Phone Companies make mistakes

If you automatically believe the things a phone company representative that you don’t know tells you about a toll free number you’re definitely going to wind up operating under the wrong assumptions and heading in the wrong direction. It’s strange how people will believe things a someone they don’t even know the name of or what their background or experience is, who doesn’t really know very much about toll free numbers, and is just repeating something she thinks she heard someone else say, over me. They will even believe things you don’t even make any common sense at all and come back and essentially ask why I told them the wrong thing, or even worse why is my lookup tool wrong. I just don’t get it.

Several times per day I have to say no, they were just wrong. It may be that they misunderstood what you were asking for and therefore gave you the wrong answer. It may be that you asked the question wrong or for the wrong thing. They could just be repeating something they heard someone else say. They could even be saying something just to get you off the phone or to pass you on to someone else.

You also have to realize that most phone company representatives wind up with Cubiclitis. (Cubice-itis) It’s a mental disease that comes from sitting in front of a computer in cubicle too long. It appears most in customer service representatives of large companies. The three most recognizable signs are a person’s belief that the computer is never wrong, that if they don’t know how to do something it is impossible to do, and that if something is against their policy that nobody in their entire organization can do it. It can be passed on by word of mouth, even over the phone, but only to very gullible callers.

So the bottom line is that you should never believe anything a phone company representative says (especially if it doesn’t make sense) without verifying it with one or more additional calls.

InPhonics is still killing Sprint

No matter how many times you verify the information to the Indians working for InPhonics, they still can NOT seem to process an order. I stood in the Radio Shack where I placed the order, with the store manager and half a dozen Sprint accounts spread out on the counter verifying information till they promised me they had everything done. They offered to transfer me to a supervisor to review the acount and confirm that it was really done.

Yet, no matter how much they promise that they have the information and that they are putting it in to be processed, the next day you call back they still need to verify that information again. There is clearly a problem with the InPhonics order process, which is exacerbated tremendously by the people who work for them. I told the girl today, that she even gives telemarketer in 3rd world countries a bad name. I don't mind dealing with someone on the other side of the world to get something changed or fixed over the phone, but the organization and the people that InPhonics is using not only give Sprint a bad name but they even give Indian call centers a bad name too.

They are definitely giving Sprint a bad name most of all because act and seem to the customer like they work for Sprint and it takes a lot of pressing to get them to admit that they actually work for InPhonics. And from the consumer's perspective they ARE Sprint and they are clearly the problem in the system. I am writing this from the consumer's perspective but I also understand business and marketing as well being a small business owner in the marketing and telecom industry. Sprint needs to addres this with InPhonics very quickly because it'll do more harm to them and their name than millions of dollars in advertising can fix.

InPhonics is killing Sprint

I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating this is. It's like Sprint is intentionally screwing this up to see how much I'm willing to say about them. It's eight days later and three or four seperate contacts and they say they need more information again?! Words just can't explain the exasperation I feel about them.

I've kept Radio Shack's name out of this because I had thought they had done reasonably well in starting it all. It seems like it's mainly Sprint or whoever they're using to fullfill the orders that is screwing things up. But at this point I don't know who screwed it up or how they could have possibly screwed this up so badly and so long. It's like they don't actually know how to process an order or the fullfillment dept has spys for AT&T, trying to ruin Sprint quietly on the inside.

I'm going to bring this experience to Las Vegas next week at the Channel Partners convention. Sprint Wireless has a booth there and I'm sure there will be some higher level people involve in chanel sales and they'll definitely hear about this. I'm going to bring this to Radio Shack and give them a chance to resolve it and then I'm going to an actual Sprint Store. That may have been the problem from the beginning. I don't know, but from a consumer's stand point this is the most stupidest thing I think I've ever seen a large company do in a long time.

UPDATE:
I went to the Radio Shack and again they were very patient. I think I understand where the real problem is now. I changed the name of this post because InPhonics is the problem and that's what in this case is clearly killing Sprint, from a customer point of view. After another hour on the phone, this time from Radio Shack, I think I finally reached someone at the InPhonics call center in New Deli, India, who at least sounded like he knew what he was doing.

He needed my Nextel account number. Now the people at Radio shack got this with my SSN and Nextel phone number when we ordered it, so you would think that the people processing the order would still have it or have access to at least as much as someone in a Radio Shack store does. But they assured me that that was all they needed, and that it would be shipped overnight.

I also went to the Sprint Store in the mall and found that they DO have them instock and they had never heard of InPhonic. So if the phone isn't shipped and here tomorrow, I'm canceling it and picking it up at Sprint.

1shoppingcart’s system is down again!

All the commerce at TollFreeNumbers.com goes through 1shoppingcart.com. Actually we rely on them for even more than just the commerce. Their system does most of the follow up emailing for orders and reservations and is the basis for the affiliate program too.

