Sprint needs a lesson in customer service optimization
Just before Podcamp NYC in April, 2008, I bought EVDO from Sprint for my Mac. Other than problems with activating the device, I really haven’t had any problems. However, since I got the service, the credit card I used to autopay my bill had expired. I came home today to a “past due” bill and I couldn’t log into EVDO.
Ok, I figured no big deal. I’ll just call Sprint, update my expiration date, and that’ll be the end of it.
Nope.
We’re currently on our way to my sister’s house and so I took the bill with me with my account number on this, thinking I could start calling on the road. However, the bill has no phone number on it. Instead, it asks you to dial *3 on your Sprint phone to get to the billing department. Hey, Sprint, I don’t have an actual Sprint phone. I remembered that when you try logging into EVDO and fail, it’ll give you a phone number to call for customer assistance. I called that.
The first thing you have to do when you log into the system is to put in your Sprint 10-digit phone number. I was doing this from the road so I didn’t have the phone number they gave me when I activated my EVDO device. It’s at home in a Sprint box, written on a sticky note. I waited on the line to see if it sent me to an operator but instead I got “it is required to put in your 10-digit Sprint phone number to continue”. Oh, that’s just great. So, for the heck of it, I pressed “0″ to see if I could get any further. I did.
Once I got a real person, I couldn’t understand a word he said. Let’s call him Mr. Mumbles (or MM for short). MM asked me for my 10-digit Sprint phone number. I said that I have an EVDO device and I don’t have an actual Sprint phone. He seemed to be frustrated with this and asked for my account number. I had that. Then I had to give him my Sprint account PIN number. That too, is on the sticky note. So I had to answer a secret question, to which he couldn’t understand how to spell the answer. I had to use Army codes (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) to spell it out for him.
We got past that hurdle, and he had my account up. I told him that I just wanted to update the expiration date on the card. He can’t do that because the card had expired and is no longer in the system. Who wrote this system of theirs? Many other systems allow you to update the expiration date and continue service (Apple, Amazon). So I had to read him all the information from my credit card. Not a big deal, but that’s 30 seconds of my life I’ll never get back.
Once that was done, I asked if that card can be used for autopay. He said no, that only happens if you call in to pay with that same card three times. How ridiculous is that? He has access to my account, why not just mark it for autopay? His solution was to log into the web site and only there can I set the card for autopay.
So, epic fail from Sprint for their customer service. Someone over there really needs to look at their computer system and find where items can be optimized.
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Epic Fail for real. Sprint. Ugh.