Bad, really bad customer service at Sprint in Kennewick. I purchased a Palm Pre 30 days ago at 10:30am on June 6th. Within a week I concluded the phone was bad and today I was refused a return by Kennewick Sprint’s manager! My story…
I 
thought I would give the phone a fair shot under Sprint of Kennewick’s “30-day customer satisfaction guarantee” and made a note to myself to call Kennewick Sprint on Friday, July 3rd, three days before my 30-day trial would expire. I made several calls to the store on Friday the 3rd with no answer (see attached screenshot of phone record) and concluded the store was closed for the July 4th holiday. We were headed out of town for the July 4th holiday on Friday evening and thought I would simply do the return today (Monday, July 6th) at 9:00am. Wrong! The manager refused to except my return! She stated I was past the “30 days!”
At 9:00am this morning I explained to the manager I still had 1.5 hours to go on the guarantee, and also explained to her I tried calling several times on Friday the 3rd! She dug her heels in. While in the store, the manager had me call “Sprint Retention.” Over the phone, the operator told me the return is the store’s decision. I confronted the manager again, and the manager refused my return, again.
When I returned home, I reread the “Sprint 30-Day Risk-Free Guarantee,” and the guarantee states I have “30 days” to return my phone. June 6th at 10:30am to July 6th at 9:00am is 29 days, 22.5 hours. Did someone add an extra day to June? Did I miss that?
Customer Service At It’s Worse
What an incredibly stupid decision and poor customer service. I’m left with a phone I do not want, and Sprint of Kennewick has a black eye as I’m sure when someone searches Google for ‘kennewick sprint’ this blog entry will show up. I wonder how many sales Sprint will lose as a result of their decision to save a few bucks at the expense of an unhappy customer (I guess 6 years and a family plan of 4 phones doesn’t amount to much these days).
Friends Do Not Let Friends Buy A Palm Pre!
Regarding the Palm Pre. Do not buy it! Come to find out, the phone is still in the beta testing stage. Glitches continue to surface in the Palm Pre software. Plus, the phone is very cheaply built. If you buy this phone, insurance is a must as the phone will not last. 30 days into ownership, the slide is already not sliding properly. Last but not least, for those of us who opted for a Palm Pre to sync with our Palm software, forget it. After a one time synchronization, there is no syncing to the Palm desktop software. What is even worse, there is no way to enter contact info into the phone except hunt and pecking the 1inch x 2inch keyboard. Yikes!
The Takeaway
If you are a Sprint customer and bound by the contract, you are stuck but beware and watch your backside. If you are not a Sprint customer and straddling the fence on what provider to use, do not use Sprint of Kennewick Washington. Lastly, unless you are happy with a phone in the beta stage, only need the phone for texting, and are happy with the 20ish apps (compare to iPhone’s several thousand apps), then my advice is not purchase the Palm Pre.
Sadly, even if I was out of warranty (and I am not), Kennewick Sprint could have gone the high road and chose to honor the wishes of a paying customer. Personally, we’ve had several service businesses over the past 20+ years,- we’ve always put the customer’s needs over the dictates of a contract whenever possible. In this case, in my opinion Kennewick Sprint was (and is) under obligation to honor their guarantee.
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I saw this on Twitter. Apparently this kind of bad service has gone uncontested. Until now a person had no recourse, but with the advent of social media, these kinds of behaviors can be exposed. Thanks for posting this.
Here’s hoping Sprint Kennewick will come to their senses before this thing becomes a monster.
Looking for Sprint’s website and searched ‘Kennewick Sprint.’ Found this article instead.
Unbelievable poor service. I cannot believe they did not honor their guarantee, especially given you had a few hours left AND you produced evidence you tried contacting their store days before the guarantee was to expire.
I guess Sprint truly does not care. By now, I would imagine someone has told them about this story made public.
I just wanted to say I read your article and I understand where you are coming from, but if you count from the day you bought it to the day you went to return it, it was in fact 31 days. I pulled it up on my calendar and counted it several times, and if you knew within the first week you didn’t like it, you should have returned it long before then to prevent this from happening. Further more, I am sure the store’s manager is just doing what she is told from her boss, as I’m sure your employees give you the same respect.
@Chillaxin,
Are you a Kennewick Sprint employee? Sounds like it. For your benefit, and anyone else reading this article, I’ll respond to your comment by quoting you then offering a more detailed explanation.
“…if you count from the day you bought it to the day you went to return it…”
I did count the days. June 6th at 10:26am (per my Sprint receipt) to July 6th at 9:00am (my wife and I were at the store when they opened at 9:00am) is 29 days, 22.5 hours. June has 30 days! Besides, we called several times on Friday, June 3rd.
