Customers are talking: Doc Searls runs up against “Simply Everything”’s limits

I posted earlier today on Sprint’s progress in customer satisfaction. It’s not all good news, though. Internet sage Doc Searls often posts on his experiences with suppliers (perhaps part of his work on Vendor Relationship Management), such as Apple and Cox Cable. Today, he wrote about Sprint and a $500 bill he got from them when he unwittingly exceeded his usage limit on his EVDO wireless card. (You didn’t think there were usage limits on “unlimited” plans? Think again.)

The problem was “resolved,” kind of:

The Sprint person on the “courtesy call” knocked $350 off the bill. That was because she was ready to “work” with me on the matter. I asked her how she arrived at that number. She said she couldn’t say.

Searls is a great observer of the absurdity of large company bureaucracies and the battle between consumer and supplier. He’s also an artful complainer. I’ll be staying tuned to see if there’s any further fallout from his latest experience.

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Tags: customer service, marketing, mistakes, mobile, wireless

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Customers Are Talking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

dsearls

Thanks, John.

What's sad here is that old phone company defaults (e.g. creating arbitrary limits and charging for overages) are returning to Sprint at a time in history when all mobile companies have an enormous opportunity to take the lead as internet service providers -- and Sprint already had a small but significant lead, as the only company with a legitimate "unlimited" claim.

Sprint made a dumb move when it compromised its "unlimited" plans with a data-cap just like everybody else. It was a huge value-subtract for some of its most enthusiastic and important customers. We're not talking about gamers or file-sharers hogging the cable plant here. We're talking about professionals who shell out big bux so they can connect and do urgent business anywhere -- and who meet and talk with plenty of others like them. These are customers you want, not customers you blow off. Saying "The use of voice and data roaming by a small minority of customers is generating a disproportionately large level of operating expense for the company" is narrow, dumb thinking. Punishing those users is lame in the extreme. That all the phone companies do it makes it even more lame, not less.

I travel a lot and depend often on my Sprint card. But I can also live without it. And right now that's what I plan to do.

jmcaddell

Doc, you're right that the early adopters of wireless broadband modems are not the market segment that Sprint (or any other mobile company) wants to alienate. $60 per month for a data service that is typically used on occasion is very high. And, as you found, when you use it every day, it doesn't cost $60 per month.

The biggest issue is the lack of transparency and candor. Limited "unlimited" is a recipe for disaster. 99% of the time, it doesn't cause a problem. But that 1%, which you were caught in, can undo all the other things Sprint is doing to regain its competitive footing.