Gutsy Move

In an interesting move, Sprint decided to cancel service to customers who have made too many calls for a variety of reasons including billing or “other general information.”

From a business standpoint – how much time (dollars) will they save in the customer service department vs. the bad publicity of firing customers?

The letters sent to customers state that the balance on their respective accounts have been brought to zero and there will be no early termination penalty. Whoa! These customers must have really been a drain…Apparently, some bean counter has crunched the numbers.

From a customer standpoint – could you really call your wireless provider so often that they would invite you to leave? That makes for an easy way out of a wireless contract.

Even though these letters were sent to a small group of customers I think Sprint made a big faux pas by underestimating the power of citizen marketing on the web. As bad news spreads like wildfire you can now Google this topic and see how many references are already out there.

So while the bean counter may have had a point, the PR person slept! Maybe they should be looking more closely at why people were calling so often.

PS . . . I am on Verizon