Sprint dropped 1.09 million subscribers in Q1
By Paul Miller 
posted May 12th 2008 10:43AM
posted May 12th 2008 10:43AM
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posted May 12th 2008 10:43AM
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Crappy network = lost subscribers = DUH!
their network is actually really great anywhere i've been.
It's crappy customer service, mediocre (at best) phones, and the arbitrary restrictions that plague the whole industry (who are mostly interested in making money despite their customer's desires, rather than because of.)
I love Sprint's network and I don't know too many people who dislike Sprint's network....it is the customer service that ruins it for most people...
That's not been my experience. My house is still in a PCS hole. It's gotten a bit better as now it'll see 2 bars sometimes (I was able to check this with a friend's phone), but I've never experienced the number of dropped calls as I've experienced with Sprint. Verizon and T-mobile seem to have good coverage here in SoCal (I've used them both and currently have T-mobile.) Cingular was just okay (a few dropped calls, but mostly their audio quality was pretty bad). I've used them all, and Sprint is dead last in my book.
What you just said makes no sense at all...if you get no service with Sprint you wont get service with Verizon...they are both CDMA and both have roaming agreements with each other...Anywhere you get Sprint you will get Verizon and anywhere you get Verizon you will get Sprint...
Are you sure that's true nationwide? My brother is currently on Verizon and has no problems at my house. My mom use to be on Virgin Mobile (which I know uses Sprint's CDMA network) and it was crap. Both of them were on a plan at the same time, and had differing results at my house, so I don't think it was the same network. Verizon has always been consistently rated higher here than Sprint, so another reason I don't think they're on the same network.
The Virgin Mobile phone will NOT roam onto Verizon's network...Virgin Mobile has no roaming agreements so it is strictly Sprint's network.
As for Sprint PCS devices...they will roam on Verizon, Alltel's, etc. basically any other CDMA carrier they have an agreement with nationwide...
I have sprint, because of SERO, but if the deal isn't there or unavailable when it comes time to renew in 1.5 years, i'll go w/ at&t or tmobile and get a blackberry. Service is fine, customer service is poor.
Sprint SERO > *
/game
+1. I switched *TO* Sprint in Q1 (from Verizon, in February) because of SERO. I was on a family plan with no data or texting for $10 a month for my line. The whole plan had about 1000 minutes. For $20 more, I get unlimited data, unlimited texting, and 500 minutes that I never use more than 100-150 of because of 7pm nights/weekends. Reception is basically as good because whenever it starts to suck, I just switch to (free) Verizon roaming.
As for CS, I used a $50 invoice credit code when i signed up, and got them to give me a $10 credit when they shipped the phone to the wrong address and I had to get my parents to ship it to me. Their system dropped the second half of both credits. I had to argue with CS a bit, but they gave me $50 more instead of the $30 the owed me. I'm pretty happy with them -- the only real "problem" is that their system accidentally approved me for a $300 rebate instead of the $100 I was owed, but they made a typo in my address and so I never got it. So I called up and they put in a new rebate check to the correct address, but it was only $100. I guess I can't complain too much about that though.
Maybe if their phones didn't automatically switch to roaming mode even when roaming is explicitly turned off. Or maybe if they didn't require a week of downtime in order to "upgrade" their website with a new design and new functionaly. And maybe if that new functionality didn't actually make it more difficult to keep track of what the hell was going on with your account. And maybe if their website actually updated the credit card you submitted to pay with instead of pretending like you didn't actually update it ... leaving your account in "unpaid" status each month until you called and paid by phone. And maybe if someone at their company actually looked at their own website to realize that there are images not uploaded to their server that they could easily fix ... but haven't in over a month. Yeah ... maybe if all of those things actually worked, they wouldn't suck so badly.
I concur with Patrick.. I was with V, but they failed getting the phone I wanted VX6800 (HTC 6800 - Mogul on Sprint) for over 6 months. Plus the SERO account saves me over $50 a month. Phone service is great - Rev. A upgraded recently, and WM 6.1 soon. Cust. Service is poor, but like another person said.. I do everything online, and have had no issues since sign-up. Unlimited for everything plan kicks all carries butts.
Having crappy phones probably has a lot to do with it too.
I switched over from Verizon to Sprint about a year ago and I love it. I have the SERO plan and I'm paying $50 less per month for MORE features. Call quality and coverage is just as good as Verizon and I don't have to wait an extra 6 months for a new Windows Mobile phone to come out. Looking forward to the HTC Diamond!
