Sprint "together with" Nextel

Customer Service (On-line), Customer Service (telephone)

I have had my Nextel account with two lines since November of 2004. I have always been able to maintain a relatively decent signal to make and receive calls from anywhere inside our home. About six months ago the signal strength degraded to a level of very weak to no service at all, depending on the location in the house. I contacted Sprint-Nextel and they had me refresh the phones, do a master reset and even allegedly put in an inquiry to engineering. After several calls to Customer Service I made complaints in writing on-line to Customer Service; my first on August 24th of this year. I received a return email in the middle of the night (2:58 AM) thanking me for contacting them and that my problem would be looked into. No return communication. A week or so later I did the same thing, this time receiving a return email at 3:16 am basically saying the same thing. After another week I called, after my son had gotten fed up with the little to no service we had and purchased a phone form Verizon, which works absolutely great at all locations in the house (evening here in the basement). I told the lady what my problems have been and I also needed to place minimum service on my son’s old Nextel line. She inquired as to why I wanted to do that and I explained. She offered to terminate the line and waive the $200 termination fee, which I was delighted. We further went through my problems and we did all kinds of things. We proved it wasn’t the phone as I have a Motorola i870, which is an expensive phone and according to her was to have the best reception of most of the phones they offer. She ended the call that if I still had problems to call back and Nextel would arrange to swap the service to the Sprint PCS network at no charge to see if that would provide better service.

I went out of town and when I came back I continued to have little to no service on my phone. I emailed again, this time a little more frustrated and stated all this crap all over again. No return email at all. A few days later I emailed again and this time within 48 hours I received a return email telling me to call Customer Service. I replied back to him (a Jay L. in E Care) and told him NO, he needed to have someone of some responsibility to call me as my frustration level has grown and for what I have continued to pay for a service that is useless 50% of my time was ridiculous and I felt I had been given the run-around long enough. Then I get an email in return telling me that they cannot make outgoing calls. Now I find that quite a stretch in the imagination but whatever at this point.

So, that brings us to today. I call Sprint-Nextel Customer Service. As always, a very nice person answers and listens to my spiel. He says that I need to contact Sprint PCS and let them know that I wish to have my number ported to the PCS service for 30 days to see if the service improves. I get connected to a woman that spoke very broken English and was very hard to understand. I asked for another person as she did not understand what I was trying to convey to her. I wind up with this woman in sales and I have to explain all this all over again. She then tells me no problem we will start you a new account, what is your social security number so we can check your credit? That was it, I let her know in short order that it was an unacceptable means to rectify my problem and that I was not going to take an inquiry on my credit report in this instance. I informed her I was contacting the corporate office and sending the copies of all these emails and the problem to a Vice President or possibly the CEO. At this pint I would probably get the same lip service out of them.

I still have the Nextel service and the same lousy service. I am expected to pay my bill by Sunday the 5th, which I think is an insult to me after all this. I found this website looking for the corporate offices of Sprint-Nextel and decided to give it a spin. I think I will even email the three major network affiliates’ consumer complain reporters and WSB radio’s Clark Howard.