Silly me! I thought I would get the answer to one of my questions at Sprint's web site! The question? It turns out that Telecom New Zealand has an EV-DO network. I'm headed to New Zealand at the end of this month (to give a speech at this event). So I wanted to know if my EV-DO-enabled Sprint Treo 700p and my EV-DO-enabled Sprint Mobile Broadband PC card for my computer would work in New Zealand and what the roaming charges would be. Seems like information that Sprint would anticipate their subscribers would want.
First I go to www.sprintpcs.com, which has been merged with www.sprint.com (what happened to all that marketing effort that went into establishing a separate Sprint PCS brand). No search box! Indeed, no "Support" button as on even the smallest and least well funded Web site! I tried the "Contact Us" button but that only demonstrated that Sprint only wants people to get in touch to buy something, not to get help with something they already paid for. After searching and realizing that I had to log in as a Sprint customer, I found a customer support page. Still no search button; instead, a knowledge-database kind of application that only answers questions that Sprint has been able to pre-answer. Their answer to the topic of "international roaming"? Yes, there are certain countries where you can roam internationally. That's it.
But magical: I see that there is a link to "Email Customer Support". (Warning: Only customers can actually get to the form in question. If you haven't logged in as a valid customer, you get redirected to a sales page.) Oh, wonder of wonders: I can actually ask the question I wanted to ask 20 minutes ago. So I do and click on the Send button. Just minutes later, I got the following response:
From: "Executive Referrals" <ExecutiveReferrals@sprint.com>
Date: July 3, 2006 8:40:50 AM PDT
To: Stewart Alsop
Subject: RE: ID # : 20060703103203
This folder is no longer being monitored for new e-mail. Please forward your e-mail request to executive.offices@mail.sprint.com.
Okay, so how much faith do YOU put into getting an answer to the forwarded email sent to the generic "executive offices"? (Go ahead and push the button if you would like to find out.) Just imagine first of all that Sprint puts an email customer support link and THEN decides not to monitor it anymore, even though it doesn't bother removing the link from its active pages! Is that a finger in the face of the customer or what?
Can you then imagine that this mighty customer-oriented organization has a staff of people in their executive offices just waiting to answer your email accurately? Do the executives in those very same executive offices know how they have been made to look like a joke?
This is what I get in return for paying $138 a month for my phone, mobile broadband, and advanced high speed data services. At least, United and Hertz and Starwood make the effort to look like they are interested in providing better service to customers who pay more!
Several years ago, our friend Dave T came up with a great way to describe them: Sprint - the English language's only one word oxymoron.
For international roaming that won't cost dollars a minute, check out http://www.gosim.com/. You'll need a GSM phone with 1800MHz band (and 900MHz Band for full ocverage), which you can find cheap on eBay.
For myself, as of yesterday I'm a happy Verizon customer.
Posted by: Gerard | July 03, 2006 at 04:16 PM