Actually, I recently switched to sprint... the 100 dollar unlimited everything deal is the only one with all the 3g, tethering, roaming, txt, voice, and gps (real gps on my q9) that you could ask for... and it works fast where i go to school (boston). On the subway underground, even though I think it's only supposed to be verizon and tmobile now, I can still get evdo sometimes... I personally haven't had any customer service experiences that weren't fairly quick and friendly... truly though, every carrier can be real creeps once in a while, I think that's a problem with the us cell market... my international friends tell me all the time about being confused at their first exposure to our contract-centric networks while in europe they just juggle sim cards and pay for what they use whenever they desire... my only misgivings about sprint are that it's cdma, but I'm pretty sure I'll be in the us until my contract expires anyway, and I have no scruples recommending to people who actually live in boston.
Well I am a current Nextel Sprint Customer (Not by choice). The business I work for has the service.
I inherited the duties of taking care of the phones. We currently have approximately 33 phones active. Nextel has been hitting us about giving us all new phones with a 2 year commitment. We have said "no".
The customer service is horrible, The Sprint Nextel website is the worst setup ever. You would think with all the money this company has they would have their act together.
I just upgraded (replaced) one of our Nextel phones that was smashed on a job site. It took a hour and thirty minutes to activate with the Nextel rep on the phone. Ridiculous!
I Wish there was a better alternative with the walkie talkie feature we need.
J
I must be the only person to have only had good luck with Sprint's CS. I got a charge on my bill for using 2.5 MB of data service... at $0.03 / KB = $75. I called them and pointed out that I had the $99 everything plan that included data and the CS guy took it right off without a problem.
That's cause it shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Of course they HAVE to remove it right away.
Fixing their mistakes does NOT constitute good customer service. It constitutes just doing the bare minimum.
I had lots of issues with the Treo 700p, and my friend with the 755p. I had bad reception, it would drop off the Power Vision Network all the time, I would miss calls, it would reboot itself all the time, and the mobile would freeze. I replaced the phone, and the problems are gone.
Although, spending $100 million on an anti-iPhone campaign is just stupid. You will not stop the Apple clones from buying one. You have to go after people on the fence and just show how wonderful your phone is. Also, dropping the ball on WiMax deployment, and not calling it Sprint, but Clearwire, (When you own the majority of the company, is another stupid move.) But Sprint is based in Kansas City, no exactly the best place to find brilliant people. Yes, I am dissing Kansas City, MOVE your HQ to someplace a person with common since would like to live, like Florida, New York, even Texas! :-)
It would be smart to consider that the reason they didn't use Sprint was because it no longer has "brand equity".
Any you've just shown that your place of residence has at least one idiot living there.
We have been on Sprint SERO for two years now. Its been a good plan for us. Our customer service experience has ranged from great to irritating. I think Sprint is faultering because of CS and their ongoing problems with phone selection. More and more phones are becoming lifestyle/fashion devices and Sprint has not figured that out yet. People care more about the device and less about the service (form over function.) The instinct is a step in the right direction, but one phone isn't going to turn sprint around. They need a total revamp of their lineup to include more fashion phones and less workhorse models.
"common since" ? Ya, please don't berate anyone from Kansas City or any place for that matter. Based on your post, your city doesn't seem to have many "brilliant people".
its all about sero unlimited text, unlimited web/email, unlimited night weekends at 7pm, unlimited mobile to mobile, basically unlimited everything and 500 anytime minutes a month for $30, take your $10 in dropped call credits every month and with taxes total $25 a month for less the a dollar a day. I could give 2 shats about any company give me the best price. I am rarely without service or cannot make a call, check my email so sprints a ok for me no need to pay double elsewhere
All Sprint has to do is decrease the unlimited everything plan to $60 a month and customers will come storming back. People will deal with substandard phones and crappy customer service if they are getting a good deal.
Don't tell me that they wouldn't still make a profit either. $60 a month is more than enough to pay for unlimited cell service. Carriers have just got too used to gouging customers and ripping people off.
Sprint rarely drops calls but the service isn't so great indoors. My contract is up this month and I am changing to a SERO plan. Best deal in cell phones by far.
im going to guess a bulk of those 1.09 were former nextel users.
I Dropped them Too :-) Happy I did as well, theirs phones suck, customer service (If tat's what you call it) BLOWS!!! and the billiing is a nightmare.
I Hope the go down, down, down, into a burning ring of fire, down, down, down, let those flames rise higher and burn burn burn, a ring of fire, A ring of fire...
