Providers offer a frequently changing welter of plans and 'specials'
which are designed to extract the maximum amount of revenue possible by
making each customer pick the plan best tailored to their intended usage.
 If grocery stores did the same thing, they would vary the price you pay
for a loaf of bread in accordance with the number of loaves you agreed to
pay for per month, whether or not you actually pick up all of your bread
allocation for the month, and whether or not you actually eat all the
bread you contract for.  If you needed to buy more bread than was
allocated for the month, the extra bread would be super-expensive, $5 per
loaf.

Cell service providers have high fixed costs, while the marginal cost per
minute of airtime for them is nearly zero.  They must try to sell as many
minutes as they can, but at the same time try to control usage so that it
falls within the capacity of the system at peak usage times.  That is
part of the explanation for the weird pricing plans.

> Some of you may know that I was stuck in Riverside,
> California, September 11, and wound up driving back home. By the time
all of the bills were in, I had over $900 in roaming charges. (I had NOT
understood
> the roaming charges fine print. Read that extra extra carefully.) When
I
> called to explain what happened, and that there was no way I could pay
that
> much any time soon, they worked with me, eventually knocking about half

> that off my bill. Still a big ugly phone bill, but given that I had
made all
> those calls, I thought it was generous of them.
>

It is indeed important to understand 'roaming' charges in a situation
like that.  Some providers/plans make no distinction between local use
and out-of-area roaming, and long distance calling.  Misunderstood
roaming charges which hit heavily on an innocent user can often be
negotiated on a one-time basis, because the providers know that
situations like that often result in unhappy customers who may abandon
the service and leave the large unexpected bill unpaid.  In the long run,
it is better for a provider to keep a happy customer as opposed to making
the customer an unhappy former customer.

Ron Kean

.

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