Recently, "Nick Jacobs" <njacobs@usol.com> wrote in message 
news:3e865fd7_3@newsfeed:

> why some people here say they have bad experiences with Nextel Customer
> Service.. Called them last night to ask them a question on my direct 
connect
> and the guy did not have the answer so he was apologizing like crazy 
that he
> could not help and then offered me 50 bonus minutes and a $25 credit 
AND he
> put a ticket in to engineering dept.

Not that I am questioning you, but did they ever call you back about this?

> Yes, there has been a few times I call up there and you talk to someone who
> is definitely a few fries short of a happy meal, but 99% of the time your
> call ends in results.

If the results are dissatisfaction, then yes, I'd agree.

Just a few of the recent calls we've had to make to them:

1. The usual 611 call about dropped calls on heavily travelled roads 
where no other carrier drops, in this case, I-95 in Westport (MM 21.6).  
The call was initiated at 3:45PM on 2/18/2003, waited on hold for 20 
minutes, dropped, called back, dropped again, was on hold for 10 more 
minutes, and finally got a rep who went through the usual speech about 
"it's the phone", "new programming", "new battery", etc., and after 5 
minutes of that and saying "all of our accounts drop here" she said she 
could take a ticket and call us back. I told them we never get called 
back and these problems never get any better, and asked to speak with 
some sort of technical department, but there is apparently no such office 
(and with Nextel I don't find this too surprising! :) ). I was getting to 
yet another drop area so I just more or less said "Yeah, whatever...I'm 
just providing the info to you so I can update my dropped calls 
list...bye" and left it at that. Overall, they manifest complete 
disinterest in hearing about any systemic(?) problems with their network 
and have apparently no means to track/follow up with these problems. 

2. About a year ago, (April 2002), I asked our office manager to call to 
pay off our bills by credit card, a few months after the person was 
specifically authorized (by me in a call to Nextel) to pay our company's 
bills using our Amex card. He was first told that he was not authorized, 
then that his name wasn't on the card (it was), then that they wanted a 
copy of his driver's license (or some ID)!, then that the 4 digit 
security code was invalid. OK, well, "Nextel is being difficult, what a 
shock" I said to myself. so I got on the phone, dialed 611 from Newark 
Airport, and (amazed that it didn't drop by the time I got to Forestall 
Village on US-1), I got a lady who must have worked for Sprint in 
previous life who *insisted* that I need to use the automated payment 
system to make a credit card payment. When I told her it kept kicking me 
out she said "There is an additional charge for manual payments" (never 
was before) and when I asked her how much it was she had no idea. So I 
said (knowing of course that this will go to a supervisor by the way the 
call was degenerating) "Wait a sec -- you know for a 'fact' that you 
can't take manual payments, that there is a fee, but you have no idea how 
much it is? Well, who would?" So she hung up. I called back, got someone 
in the Denver (?) billing center who was more helpful, who also added 
"...Oh, I'm sure the rep didn't hang up, the call just probably dropped". 
[Hey, when you work for Nextel, that's always a plausible excuse! :) ] 
and eventually took my payment and made sure that Chris (the guy who 
tried to pay initially) would be able to call her directly if there are 
any problems in the future. (And there were, so we just call Denver 
directly now.)

3. When the antenna on the i2000 broke once again with the annoying 
monotony of an unloved season (I heard that somewhere...can't recall 
where...), I called them up while driving around Boston to find out where 
the nearest Nextel-owned store or service center was (ie, a place where 
they have the part) and was given directions to some store near The 
Westin. I look around for parking forever (I should have just driven to 
NH and got the thing tax free! :) ), get to the "store" and of course, 
there is no antenna -- all they do is sell phones. (Any broken ones they 
can cannibalize? Of course not...why bother...? ;( ). So I get out my 
laptop, use my Verizon 1XRTT card, and go to their web site and find a 
"real" Nextel store which can help me.

So these were just in the past year or so, and off the top of my head. 
There are many more, unfortunately :(

Is this any worse than anyone else? I mean, I've been told by AT&T that 
when I get called via the "roam port" in a home area market it is still 
roaming (eg, "Why else would they call it a roam port?" is their general 
answer); I've been told by Verizon that unanswered calls which get 
No-Answer-Transferred to voicemail can incur roaming charges if your 
phone isn't even on and is just *registered* (traveled through) a roaming 
market; Sprint has Claire (automated IVR) and we cancelled due to their 
outrageous prices they (used to?) charge for failing to use Claire, AT&T 
GSM pretty much has the worst coverage of them all and is so congested at 
5PM that it's unusable (so good customer service or not, if the phone 
*service* is no good who cares?), Cingular has people who barely speak 
English doing customer service in Arkansas(?) and has very limited 
customer service hours, and T-Mobile, like AT&T GSM, has pathetic 
coverage in comparison to the other carriers so again, customer service 
doesn't even enter into the picture as if the coverage routinely fails; 
they can be nice to you all you want but the people you call or who call 
you won't care whether or not T-Mobile gives you "free" minutes for 
*your* trouble. 

So overall they are all not tops; IMO Verizon's ex-GTE Mobilnet is 
probably the best in enabling reps to get things fixed, then Verizon-BAMS 
comes a very close second (with a lot of bureaucracy to get a problem 
elevated to the right person), AT&T GSM is OK since the service stinks so 
they need to do something right [service is getting better, but it still 
dreadful and drops all over], Cingular you need to speak a foreign 
language to deal with most of the time (I mean, there's nothing wrong per 
se :) with other languages but this IS the US and we do, last time I 
checked, speak English here; I never thought I'd miss hearing the 
hard-Boston accented reps at the old Cell One/Boston but now that 
Cingular farmed all calls to the central reps you can barely understand 
or explain a complex issue to them most times) , etc. 

But Nextel's service is at the lower end of the barrel, while Verizon's 
is closer to the top. Perhaps as a business user (in part) we demand 
things which non-business users don't, mainly the ability to carry on 
uninterrupted calls without dropping on heavily traveled roads and/or 
train routes. None of the carriers can deliver that yet (Verizon being 
the best, AT&T GSM (currently) being the worst, with Nextel not too far 
behind, but they do have a significant coverage area as compared to 
AT&T)), so at the very least they can have customer service offices which 
can respond to these problems in a more positive way (usually a minor 
adjustment to an extant tower can help a lot in areas where there is 
already good coverage but poor handoffs) than Nextel's apparent inability 
to address customer-initiated technical inquiries/requests with the 
apparent ineptness and/or callous disinterest which Nextel manifests on a 
regular basis. 

Perhaps with the new "integrated" billing/customer service system this 
will change, but I've seen no signs in our dealings with them that there 
is any incentive from the top to improve customer service, mainly in 
terms of technical issues but also in relation to the billing and other 
issues enumerated above. 

(A list of Nextel drops is located at 
http://www.wirelessnotes.org/nextel-drops.html  This post and SID list 
are also available at http://www.wirelessnotes.org)

Regards,

Doug

d2@interpage.net
Interpage(TM) Network Services Inc. / http://www.interpage.net