“…if you knew within the first week you didn’t like it, you should have returned it…”
Perhaps you need to read my story a bit more carefully. I stated I would give the phone a “fair shot.” Initially, my main beef was the phone would not sync with my Palm software (this is a Palm phone, right?). I thought perhaps this would get corrected by Sprint or Palm, but nothing has been corrected. Over the weeks following this first observation, several other problematic issues became evident with the phone.
“…I am sure the store’s manager is just doing what she is told from her boss…”
Uh, she IS the boss, as she IS the store manager. Again, re-read the article Chillaxin. In my article I mentioned this store manager had me call Sprint Retention while I was in the Kennewick Sprint store. The Retention operator told me the decision to accept the phone return is the manager’s decision. I confronted her with this and she still refused my return.
I tried to warn you about the lousy Sprint service in this area, I to was with Sprint for many years but after living here 3 years and having bad service & little or know support, when my 2 year contract ran out I couldn’t wait to drop them.
I’m now with ATT & an IPhone and I am reasonably happy with the service & customer support …
Good Luck
Jeter
Hey just stumbled across this article looking for stuff on the Pre. Interesting article very well articulated looks like you have all your facts in order. I’ve been a Sprint customer for 13 years and I like the company overall. Although I’ve had many problems with that Sprint Store in the past but most of the time they are great, the problems I usually have are with the over the phone customer service, witch can be frustrating. I just got the Pre and I love it, its taking me a while to learn but I think that you have just saved yourself by waiting until the last minute. I had a similar experience at Best Buy and I didn’t take a $960 Blue ray player back until the last day and it snowed badly the night before and I couldn’t make it. When I came in the next day they wouldn’t allow me to return it and I ranted and raved about it but it was to no use just made me look pretty stupid then months later it became the standard for High Definition not HD versions. I was wrong for taking it back so late, but still I felt it was their fault that I sat on it for 30 days. I have noticed that many small situations in life are just a microcosm for societies problems. McDonald’s hot coffee burning, the failed law suit for people saying that McDonald’s made them overweight, people signing up for house loans not reading the fine print or being able to afford it, the overall credit crisis, diet fads come and go but America just gets fatter, people want big trucks, SUVs even though fuel prices are increasing. It just tells me that people don’t want to take responsibility for their actions, if we all did maybe we wouldn’t be in our current situations, people would take care of themselves and not be looking for government help/bailouts/stimulus checks or company help. Look I’m all for complaining about bad customer service when they disrespect customers or not have enough people to help the people that give them money but it doesn’t sound like from your article that it is all that bad, besides them not answering the phone. I called them the other day to see if my sons replacement phone was in and no one answered I called back 3 times still no answer so I decided to stop by and check em out but I needed to see what time they closed so I pressed the button on the automated system to listen to their hours. It was B. S. that a company as big as Sprint didn’t have someone just to answer their phone calls but then on the way over their I had to call Charter for my internet 2 times and both times got an automated system. Called At&T for my wife’s phone and got an automated system, all of these were local offices. Just sayen that I think that this phone is out of this world. After Sprint made me really mad I decided to keep my sprint until I got another carrier. When the original iphone came out my wife and I were stuck in that long line at the AT&T store we got the best phone in wireless to date, this was like no other phone then i lost it at a trade show, no insurance, tried to plea with AT&T to get me a deal on a new one or even let me renew my contract for one even at a discount and they said no. I tried getting the phone that would be the iphone killer, Palm 700p, then back to sprint with the Samsung Instinct then to the Pre…lotus based OS. Look at some of the other pages that come up when you search for the Pre its tight! Btw one of those 20+ apps has a syncing ability on your computer via wifi that works great for itunes and outlook. Why would you use palm desktop manager anyway, little dated. The phone will have tons of updates to fix bugs, no other phones have that ability, the app store is waiting on developers to make apps, plus iphone home brew apps are the best anyway and most of the best ones for the pre are home brew. Anyway I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience it always sucks when that happens and it brings out the worst in people on booth sides but I’m sure that you will like the phone in the end. Take what you want from my article and I hope that you have a different outlook on the Pre.
I knew after opening the box and picking up the device that it was cheep and poorly made.
I tried to work with the phone for a week before I knew it was pointless. It is a shame that they did not take the device back.
More important, the Retention department is there to try and keep you. If you remain calm, dont yell, dont cuss, chances are they would have found away to take it back even if it was just for replacement.
This is free of speech. I don’t understand bad comments. The people read the story and decide themselves. I am a great fan of Palm Pre and see such negative customer experiences as a nice thing for increasing overall service quality.
