It's about time: Sprint touts business customer guarantee. It wasn't long ago that I was contacted in Chicago to participate in a class action lawsuit against Sprint for overselling services and providing poor support. I didn't do it, but I wondered how long business customers would fume before the ambulance chasers helped them out. I don't think Sprint would offer a dropped call deal if negative PR wasn't an issue.
I've had cell service from just about every provider and I can safely say they all suck. If you use a cell phone for business, you should say at the beginning of your call, "I'm using a cell phone and this call will end prematurely. I will try to call you back as soon as the damn 'no service available' message goes away."
Most business people understand that cell phone service is lousy. It still doesn't take away the rage you feel when the call drops. I think road rage is actually an offshoot of cell phone rage. Think about it; road rage wasn't an epidemic until cell phones became prolific. Personally, I don't get mad at other drivers, but I really lose it when the call gets canned. Then my blood boils more when I'm trying to call the other person back and I keep getting his voice mail because he's trying to call me back. At that point, he goes straight to my voice mail. Then I think I'll give him a few minutes and let him call me since he's obviously trying to. My phone won't ring because he's waiting for me. When I get impatient and try again–voice mail. If that doesn't stoke the fires of rage, nothing will.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Long Way From Home by The Heavy
Re: Cell Rage
I love Sprint. With a capital L – U – V sloppy drunk-kinda love. No other cell phone carrier has given me so much free time. How in the world could that happen, you wonder.
A few years ago, Sprint notified its customers that the little voice mail icon would continue to display even after they checked their messages. To make it go away, I had to navigate various menus to clear it myself. Yep, I’d see the icon, think “hmm, voice mail,†dial my number, wait while Sprint spent over a minute of my precious allotment trying to connect, and finally listen to a lovely auto-matron announce, “No new messages.†After falling for this routine a few times, I decided I would check for messages only on special occasions.
And then came the day I received twenty e-mail messages from my boss asking for an update on all of the tasks I had been assigned. I checked voice mail, and indeed, there were twenty voice mail messages dating back a few weeks. Ta-dahhhh: ladies and gentleman, not being tied to voice mail gave me more free time. For one thing, I wasn’t wasting time waiting for the connection to happen, but more importantly, it got me out of doing work (“What? I never got your messages. Stupid Sprint voice mail.â€). Being a cell phone user herself, my boss sympathized with my plight.
Sprint knows that calling voice mail is the longest, most tedious trying-to-connect minute you’ll ever spend. Checking voice mail once a day is about thirty minutes a month, or 10% of their most basic plan, or $3.50, wasted. Or for me, it's thirty minutes spent using my cell phone to gripe about my cell service. At least in the latter situation, I'm using my minutes doing what I pay those people to let me do anyway: talk.
[Reply]