Something like that anyway ;-)
Faslane
Sprint customer for 5 years, never had a problem with customer service, always solved the problem and quickily replaced defected phone
currently on the $30 Sprint Sero plan...
their phones suck though, still using the Samsung A900.
sprint can burn in hell....they have been robbing my mother for 8 years and she somehow believes getting an extra bar of reception is worth the premium and hidden fees. I try but oh well... =/
I think there's one person in the 1200 I see on a daily basis that has sprint...
While I think new phones are neat, and cool, am I the only one who just doesn't need the latest and greatest phone?
I've been using the same RAZR for 2 years now on T-Mobile, and it doesn't bother me that I have no 3G, I have no extra features, and all it does is call, and text.
I do hate Sprint though, I had a plan with them, what, 6 years ago? We canceled them 5 years ago, and they keep trying to reactivate the line. We've blocked them from our bank account, called 32434657687874354 times it seems, and they won't stop trying. We refuse to pay, and we've threatened to take it to court if they don't stop bothering us! D
"Sprint should be studied in colleges. A business with stellar infrastructure but horrid customer service.
I'm only with Sprint because of their 3g network, fastest in the business. However, once T-Mob launches some nice 3g phones for their network I'll be jumping ship."
It's funny that you lament about Sprint and their crappy customer service in lieu of T-Mob when T-Mob had a horrible reputation on customer service.
Don't kid yourselves folks, all mobile cellular companies have shitty customer service. You can't escape it. The only thing to appease folks is a quality product, and low monthly service rate.
Otherwise you are imprisoned in your 2 year contracts, and left holding your "package" when something breaks a day outside of warranty coverage.
Its not clear if the article is claiming 1M in churn, which is roughly 2.5% of their 50M user base or 10% per year, or if this is a net loss of 1M. Industry standards for 2007 seem to hover around 15%, so this doesn't seem too shocking if it is just churn. Or am I missing something?
@FireWolf @ May 12th 2008 7:28PM
I know message might be kinda late but, do u know that Tmobile is the only company to win 8 JD power awards ( in a row ) for customer service ( Let alone being it be for cell service ) WTF?
Good thing about Sprint is I can make calls from my house without resorting to hanging myself outside my upstairs window to make a call. Through 8 years of Pacbell, Cingular, T-Mobile, At&t, those companies couldn't fix the signal strength of Sprint in my area. Plus the plan is great. SERO ftw!
I'm a new customer to Sprint, and just got my hands on a Mogul last week, and, Im in love. The phone is excellent and the data, fast. I'm on their SERO plan so I've got a GREAT deal. When i started their Customer Service sucked, but when i talked to them recently to put on my new phone, and some billing stuff, they were... good! Before that I had T-Mo.. Which I find is the best service, but their slow network and horrible technology evolution chased me away. Then AT&T... which was even worse then sprint. The messed me up, thier CSR had me buy more minutes then they told me they couldn't transfer my account.. and THEY told me they had a no refund rule under any circumstances even with something that was their own fault. So I took my hacked iPhone back to T-Mo. But got sick of what i couldn't do with the iPhone.
As much as I love the GSM phones, it pisses me off that AT&T has the mnopoly on them. I don't like AT&T, who wants to charge me a $500 deposit to sign up with a contract, rude CSRs, and I don't like supporting monopolies if I don't have to.
I hate sprint. I'm so glad that i'm moving to Altell because they actually have coverage, where as Sprint can eat dirt, $300.00 a month for nothing. I'm so upset that a company can charge bullcrap prices for dumb service.
I pray that sprint will fail and will lose everything.
I am a sprint guy... i work for a big cell company but not sprint. yea their customer service sucks... it took 6 months to credit back something they messed up with in the first place. but when it comes down to service... i have had service in lots of places friends (tmobile/ATT) dont. rarely the other way.
AAAND w/ evdo rev A out in my area... im getting dl speeds of 1280/sec while att can only max out at... 700? but thats like dial up being able to do 56k /sec (but only access up to 53 at any time) so i mean. just the data service is friggin awesome.
now the SIMPLY EVERYTHING plan... where att/verizon/tmobile only offer voice. and sprint offering everything under the sun... voice/data/gps/full tv/email... and i've talked w/ people who has sent in their crappy iphones 9 times... AND ... was given an apple BT headset that only has a talk time of 30 mins on a full charge... gimme a friggin break. the only people that I know who REAAAALLLY enjoy their iphone is the ones who hacked it... Iphone... so much potential... so much wasted.
just wish they already come out w/ the tilt version in sprint or the the touch2.