A high percentage of the customers we get are starting their own business so I often get questions about who we use for the commerce on our website, among other things. I used to rave about 1shoppingcart. We’ve used them for years and have been very happy with them. They’ve been responsive and helped fix things and even made changes in their system for us at one point. If there was any one vendor that I would want to lose the least in my business, it is probably them. We rely on them quite a lot and it would honestly be a nightmare to change things at this point. That’s why my comments here are very reserved but also why I think it’s important to say something too, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to wind up being so dependent on them at this point.

I think the problems honestly started when 1shoppingcart was sold by the original founder to a larger company several months ago. There weren’t any changes at first but there have been more and more problems lately that are definitely hurting. And the worst part is that they seem unable to explain them and simply try to brush them off as “upgrades”.

Their “upgrades,” to the order notification, consisted of removing much of the information necessary to complete the order (including the shipping address, the affiliate information and the comments). They took all of the information out of the subject and did this all with no notice or warning at all. When asked about it, they simply said this was an upgrade that had been planned for some time and was in response to user requests. Even when asked politely over the phone they simply refused to explain anything or give even a plausibly honest answer.

I didn’t really say anything about this at the time. They put most of these things back over the next week. Rita and I figured that the best explanation was either a hacker “broke” the code or merging the system into the parent company’s system broke it somehow. Oh, I forgot to mention that the system had been getting slow and even blacking out momentarily before the email notification changes. Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it.

We recently noticed another issue with the affiliate program. The bottom line is that they simply shut it down. They say it’s part of an upcoming upgrade, but it’s been down for at least this whole week allegedly for an upgrade that hasn’t even gone into effect yet. I definitely hope their “upgrades” to the affiliate program are worth shutting it down like this for.

I’m not attacking or bad mouthing 1shoppingcart here. I’m merely trying to share what I’ve observed personally. I’ve been a customer of theirs for years and I rely on them quite a bit. I have nothing to gain and no axe to grind beyond the truth. I believe the benefit they have provided to my business over the years I’ve used them outweighs the recent problems. But I can tell you that I have a lot more concern about them at this point than I ever did before and I don’t recommend them to customers like I used to.

Update: 2/28/07 It's still deader than a door knob.
I also did some research and 1shoppingcart is having a LOT of other technical problems, especially with email delivery. They had to change their whole email system because it got blacklisted. They've got a LOT of problems lately. One other possiblity we came up with is that after the merger some of the key technical people may have left or been let go? That's just how it feels, anyway.

Sprint screws up Treo 700p orders

I recently ordered a new Treo 700p from Sprint and it’s amazing how screwed up big companies sometimes get. They took the order and $434 later they gave me my receipt. I upgraded from my blackberry and although it’s not cheap, I was excited. We had gone over absolutely everything for almost an hour and I walked out of the store with my receipt and they said they would have to fedex me the phone. I understood as they change so fast that it’s hard to keep them in stock in a small store that sells a lot of different phones. They’re also expensive and relatively light so it makes sense to just overnight them.

Unfortunately the next day when I checked the status after not receiving it, I got a message saying that my credit wasn’t good enough or they needed more information. Now, maybe my credit isn’t perfect but I’ve had a phone with Nextel for years and years, since they came out with the unlimited incoming calls. I’ve upgraded a couple times, and I actually have 4 accounts with Sprint or Nextel all together including all of the cell phones and air cards that I pay for. So it seemed strange that they would have a problem with me. And besides I was in the store and gave them all of the information they needed.

I tried calling the number but got lost in a maze of voicemail options so I figured it’s easier to just go back to the store. Unfortunately they didn’t even have access to the message I got and just called the same number. Eventually we wind up talking to an operator in India, and believe me it was obvious we were calling the other side of the world. The call sounded like she was on the moon more than India and the operators poor English didn’t help things.

Anyway, after I had already paid $434 for the phone and was agreeing to upgrade to about $225 per month for just about everything unlimited, they decided to charge me an additional “service fee”. Actually they had added two additional fees that the store had no clue of and couldn’t explain. The operator couldn’t really explain it either, but said that they were upgrade fees.

I can understand having to pay a significant amount for a good phone. I can also understand needing to have reasonable credit. But I don’t understand why Sprint couldn't tell me the real price up front; why they stopped the order holding it up for almost four days all together because of these mystery fees; and why they couldn’t even explain what they were for. The bottom line is that once you order something it seems like extortion to tack on additional hidden fees. Otherwise you’ve already paid for the phone but they're not going to activate it for you. Actually I had already paid for it, but they weren’t going to even send it to me. And when they did send it, they sent it four days late.

Come on Sprint, ordering a new wireless phone shouldn't be such an ordeal. You spend millions of dollars on advertising and then make your new customer hate you before they even get the phone. It’s not the additional $48 and $15 they wanted to charge, it’s the way they did it that just makes you feel like you’ve been taken advantage of. This isn’t exactly toll free oriented but it’s phone related so I figured it was worth venting a little. I’ll write a review of the actual phone later too.