Closer To The Ideal

I’ve written before about the error messages I’ve encountered on the Sprint PCS website. I’ve been unable to log into the Sprint PCS website this month - I get some bizzare error messages instead.

Today I figured I’d try to use my phone to pay the bill. I hit “*2″ which dialed customer service for me. I reached an automated voicemail system. It asked me to type in my phone number, so it could look up my account information. I did so. It then told me that I owed Sprint $513. I was stunned. By my calculations, I owe something like $200. I pay about $97 a month, and I owe last month and this month. I’m not sure how the amount doubled.

Eventually, the automated system gave me the option to talk to someone. I pressed the button.

A pleasant, helpful woman got on the line and asked for my telephone number, so she could look up my account information. I gave her the number and she said they had no account information for me. I explained that I’d had this account with Sprint since March of 2001. She explained that she worked for Nextel, she didn’t have account info for Sprint customers (the two companies are merging).

This is puzzling. If Nextel doesn’t have any of my account information, then why should my phone auto-dial Nextel when I press the buttons for customer service? Also, if Nextel has no information about me, how did the automated system tell me that I owed $513?

What happened next is also puzzling. I said, “Okay, can you transfer me to Sprint Customer Service?” She said she could not transfer me there. She could, however, give me the phone number. Why can’t the phone company transfer me to the number they want me to go to? I find that confusing.

I dialed the number she gave me.
Sprint PCS also had an automated system. It asked me to type in my telephone number, so it could look up my account information. I typed in my telephone number. It said there was no account with that number, and it suggested I type it again. I assumed I’d mis-typed it, so I tried it again, carefully. Again, the automated voice system told me that there was no account with that number. I didn’t know what else to do, so I typed in the number a 3rd time. Again it told me there was no such telephone number.

I couldn’t think of what to do then. The automated voice system did not give me any other option. It kept asking me to type in my telephone number. It asked me 4 more times, and then, when I did nothing, it hung up on me. It never offered to transfer me to a human operator, who might have been able to resolve the situation.

I’ve had this account for 6 and half years. Right now, I seem to be completely locked out of it. The computer at Sprint PCS claims my account doesn’t exist. At Nextel, the computer says I owe the incredible amount of $513, and then the operator says she has no access to my account information because it is over at Sprint.

I don’t need to know many of the details to tell that the merger of Sprint and Nextel databases is going badly. If I had stock, I’d sell it. This is the worst customer service experience I’ve had in many years.

Yet another story about a badly programmed website, with really bad error messages.

I went to pay my monthly cell phone bill. Just last month, SprintPCS instituted a new policy, requiring stricter passwords with more letters and numbers in them. So I was forced to change my password. Perhaps I was also in a hurry, as I did not write it down in the usual place.

Today, unable to remember the new password, I clicked the link they offer for “Forgot your password?” I came to the screen you see in the first image.

I typed in my “username”, which is simply my telephone number. When I hit the submit button, I got, in response, a blank white page with the text “Error: 500″. That’s it. Nothing else. Just that text on a blank white page. You can see it in this second image:

I offer this anecodote as one more small piece of evidence for the case that most web sites are horribly programmed and poorly tested. I don’t mean to pick on SprintPCS, since there are many sites that are just as bad, but this just happens to be the broken website that I interacted with today.

Mind you, the above incident happened this morning, around 11 AM, and now it is 11 PM. I just went back to get screenshots. Twelve hours later, the problem is still there.

I sent SprintPCS an email about this. I have not yet heard back from them. I’ll update this post if I do hear from them.

UPDATE: wonderful response time. I just got this, on the 17th. The irony:

Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:08:18 -0500 [02:08:18 PM CDT]

From: Sprint Customer Solutions <ecare@cc.sprintpcs.com>

To: LAWRENCE@KRUBNER.COM

Subject: Re: Subject: ID # 20070914212929 (KMM38317571I123L0KM)

Hello Lawrence Krubner,

Thank you for contacting Sprint.

A ticket has been submitted in reference to the difficulty you are experiencing logging into your account online at Sprint.com. The ticket number is 16880851.

A follow-up call will be made to you within 36 business hours.

Thank you again for contacting Sprint. We appreciate your business.

Mary O.
E-Care
Sprint
“Where our customers come first!”

Refer someone to Sprint and get $25.

So after 3 days, they send me an email in which they promise to contact me within 3 days. Then they close with “Where our customers come first!” Hate to think how we’d be treated if we came second.