From "The Shopping Avenger" at slate.com:
slate.com
We will return to the issue of airlines in a future episode, but the Shopping Avenger would like to relate another tale that caught his attention this past month. The company in question is Sprint PCS, and the story most definitively does not end with an apology.
In short strokes, the story goes like this: A customer, William Summerhill, an associate professor of history at UCLA, ordered two phones from Sprint PCS. He was billed for six--weirdly, at three different prices (still another charge, for one cent, was also billed to his credit card by Sprint PCS). He fought the bill; Sprint PCS fought back, by phone and fax, wasting a good amount of time.
Finally, his credit card company agreed that he was the victim of false billing and canceled out the charges for four of the six phones. Professor Summerhill continued to be billed, but one thing he did not receive in the mail was a rebate on one of the two remaining phones, part of a special promotion he signed up for. Though he paid for the two phones, he withheld paying his monthly fee until Sprint PCS straightened out his case and gave him his rebate. In response, Sprint PCS canceled his service and referred his case to a collection agency, which is threatening his credit rating.
When I first contacted Sprint PCS (which is a tale in itself--the 800-line operator, citing policy, refused to disclose the telephone number of Sprint PCS headquarters, apparently fearing that customers might try to talk to the executives whose salaries they pay), a spokesman, Tom Murphy, told me the case was terribly complex. Actually, it isn't: Sprint PCS billed a customer for six phones, refused to stop billing him, and threatened him when he wouldn't pay for service pending a resolution of the problem.
Summerhill, who is now a happy customer of AT&T, says he will pay the monthly fees when he receives an apology and the rebate money. The rebate money is owed to him, and so is the apology. He estimates that he has spent 40 to 50 hours trying to straighten out the billing problem, which is clearly Sprint PCS's problem.
But no apology is forthcoming. The Shopping Avenger received an e-mail from Alison Hill, an "executive analyst" at Sprint PCS, who writes that she works "directly for Mr. Andrew Sukawaty, the President and CEO of Sprint PCS." Hill concedes that Sprint PCS was at fault for erroneously charging Summerhill for phones he did not want--she claims he was charged for two phones he didn't want, even though his records show he was billed for four--but she says the "customer is also at fault" for not paying his bill for telephone calls made on the phones he did use.
I spoke with Hill directly and told her it seemed reasonable to me that Summerhill would withhold payment until his billing dispute was settled and the rebate issue resolved. She said he was wrong. I mentioned to her the quaint notion that "the customer is always right," and she said, "in my opinion, the customer is wrong."
Obviously, the Shopping Avenger juju has not yet worked on Sprint PCS, but Summerhill reports that it has worked on the collection agency. "I told the agency that I was reporting this matter to the FCC, to the California consumer protection people, and to the Shopping Avenger at Slate. She didn't say anything about the FCC or the consumer protection people, but she did ask me to please not give the name of the collection agency to Slate."
Professor Summerhill has promised to tell everyone at UCLA and in his Army Reserve unit to boycott Sprint PCS. "I'm pro-business, I love America, I love capitalism, but these people are crazy," he said. "They could make this go away, but they won't."
Sprint PCS could take a cue from Southwest Airlines, one of a handful of companies in America with sterling reputations for customer service. A little while back, the Shopping Avenger received a plaintive e-mail from B., who reported that he was the only passenger on his flight not to receive free drink coupons. Apparently, the flight was late, and as a friendly gesture Southwest let the passengers get drunk on its dime. But not B. Somehow, he was skipped over.
The Shopping Avenger let Ed Stewart, Southwest's spokesman, know of B.'s sad story, and within hours, the Shopping Avenger received this reply: "As I'm sure you've heard, we here at Southwest Airlines pride ourselves on our Customer Service and would NEVER want it to be said that we deprived anyone--particularly a Customer!--the opportunity to have a drink on us."
Stewart says that B. will be mailed an apology, plus Southwest peanuts, plus a coupon book for free drinks--including mixed drinks!
"I hope that this will satisfy your sense of justice," he wrote.
It does indeed.
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