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1.5 stars
"Nextel Nightmare"
Pros: The phone was made by Motorola
Cons: Nextel's Atrocious Customer Service
Summary: Nextel Nightmare
My Nextel Nightmare began on April 17th, and didnt end until over 48 hours later.
It all began when I made the enormous mistake of attempting to order a phone online.
I use PCs, and have been a computer professional for 22 years. I understand technology, in particular Internet technology, very well. I also use a Mac sometimes. A very new, very up to date, perfectly functioning Mac, using Safari as its browser. Turns out that Nextels online ordering site doesnt work with Safari, although naturally nobody mentions that on the site. Nextels customer service reps have no idea what Safari is, and most have no idea what a Mac is. That includes the web support people.
I went online, logged in to my account, chose a phone & service plan, and submitted my order. It took about 3 minutes. The ordering process confirmation dialog box showed that it had gotten to step 5 of 6 in confirming my order, and then the web page stopped responding. My browser did not stop responding, and neither did my system: Nextels poorly-coded web ordering page hung up, and would neither confirm nor deny that a phone order had been placed. I was in web-ordering limbo. There was no way to go backwards, forwards, or summon any sort of help.
So I called customer service: 800.639.6111 and spent 20 minutes on hold.
Thank you for calling Sprint, now together with Nextel. Para Espaņol, marque cinqo.
I gave detailed personal information, explained my situation, and was showered with Im sorry and Thank you for your patience before the customer service rep transferred me to another department, where I had to give all my personal details again, after having spent another 15 minutes on hold. Then I got transferred a third time, to another department, giving all my information yet again, before telling about my problem.
When I got transferred for a fourth time, the call got disconnected.
So, I began the entire process above again: Call 6111, wait 20 minutes on hold, give my name, spell my last name, spell my last name again, help them with the pronunciation of my last name, then give them my phone number, my account number, my complete billing address, and then the last four of my SSN, before I explain the problem, get told again how terribly sorry they are and yet they have absolutely no idea of what to do, but please hold while we transfer you to someone who will have no clue either.
Thank you for calling Sprint& During the next two hours, I had extensive conversations with multiple individuals at:
Sales support at 866.203.0952
Web order support at 800.639.6114
Online rep for web order support at 800.213.5413
And order-related customer service at 703.433.4000
&now together with Nextel. Everyone assured me that no, there was no phone order in the system, and that no, they could not cancel anything or confirm that any phone had been ordered, because there was no phone that had been ordered. Period. Some of them laughed at me, and my concerns that the almost-completed order process would result in a phone showing up on my doorstep: they assured me that was impossible. My mistake? I believed them.
Para Espaņol, marque cinqo& Finally, after talking with at least 9 different CSRs, none of whom spoke English with anything approaching fluency or the ability to understand a non-Spanish-speaker, I got an American. You know, somebody who actually grew up speaking American English, someone who can be understood very easily by other Americans, rather than being not only unintelligible, but insulting and dismissive, as most of the Spanish speakers were.
The American finally took charge of the situation. She called a local Nextel store, told them to fulfill the order in person, and credited my account for the difference between the online price and the price the store was forced to charge me. She also assured me that, no, there was no online phone order placed, so the matter was officially closed.
I went to the Nextel store, and although it took another 30 minutes of waiting, I actually got a phone. Amazing! I took it to my office, charged it, programmed it, and shipped it to my employee via FedEx that afternoon. Youd think that would be the end of the story, but it was just the beginning.
This afternoon, what shows up at my office, but an unmarked little brown box from FedEx. Nothing on it indicated that it was a phone from Nextel, so of course my secretary had no idea what it was, and had zero opportunity to simply refuse delivery. So I opened the box, expecting something from another vendor, and there was a nice new phone from, who? Why Nextel of course, the same company that assured me a dozen times that the phone order had never been placed.
So I figured, OK, Ill call them up, explain the situation, and everything will be sorted out in no time. No such luck.
Thank you for calling Sprint, now together with Nextel. Para Espaņol, marque cinqo.
Back to waiting for another 20 minutes before getting a CSR for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language. More attitude, confusion, and transfers. More platitudes, more we cant help you , more having to explain my situation two or three times in a row to someone who then laughs and transfers the call, which is then disconnected after another interminable wait.
I tried calling the local Nextel store that had helped me yesterday. Oh, Anthonys not around. I dont know what youre talking about. Let me put you on hold. No, we cant help you. I dont know what Anthony did. Let me put you on hold. Only Anthony can help you. Let me put you on hold. I spoke with our boss, and he said [something unintelligible].
So I say to her: What youre saying is that your boss is telling you Just dump this guy back on corporate customer service, right? And she says yeah, right.
&now together with Nextel. Back to 800.639.6111 for yet another chance to tell yet another CSR my personal information for about the 512th time in the past 24 hours, after waiting and waiting and waiting again.
Para Espaņol, marque cinqo& After more explanations and transfers, I finally got transferred to the 30 day department , where it only took another half an hour to us to (1) figure out what the number of the erroneously-shipped phone was, then (2) cancel that number, before I was told (3) everything was fine, so I asked how I was supposed to return the phone. Oh! Now step 4 begins: its time to spend yet another 12 minutes on hold before I get told that FedEx is going to email me a shipping label, sometime in the indeterminate future. I of course am supposed to know by some kind of infused knowledge that I have to take the maybe-to-be-emailed fake label to a FedEx/Kinkos, where I then get to wait in line, explain to them what Im trying to do, have them repackage the phone, and print up a real label, before they ship it back to Nextel. Im really looking forward to spending an hour or more of my day doing that tomorrow.
But hey, who am I to complain? At least I got an English speaker, which was only the third time that little miracle had happened during my entire two day Nextel nightmare.
You corporate types might be sitting around during the quarterly sales meetings, wondering why Verizon is eating your lunch. Try spending some time on the phone with your customer service department, and you might start to understand why.
Motorola i670 (Nextel):
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