I agree Sprint is not too wise to treat existing customers the way they treated you. Unfortunately it appears Sprint and other major carriers are focusing on locking customers in that 2 year contract – that seems to be their main concern and the reason they aggressively go after new customers while providing poor service to existing ones. Not too smart – especially in today’s social media society like this blog for example.

Maybe this abolition of human sympathy is a side effect of becoming a multinational corporation, or maybe this is the new generation of customer service that’s wised up to pesky customer defense tactics such as asking for a refund. The only reason the courts haven’t called it fraud is because none of the customers/victims are wealthy enough to prosecute.

I guess I’d just like to know when and why American services started waging psychological warfare on their customers. Comcast, Sprint, various gyms, the list goes on. Every last one of them forces you to juggle complex service plans and countless “special agreements” just to keep a reasonable price on your services. And may God have mercy on you should you try to cancel before your minimum contract is up!

Is all this really necessary just to squeeze a few more dollars each month out of their customers? Wouldn’t it save the entire US economy a lot of wasted man-hours (and money) just to make service contracts sane again, and downsize half of the anti-litigation teams and customer complaints staff in India?

Mike – Good idea, I’ll try the small biz route…

Erika – My boss was dealing with this, he has it to the point where he has the new provider leave all the old wiring, now he can switch every year from provider to provider… insane….

rep: “I’m sorry sir, that deal is for new customers only.”
me: “Don’t you care about your existing customers?”
rep: “Uh…”

Well, every conversation until the last, when I finally found a CSR with some sense…

My Comcast bill just jumped up by $30+. When I called, I found out that my promotional bundle package has ended and “because I already have such a high-level package and can’t really upgrade, there’s no promotional offer that they can extend to me.”

The ultimate irony — I am such a great customer that they can’t help me…grrr… Strongly considering a switch to Verizon now.

This has been a constant frustration for me because it seems that my phone miraculously dies at the time that I hit the “early renewal” portion of my contract. So, if I want a new phone I have to re-up with my current provider and can’t shop around.

I have felt for a long time that these cell phone companies are stupid and missing an opportunity. They all seem to be focused in locking in phones, etc to prove that they are different than the others. Why doesn’t one company say, “Hey, we’ll give our CUSTOMERS an even BETTER deal on new phones than new subscribers!” How quickly would people flock to that company for that type of service?

Keep up the great work!

Kevin