The stupidity of Sprint and getting my mother a phone!

My 78 year old mother recently moved back into the Chicagoland area. The building she lives in requires phone service to be buzzed into the building. For the past two weeks, she's been trying to start phone service with Sprint. With Sprint, she can get both cell and land-line for under $40 a month. I suggested just using AT&T, but she refused, saying she had used an affiliate of Sprint in Houston and would continue to do so. Onto the so called customer service:

Last Saturday, I go to her apartment and we call Sprint on my phone. Everytime she uses her cell, it hangs up(its just a throw-away that she bought before her trip). We find out that her order was cancelled due to her credit check having a problem because Sprint spelled her name wrong!  So, we spend about 30 minutes on my cell(free nights and weekends--no biggie) making sure that everything is correct. They ask for a contact number--we give them her cell phone number, my cell phone number and my home phone number--they now have three numbers. My mother ends up ordering a phone that also takes pictures and I warn her that she doesn't want her grandson(my son--17) or great grandsons(who are 16, 13) to find this out...it could get a bit ugly since she also has internet at her home and she'll never get rid of them!

On Monday, I get a message from Sprint that they're trying to verify my mother's information. I try calling them back. Only problem is that all I can get is a fast busy--you know the one you get when the network is busy? One of the reasons that my husband and I left Sprint?!?!? I call the other number that the service tech gave us--this number connects to a FAX!!! I talk to my mom and she tells me that Sprint has already taken the money out of her account so she figures it's probably not a big deal. The phone and service is supposed to be delivered by Tuesday. I keep trying to call them with no luck.

Wednesday, I receive a call at work from my very upset mother. The phone has not been delivered. I tell her that I'll be over tomorrow, but she needs to call the apartment building office and see if her cellphone has been left downstairs. Maybe UPS only leaves packages downstairs.

Thursday rolls around, I first go to the office to make sure the phone isn't there. No, its not, my daughter was over yesterday and checked. I go upstairs and start the process over with the orginal Sprint customer service number. I race through the voice prompts to get to a person. I give her the order number. She tells me the order has been cancelled because I didn't call back! Not only did I not call back, but she tells me that they have called me 3 times--HAH! I hate it when people lie to me--and this is where I lose my patience and THE REDHEAD takes over. First I ask her for her supervisor, she says she can't do that(I always ask for a supervisor because I figure they get paid more and if I'm going to take someone's head off, it should be someone making more money)I tell her that not only did they not call me 3 times because my phone only showed them calling once, but I kept trying to return the call and couldn't get through because their network was busy--and they gave me a wrong number for the second number. I also didn't appreciate that they could take the money out of my 78 year old mother's account to pay for the phone, they should be able to give us a working number to contact someone! This was the second time there was a problem and Sprint didn't bother to try to make anything be a minimal contact. She said we could start the contract again--I said, why? so you can screw it up again? This woman lives in a building that has a security system based on a phone system which she has been unable to use. We'll try another company.

I called AT&T and within 2 hours, my mother had service...someday, maybe my mother will listen to me.