Sprint And The Problems Of The TeleCom Industry

If you haven't heard by now, Sprint sent a letter to 1,000 or so people that complain too much notifying them they had been dropped from their service. Deemed habitual complainers, Sprint is tired with customers that call too much about their shitty service. Ironically they were told to call customer service if they had any questions or complaints.

So is this just a story of a company trying to free up their customer service reps for other people to complain or was the wait time for rep just too long for Sprint's liking? Frankly, I don't care. A responsible company would have added more staff to deal with callers complaining about the quality that Sprint delivers. Now these dropped customers will have to go somewhere else having been banned by the nation's third largest carrier.

But where will they go? There's AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and...and....um...well, thats it. There are four major cellphone coverage providers left. Nextel, Cingular and the rest are gone, having been merged into the fold in this post- 1996 Telecommunications Act world.

Is it fair? I'm sure the CEOs and other corporate brass at these companies would say so. Some of the large shareholders might echo it as well. But for the consumer, the options are limited and at the rate things are going, there will be even less than four choices before you know it. Who knows, maybe WalMart will just buy them all out and we'll need their permission to use cellphones in the future. And as for customer care...if you have a problem, it might be best to just shut up and be thankful you have a cellphone at all.