BobHarris.com - Sprint -- away, as fast as I can

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Dennis Perrin

Sprint -- away, as fast as I can

Tag it now -

Tuesday, 01 April 2008

I was a loyal Sprint customer starting in 1986, when "U.S. Sprint" had the cheapest rates I could find. I traveled constantly even then, so long distance was a necessity, and saving a few cents per minute could really add up.

For more than 15 years, I accumulated points in the Sprint Rewards program, eventually racking up enough for several round-trip flights to Europe. I never took those, however, because in July 2002, Sprint suddenly changed the rules, politely telling screwing hundreds of thousands of customers to go screw themselves. The company is now subject to a class action complaint.

Obviously, I stopped being a Sprint customer, but I would have left anyway. T-Mobile had a much better deal for international travellers at the time, although now Skype is the way to go.

Nonetheless, two years ago, in January 2006, I got an unsolicited email from Sprint, totally out of the blue, asking me to be a part of the Sprint Ambassador program. Google around, and you'll find that this was a klutzy attempt at guerrilla marketing, where Sprint shoved free phones at hundreds of bloggers, almost randomly, promising to engage our feedback while really just hoping we'd all be so blown away by a free phone -- yippee! -- that we'd froth pure joy to a cumulative hundreds of thousands of readers.

Thing is, the phone was OK, nothing more. Sprint hardly has a reputation for genius innovation. I put the phone on a shelf, figuring I'd give it to somebody who needed it someday. Meanwhile, the program didn't quite get the desired results, and they shut it down about ten weeks ago with one last email farewell, including a phone number for anyone with Ambassador-related questions.

Still, I have a friend who still has Sprint service (I don't let this come between us, though) and needs a new phone, so I figure maybe I can give her my old unused Sprint Ambassador handset.

So I contact Sprint today, hoping to get a few simple obvious questions answered. Or I try to. The Sprint Ambassador web presence? Gone; it now auto-forwards weirdly to some tech forum. The Sprint Ambassador customer service number, sent out just last January? Already dead.

OK, try Sprint's regular customer service... and not only had the guy not ever heard of the program, he all but accused me, basically, of making it up. And no, he wouldn't let me speak to a supervisor, not at first. When the supervisor finally came on the line, she hadn't heard of the program, either, questioning the program's existence even after I begged her to use that obscure research tool called Google.

Her actual suggestion: I should print out the emails from Sprint and take them to a Sprint retail store, and hope I could convince somebody there that the program actually existed.

Let's review: Sprint shuts down the contact mechanism for one of its programs so thoroughly that now I'm supposed to bring Sprint its own emails in order to prove to Sprint its own programs existed?

Wow. I don't want to call the Better Business Bureau. I want to call Franz Kafka.

This hereby completes my lifetime interactions with Sprint. I hope.