Over the weekend on a work trip, the headset jack on my 700p started acting up and the unit was going to have to be replaced.
When I went to my local Sprint store Tuesday evening, they told me, sorry...I would have to go to a special Sprint store that had a technician in it. The nearest one was several miles away.
So, today, at 11:30am, I show up at the Sprint store. I wait 20 minutes just to talk to someone. I give him my phone to hand to the tech to verify that it was, indeed, a bad headset jack. 15 minutes later, the tech verifies that as the problem and says he can't fix it. No sweat, I say, since (a) it's still under Palm's 1-year warranty, and (b) I have the phone repair/replacement warranty on top of that. So, I expect them to hand me a replacement 700p.
Nope. Sales dude Jeff tells me that they have no Treo 700p's in stock and they have to get it from the warehouse, which takes 3-5 days. In the meantime, I will just have to use the wired headset whenever I want to make or receive a call or check my voicemail (which is the only way they'll alert me that my replacement phone is available).
However, I get back to my office today and call the store. I talk to sales dude Mike and ask if they have any 700p's in stock. He cheerily tells me that they have several 700p's in the store and to come on in and pick one up (they're open until 9pm!).
So, what's up, Sprint? I'm paying you nearly $100 a month plus a $6 per month replacement service fee just so you can make me wait an extra 3-5 days while you'll give a new customer my phone today? Sprint sucks.
It's really no wonder that a recent MSN-Zogby poll ranked Sprint as having the worst customer service across all industries. It's times like this that I really miss T-Mobile.
Update: I called Sprint's telephone support and they said they weren't sure why the store said what it did, but that I could go back to the store and ask to speak to the manager. Rather than driving clear up there again tonight, I called and was told that the phones in stock in the store were new phones and that they couldn't give out new phones for replacements (only refurbished models are available for existing customers). I asked the girl if she thought that giving better service to a potential Sprint customer (e.g., someone wanting to sign up for service and buy a 700p outright, who would be handed a new phone immediately) than a current Sprint customer (e.g., me) was the right thing to do. She said, "I'm not going to answer that." Yes, welcome to Sprint...ethics optional.
Was this the Kenwood store?
They did this to me, at any rate. I had a Sanyo PM-8200 and I allowed the case to get torn up. I decided to have their technicians replace the outer cases, at my expense (roughly $20). When I got the phone back, the vibration function was broken, and it worked when I gave them the phone.
They offered to replace the phone for free, rightfully so, but with a remanufactured unit. Fine by me. My original phone was silver, but I asked if they could order a blue one, which they said was no issue. On the day they called and said my phone was in stock, I went in for the exchange. On arrival, I was told that my remanufactured phone had been given to someone else, but I would receive a new one.
When they brought out the box, it was a silver unit. I politely explained the situation with the ordering of a blue reman unit, and was promptly told that they didn't have any blue in stock. I found this to be fishy. Don't get me wrong, if they said it wasn't allowed by the system, or against Sprint policy to change colors, I would have been fine with that. But they said it was out of stock. So I allowed them to go through the motions, setting up the silver phone, etc.
I went home with the silver phone and waited a few hours before calling. Of course they had the blue in stock, and the manager didn't have an answer as to why I was lied to. In the end, I got the blue phone, but the service was terrible through every step.
And now I have Cingular, and haven't had an issue in the year since I've switched. Sprint is terrible.
Michael, yes, it was the Kenwood store. :-/
That's awesomely ridiculous.
There is a flipside to this in the industry. I recently travelled to Paris on business. A week or so before, I contacted my corporate telecom help desk to change my Blackberry Pearl to international capability. Supposedly they did their job. I arrived in Paris to dead air, but fortunately had saved the email I received telling me to call AT&T International Service in case I had any problems. I called them at around 11PM EST and got a person on the first ring. She listened to my issue, fixed it in about a minute then made a test call to me to ensure her success. From that point forward I had phone, email and web accesss via Blackberry the whole time.