From: cdale@silly.techmonkeys.net
Date: Sun Aug 20 2000 - 19:13:00 PDT
Greetings.
<clusterfuck>
Okay, this is just ridiculous. I went to the Sprint shop in Raleigh, told
em I wanted a comfy phone, with service as far and wide as possible, since
I travel a lot, and named a few cities that needed to be covered, one of
them being Biloxi, MS. "No problem," I was told. Sure thing, I'd have no
problem. So I move here. Problem: my phone is on roam. So I look in the
phone book for the 800 # and find none, because, of course, there IS no
Sprint service for the coast. Fine, I call to cancel the whole bag of
worms and find out how to get my money back for my special little
Sprint-only phone. So "Ollie" gets my call and apologizes profusely for
the "miscommunication" and offers me 50 minutes of free roaming a month
for 6 months, to give Sprint time to get down here. Let's see, yeh, I
barely keep it to 500 minutes a month, I don't quite think 50 is going to
work, and damned if I'm gonna pay 35 cents a minute for 450 minutes. No
problem, there are roaming bundles, blah blah. Fuckit. I tell Ollie
that I will search around and see what's local and call him back. "Fine,"
he says. So I do that; I search and find that Bell South has the best
deal and it's one I'd have to bend over for (of course), so I call Sprint
back and I wanna talk to Ollie. Oh boy. Okay, fine, no Ollie, no biggie,
just gimme that 50 minutes free and 3 roaming bundles and the least number
of PCS minutes, and I'll fly with it, seein as how this nice lady named
Alice told me that Sprint would be here August 1st. (no, still no Sprint
yet, but I -have- snapped a pic of the billboard that says it's coming in
September). Anyhow, noone knows who this Ollie character is, much less of
ANY offer that anyone from Sprint could POSSIBLY give anyone, so I say,
"okay, I'm a liar, I'll call back later when I have more time to bitch."
So I call back later and finally figure out that I got Ollie by calling
the disconnect extension, and only the ones in THAT department can offer
those free roaming minutes, etc, so fine, gimme the damned free roaming
minutes and the bundles and I'm on my way, bye, thanks for choosing
Sprint and have a nice day.
So friday, I'm in fucking ALABAMA trying to cash a check that's made out
to me by one of my clients AT his bank, and they won't cash it. Fine,
I'll call the client, and since he could BUY the damned bank if he wanted,
he'll fix this. Uhm, no. I've over my limits of credit ?!?!? with
Sprint!! SO I hit *4 and yell at a few people and find out that they've
been charging me regular roaming instead of adding the minutes to my
bundles, and someone will credit my account 100 bux till it's cleared, and
my phone will be working in 2-4 hours, thanks for using Sprint and have a
nice day. This is at 5:20. Bank closes at 5:30. -sigh-
</clusterfuck>
I've done a lot of research about cell services,
and Sprint really -does- have the best deals I can find (especially when
they get down here, heh). I can go more places with it than with any
other company for the best price, as far as I can tell. Am I missing out
on some company someplace that actually has their shit together AND has
decent coverage in the US? Or is this as good as it gets? (: (BTW, As
Good as it Gets is a damned good movie). Any input welcome.
Thanks,
Cindy
P.S. The clusterfuck syndrome is something I'm seeing everywhere, from my
3 person business to the biggest companies around. I reckon it's because
there's just too damned much to deal with in too short a period of time
since technology is changing so rapidly and things that are "cutting edge"
need to always be taken care of RIGHT NOW before someone else gets ahead,
so I guess I can't fault Sprint for that. Apathetic? Sure, what other
choice do I have?
"A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity."
-- Robert Frost
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Aug 20 2000 - 19:05:26 PDT