Too bad Sprint Kennewick took the stand they did. I was looking for the store location of the Kennewick Sprint store (I Googled ‘kennewick sprint store location’) and found this critique. Makes me reconsider my options.
thanks for the info on the new pre. i was actually going to purchase one but i figured they would have glitches in the beginnnig models. thanks for the update
I have analytics set up to monitor traffic to this blog. It’s amazing the number of phrases folks are using to find this post, and the huge amount of traffic this blog entry is receiving. This blog entry may very well be my most trafficked (read) blog entry!
By now, the Kennewick Sprint store has got to know about this story. The fact they have not tried to contact me to make things right is a testimony to the customer service one can expect at the Kennewick store. Perhaps other Sprint stores as well?
Btw, I continue to have issues with my Palm Pre.
Joe & Colleen:
I bought the Blackberry 8830 as US Cellular is the carrier of choice at White Pass. My spouse has a Windows Smart Phone that does not appear to synch with anything “Windows” related.
I had a regular Palm that I had wanted to update but, again, it did not appear that Old Palm was New Palm compatible.
If you have issues with your cell carrier, one way to seek relief is to write up and send the scenario to the respective states’ attorney general’s office, i.e., WA State Attorney General’s Office. They have a consumer advocacy department that seeks to resolve these types of issues.
Thanks for commenting John. Sending something (perhaps this blog entry) to the WA State Attorney General’s Office might be an option. Thanks for the tip.
Phone companies showed up as the top reason to complain to the Attorney General’s office.
http://www.atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint/TopComplaints.aspx
Below is the link to their complaint site:
http://www.atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx
Okay….now I’m looking for my “can of whoopass.” Thanks for the heads up.
Here ya go Beverly…
I bought the Palm Pre on Monday night and it was broken on Tuesday. Went to Sprint store Wednesday morning and they refused to replace a new one. They insisted that I physically damaged the phone. Go figure how well built is this phone? Customer Service at the Sprint Store is absolutely pathetic.
I am so glad that this is posted. I don’t waste my money on the lastest and greatest phones because of situations like this. Not faulting anyone, but I just refuse to give Sprint my money behind a useless phone!! I too am a Sprint customer and have been for 8 years. I was their biggest advocate and fan because while everyone was complaining about dropped calls years ago, I never experienced that. All of the upgrades I got were free and were good Samsung phones……that it until I upgraded to the RANT last October. I dealt with the issues thinking that an “update” would fix the problems, but it never happened. I won’t get into the nightmare that occured while I was getting the phone activated and porting in a relative for the second line…so to keep the story short, I ended up switching the phone out 3 times for the same issues, getting updates, calling tech support, writing the corporate office, just to have them tell me the same thing….Call Retention. Retention says it’s up to the store manager because they can’t physically see the phone to swap you into a new device. I went to one store and they acted as if I was in there for my health and gave me the run around. I called corporate again (I saved their number) and they suggested that I go to another store. I did. I was in there for 3 hours!!!!!! I don’t even wait at the doctor’s office that long! The store manager hesitated for like 20 minutes with the tech before he finally decided to put me in a cheaper phone and I told him no, I wanted one equivalent to the one I had, then he wanted to try and get me to go into a Blackberry curve and pay “just $50″ excuse me??!! I finally got into the Samsuck Exclaim and it’s okay, but the screen doesn’t flip back to portrait.
Any who…this is exactly why they are loosing customers….like me.
Thanks for chiming in NolaHou.
Things around here are going from bad to worse! Colleen purchased the Palm Pre when I did and had reasonably good luck with it. However, this week her Palm Pre went down (haven’t we addressed how cheap this phone is previously) and used her insurance to return it. Come to find out, the insurance deductible is now $100 (up from $50)! Can we expect to pay $100 to use this phone every 2.5 months if the phone breaks down every 2.5 months? Yikes! What made things worse is the supposed 2-minute setup and transfer of data from the broken Palm Pre to the new Palm Pre took the better part of the morning. Thanks Sprint and Palm Pre!
I myself just bought a phone in August 18, 2008. I upgraded my phone with a new 2year contract and it was such a hassle just to get the Samsung Rant. It took them about a week to correct my upgrade elgibility and get me my phone. Now i have had it about a Month and it turned out to be defected phone. I have tried for 2weeks again to get my phone replaced because it has been with in my 30days. I have been sent back and forth from store to call center reps. I am still with out a phone and i continue to pay my bill. I called today to customer service for a tracking number on my device and what another mess. I just cant see why sprint can not work with store locations and reps correctly. I tracked my phone mailed to an unknown address. I then call the customer service and a rep did says yes ma’am the phone was mailed to the unknown address. I then spoke to a supervisor and was told i don’t know how they got the unknown address but the phone has now been mailed to the store. So once again i am with out a phone and can not cancel my contract because it has been past my 30days. I am so willing to pay my 500.00 deposit with a competitor who can provide better service.