The Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Saga (week 4) /end?
On the 26th of March I upgraded my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to Android Pie. As we recall that did not go so good. I was on with Sprint entry-level for an hour before being transferred to the Oklahoma tech group who ran me through a variety of things ending up with a suggestion of contacting them later as they had a lot of these flooding in and no solutions.
TL;DR – evidently you just bug the CEO on Twitter and you can speak to someone who treats you like you’re a valued customer in less time than it takes the person on the bad customer support VoIP line to understand what your PIN is.
Another call I was sent to a Sprint corporate store to try out a replacement SIM, sent to another for reasons I’m unclear on now dealing with activating a different device that turned out they couldn’t, and along the way they activated Asurion device protection without my consent.
Besides the no LTE, either my phone, the tower, or something became so bad that I was unable to be heard. Literally useless for anything other than in WiFi range (and WiFi calling would not work due to Location Timeout.) My assumption is location timeout is looking for an LTE tower as I recall them requiring that back in the day (you had to have a tower nearby).
I’ve hit the forums Sprint community multiple times and attempted to get someone to contact me, no dice, the two reps I managed to get in touch with at the Oklahoma tech center ghosted me (I’m not needy, I just need a phone and my case number which nobody would provide,) and I ended up presented with the following scenario:
Either I sent my phone off to Samsung for “repair” which would have been approximately 10 days of phoneless-ness and might have been a charge, I pay a chunk to buy the wife’s phone out and go to another network (bad month for this,) or I did an upgrade in the hopes that something would be worked out.
As readers know I did the upgrade, the fix was released about 3.5 weeks after it broke, and I’m not hating the S10+ but it’s not much better than the Note 8 was for me.
Nobody would respond from Sprint.
So I did what anyone does these days and simply bugged the CEO of Sprint because nobody I had been in contact was returning emails, calls, following up, etc. I bathe, and I haven’t been rude to people.
And after spending nearly 7 hours talking, trying to reach people, driving, and dealing with the issues (don’t get me started on the disaster at the Sprint store where the employee was being forced to demo garbage speakers instead of helping me with the phone,) I got a response in one minute, and a rep calling me within maybe 17.
Of course I was away from the phone when they called and had a meeting, so can’t say the resolution came immediately, or that what we’ve discussed will happen properly, but I spoke to someone at Sprint who didn’t act like the issue was news to her and nobody else has ever heard of it despite hundreds of complaints in the forums.
As of now there’s a $60 credit for the lost service (one month effectively,) and a return kit coming for this S10+. Reactivating the Note 8 later today, and when they get the unit back I’m supposedly not being charged for the loaner phone they refused to loan me.
So yeah, if you’ve been ghosted by the Sprint OKCTeam support like I was (two reps,) if you’re tired of trying to make your way through the low quality VoIP connection to a call center to try and reach support, if the Sprint Community Support group is completely ignoring people requesting to talk to someone who knows the issues and can assist without requiring you to present a detailed timeline, breakdown, and description of all players involved, and if your local Sprint corporate stores are doing nothing for you other than steering you into a forced upgrade. Evidently the solution is Bug the CEO on Twitter.
One minute response. (Seriously, 10:25 I wrote, 10:26 I got a response.) Maybe 13 more minutes until I got a call from the Executive and Regulatory Services department who had my info because I’d contacted Sprint on Twitter previously.
19 year customer of Sprint here. Past month 58.1 miles of driving (two stores for diagnostics, once for a replacement.) 12 calls totaling three and a half hours (tech support, and then because they activated Asurion protection without asking.) 2 factory resets, 20+ ##brand# and ##72786#. A $10 speed test to verify that it wasn’t the phone it was Sprint.
Neither Samsung nor Sprint will say who’s at fault last I checked.
Bug the CEO.
