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I’m not prone to blog rants … But I have been reading for months how Churbuck and Cahill and Borsch analyze and even define reaching out to customers, proactive support, customer engagement and participation. All great stuff and long overdue. Which makes my recent experiences with Sprint so glaringly awful.

I wanted to become a late ‘early adopter’ by getting aboard the Treo train. But I found that my current provider, Nextel, only supported the Blackberry. After several conversations with reps from both companies (they still are somewhat separate even though they have merged), I decided it was worth switching to Sprint.

So, I went to the web site and began ordering my phones and services for my wife and I. While doing so, a chat window popped up with a sales rep helping me through the process. It was a real rep, too; I asked several pointed questions to see if it was just a bot. She was very helpful, and in fact, even gave me a $50 promotion code. Well, that was very easy and a very good experience. I was told I should have my phones in two business days.

Four business days later I became concerned at the absence of my phones. I got a call from Sprint’s fraud department the same day questioning my order, because several orders had been mistakenly sent to the wrong addresses. I was given a number to call to check my order.

When I called the customer service number I waited on hold for almost an hour before the lady there confirmed that my phones had shipped and that they would be here tomorrow. I asked for her name and waited another day.

The next day I called the support number again (which is even more difficult when you don’t have a Sprint phone number yet; they seem troubled by helping you when you’re not a real customer yet). After another hour on hold, the guy I spoke to confirmed that my order shipped and should be here today, which was now Friday.

No phones on Friday. (I wondered if the reps were just making things up, typing on their computers to make it sound like they were accessing actual information on my order.) Late Friday night I get call from a guy at UPS. I can barely hear him for all the factory noise in the background. He seems to be saying he has a package he thinks is mine. It was shipped to Kansas City, MA. Since there is no such place, he opened the package and checked the bill. He confirms my true address, though I can barely make out what he is asking me. Very strange and disconcerting.

Sprint on Monday (after another hour on hold) tells me of the error with the shipping when I call them again. But this time they tell me that there is nothing they can do; they say I have to wait up to 10 days for UPS to consider the package lost before they can put a trace on it. I say that is fine, they can just send me some new phones while they wait for their lost phones to be returned. They cannot do that; they have to get the phones back first. I ask to speak to a manager, who is surprisingly surly and unhelpful. After another call, another hour on hold, and another rejection for satisfaction I am fit to be tied and wished I had never switched services.

I get home that night to find that the UPS guy on the phone that night indeed did have my package and had forwarded it on to me. I was thrilled, but also amazed to find that it took another hour on hold to get the thing activated at Sprint. (They still considered my my phones lost, incidentally, though that is not why it took so long to activate).

About 10 days later I got a second box from Sprint with two new phones in it. And yes, it took me an hour on hold before I could find out how to return the phones to them.

There’s more. My wife recently wanted to make sure that when she unblocks her call blocking, that her name appears to the receiver and not mine. You guessed it, another hour on the phone … and it still does not work properly.

If it were not for the hefty cancellation fees and the cost of new hardware, I would switch to anyone … anyone … else right now. Each time I call Sprint for support each rep offers a different answer to the same question. It’s appalling really. You walk away feeling lied to every time.

This experience is second only to the misery suffered at the hands of the Big O, Overstock.com. After a botched shipment similar to the one mentioned above (and the requisite multiple calls and hours on the phone), I waited weeks for a 19-inch Dell monitor. When the thing finally arrived, the case not only was covered in dents and scratches, but the left third of the viewable portion was brown and distorted. Completely useless. I did get a $50 gift certificate as recompense, but refuse to use it.

I’ve been meaning to blog about these experiences for some time now. Ah, feels good to get that off my chest.