May 22, 2008

Mr. Dan Hesse, Sprint Board of Directors, et al.

As you may be aware, I recently had discovered that I had overpaid Sprint for dedicated Internet access (DS3 access). I gave your company many opportunities from 2004 to 2008 to rectify the price charged. Each time I asked about the rate, I was advised by your sales representatives that the price had gone up, and that I would have to pay more should I sign another agreement with Sprint. I finally recorded a telephone conversation with Mr. Ron Schober and caught him lying to me.

You see I am an honest man that runs an honest business. Two months ago, Amazon.com overpaid me $9,800.00 for monthly sales on two of my books. Rather than not say anything and just keep the money (kind of what Sprint has done with the overpayments from me) I contacted Amazon.com and inquired about it. It was indeed a mistake and I sent Amazon a check for what they overpaid me. I have ethics and morals. I would not even consider taking money that I did not earn. I can sleep at night and do not stress about my business because I don’t take advantage of customers to make a buck. I don’t have to worry about what goes around coming back around to me, as I do not deliberately do wrong. I am not saying that you or Sprint deliberately do wrong, but as they say: if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck.

I have had many correspondences with former Sprint business customers that also discovered that Sprint had been overcharging them for services. I see quite a pattern of mis-billing, gouging, lying sales representatives, etc.

One person advised me it took two years to finally convince Sprint to pay the $12,000.00 that was overpaid to your company. It appears that I am not the lone complainer regarding being “gouged” by Sprint. It does appear though, that I am the only person to become so vocal about being overcharged.

From my point of view, Sprint comes across as arrogant and doesn’t seem to care too much for its reputation or its customers. You lost over a million mobile users and continue to operate with a “so what” attitude. It is almost as if Sprint is trying to shed itself of mobile phone users and divest itself of consumer revenues. Is Sprint moving towards being only an infrastructure provider? It seems to me to be the case. Even then with your poor customer service you won’t have many infrastructure customers either.

Sprint customer service is abysmal. Since this issue between myself and Sprint began I have been researching complaints. The number of angry and dissatisfied customers and employees is staggering. Maybe up in your glass tower your have been insulated from the real problems at Sprint. I do not know but I can assure you that if Sprint continues on the path you have chosen Sprint is doomed to failure.

I really dislike having to erect sucks.com websites and I only do so when all reasonable efforts fail with a company. To date I have had only one company refuse to do anything after I erected a sucks.com, with that being said that company and its board of directors are involved in a class-action fraud lawsuit, so I imagine they have more important things to worry about at the moment.

Sprint needs to get back to basics. I am referring to customer service and support. Sprint fails miserably with customer concerns and problems. Without customers you have no revenues (think about that for a moment). Ignore the customers long enough and you won’t have to worry about how to turn the company around as there will be no company. If you want Sprint to succeed I suggest that you take care of what puts money in your pocket. Customer care should not be a cost line item in your accounting system.

With that being said, you and Sprint should do the right thing and refund what I overpaid your company. I am not going to throw a bunch of threats around, however every visitor to Sprint-Really-Sucks.com is potentially one less customer for your company and I imagine many will tells others, who will in turn tell others, so on and so forth. The dislike for Sprint will grow geometrically and eventually hit critical mass.

If Sprint had addressed my issue immediately this whole “Sprint Really Sucks” could have been an opportunity to show your customers that you do care, would have gone a long way in terms of goodwill, and would have perhaps bumped you up a bit in overall customer satisfaction. If customers feel that a company cares and will attempt to help them with their issue they are more likely to hang around long-term. Unfortunately it seems that Sprint doesn’t care about customers they way they should be. If Sprint had there would not be a mass migration away from Sprint to other telecommunications companies.

I can only hope that you or someone on the Sprint board of directors see that the Sprint needs a complete overhaul of its customer support and get back to basics (the customers).

Even business customer support is failing. When I pulled the plug on my Sprint data circuits in April of this year it took three full days before Sprint called to see if there was a problem, in years past I could pull a circuit offline and within 30 minutes Sprint would call to see if there was a problem. Big difference it seems between then and now.

Building a new WiFi network isn’t the cure-all for Sprint. If you don’t have any customers to use it how are you going to profit off of such a venture? I guess you could shed all of your consumers and rent the WiFi out to other companies. Why not let them make all the money, right?

It is sad to see that Sprint has fallen on such hard times, however Sprint employees and polices caused that. You only have yourself to blame for that one. I used to be a happy customer and I used to tell people about Sprint services. I guess you can imagine I stopped doing that a while ago. I imagine a majority of your former customers feel the same way.

There is a well-known saying that a happy customer at most tells a couple of people, but an angry customer will tell the world, or at least anyone that will lend an ear. In effect, Sprint is helping itself to losing customers but not addressing their needs. Think about that one for a bit.

In the event that Sprint does not rectify my overbilling issue, I will continue to draw attention to the fact that Sprint does gouge business customers, mistreats their consumer customer base for as long as I breathe.

The choice is up to Sprint. Would they rather satisfy a former customer and get a little good publicity or continue as you are now and continue to have your reputation erode and show just how stubborn and arrogant your company still is?

In closing I want to quote one of my favorite verses in the Bible (Proverbs 1:23-27)

“If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured my heart out to you and made my thoughts known to you. But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed to my outstretched hand, since you ignore all of my advice and would not accept my rebuke. I will turn and laugh at your disaster; I will mock you when calamity overtakes you – when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.”

I know what you are probably thinking. How can I (Allen Harkleroad) call myself a Christian setting up a website like this. Just because I am a Christian, does not mean I must allow people and companies to take advantage of me. Remember Jesus himself kicked over the tables of the moneychangers and drove them out of the temple (Matthew 21:12-17).

You reap what you sow…

With that, I close.

Regards,
Allen Harkleroad
CEO

GMP Services Inc
Statesboro GA

Read the full story at www.sprint-really-sucks.com

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