Sprint Nextel to cut 4,000 jobs: Wireless carrier loses 683,000 postpaid customers
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sprint Nextel Corp. said Friday it would eliminate 4,000 jobs and close 8% of company-owned retail stores amid the loss of more key customers to rivals. The store closings and the 6.7% reduction in Sprint’s workforce represent the first major moves by new Chief Executive Dan Hesse, who was hired last month. The company has been hurt by a reliance on credit-risky subscribers, mediocre customer service and a less attractive roster of handsets compared to competitors such as AT&T Inc., the exclusive provider of the iPhone. In the fourth quarter, Sprint lost 109,000 subscribers overall and 683,000 postpaid customers — larger than Wall Street analysts expected
I suppose this is what happens when YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS!! Pardon me if I’m enjoying this perhaps a wee bit too much, because I’m usually not big believer in schadenfreude, but Sprint has only themselves to blame. I should know; I was a Sprint customer for the better part of eight years, before I finally bit the bullet and paid the $150 ransom cancellation fee so I could switch to Verizon. Frankly, I’d long since grown tired of indifferent customer service, poor reception, and the perception that Sprint just didn’t give a damn…as long as I paid my bill every month.
It’s not that Verizon is better by leaps and bounds, but I was sick to death of customer service representatives whose job description seemed to be based solely on telling me what I couldn’t or wasn’t allowed to do. To call Sprint’s customer service “mediocre” doesn’t do justice to the dismissive manner in which I felt I was treated when I had to deal with their customer (dis)service reps. It was an excruciating process, which generally led only to more frustration and anger…and I was paying for this “privilege”.
Personally, I hope SprintNextel is broken into tiny little pieces and fed to wolves- if for no other reason than having a business model that apparently calls for customers to be treated as annoyances. This is what happens when you treat your customers- the people paying the freight- as mere annoyances who exist only to prop up your stock price. Buh-bye!!
