Shanti’s Dispatches

Sean over at Scrollin’ on Dubs has had a similar horrible Sprint PCS customer service experience.

It helps to know I’m not the only one.

Are there any good blogs covering this stuff besides Consumerist? Judging from blog reaction (and my own personal blood boiling, which is rare, trust me) when dealing with these companies, it seems to indicate much latent demand for a Customer Strikes Back blog of sorts.

Keeping things light…

I feel bad making this blog too heavy. here iz some lulcatz for u

sum cats require not lolcaptunz!

oh hai, blogger lazyjacked img urls. kthxbai

Woke up today with a massive sore throat & felt like crap. To make matters worse, I found out that my woes with Sprint PCS were not yet over.

A few weeks ago I had finally gotten ahold of their cancellations department, after much rigmarole.

They were going to cancel the 2nd account (which they had hooked up to a broken phone and were attempting to charge me for) and give me some credits for activation fees, etc.

Today I discovered that on top of all that, they had the audacity to charge me a $200 early cancellation fee for this fraudulent transaction.

The Ironic Part

I’ve been recording the calls using HotRecorder for Skype.

For them to be of any use in a court, etc. you have to say “this call may be recorded” to the person on the other line.

When I got to their cancellations department, when I said that, the lady said that it would not be okay for me to record the call. WTF?

They can have a record of the conversation (every customer service call starts off with “this call may be recorded or monitored for …” blah blah blah), but not their customers? Is that even legal?

So I turned off the recorder because I am just too honest of a guy. This lady was nice enough (seemingly)… I’ll see in a few days if any other mysterious/nefarious charges appear on my bill.

New Carrier Suggestions?

Verizon, T-Mobile, anyone? Bueller? They all seem like spawn of the devil to me at this point.

One of the greatest ideas in Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business is the quarterly review.

Employees get to braindump all of their issues and problems on management. In return for putting up with this abuse, management gets a treasure-trove of information about how to make the business better.

Well, I did Cox Communications a favor (I know, do they really deserve it?) and asked my tech support girl contact how they can improve their business and relations with customers.

Here’s what she said:

If corporate would listen I would tell them to not focus on call times so much. Sometimes we cannot help without it being a lenghty call.

Also we as tech support should not HAVE to offer telephone or cable tv, (so yeah, I know you are having constant problems with our HSI how about trying cable tv or phone?), it does not go well. We end up getting yelled at more than we get told yes.

Our programs bogging down on a regular basis is also not good. And most importantly quit making changes and not telling us!

Below - a list of Cox Corporate officers. Let’s see if any of them subscribe to their Technorati ego-feed!

Brian L. Roberts > Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer

Officer Since: 1986
Age: 47
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
John R. Alchin > Co-Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer

Officer Since: 1990
Age: 59
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
Michael J. Angelakis > Co-Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President

Officer Since: 03/28/2007
Age: 42
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Ralph J. Roberts > Chairman of the Executive and Finance Committee of the Board of Directors; Director

Officer Since: 1969
Age: 87
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
Stephen B. Burke > Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President; President, Comcast Cable

Officer Since: 06/1998
Age: 48
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
David L. Cohen > Executive Vice President

Officer Since: 2002
Age: 51
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
Lawrence J. Salva > Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer, Controller

Officer Since: 01/2000
Age: 50
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
Arthur R. Block > Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary

Officer Since: 1993
Age: 51
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
Trading Activity - Yahoo Finance
Marlene S. Dooner > Senior Vice President - Investor Relations

Officer Since: 05/29/2007
Bio & Compensation - Reuters
D Arcy F. Rudnay > Senior Vice President - Corporate Communications