A customer analysis of Sprint reveals that Sprint's customers are a rapidly diminishing consumer group that regard the company's customer service as abysmal. In July 2005, "Sprint Nextel was rated the worst network provider in the USA by its service, and worse, its customer service was dead last among all American corporations, not just telecoms" (Ahonen, 2008). Sprint reported in January that although it added 742,000 customers in the previous quarter, it lost 306,000 postpaid subscribers (Jones, 2007). Customers' unhappiness with Sprint's service was magnified exponentially when it dropped 1,000 customers that were complaining too much; further investigation showed that Sprint's customer service itself was prompting the numerous callbacks by forcing customers to hang up and call other numbers (Ahonen, 2008).
Sprint has set up three channels for selling its products(the Sprint Indirect Sales Program, the Sprint Channel Partner Program, and Sprint Lead Referral Program ("Sell Sprint Services," 2002). The Sprint Indirect Sales Program is for U.S. Sprint partners, while the other two programs are for those outside the U.S. ("Sell Sprint Services," 2002).
Sprint's product/service planning is confusing. It has several apparently unrelated service plans for its various products, such as the Sprint Simply Everything Service Plan ("Sprint Simply Everything Service Plan Detail"), the Sprint Power Pack 4000 Service Plan ("Sprint Power Pack 4000 Service Plan Detail"), and the Sprint Basic 200 Service Plan ("Sprint Basic 200 Service Plan Detail"), to name just three. These plans have considerable overlap, and it is not clear why there are so many plans.
Sprint's pricing has also been criticized as confusing, and its latest pricing plan, the $99 "Simply Everything" plan was developed to counter rival company Verizon's $140 plan, which includes "full unlimited service" ("Sprint Unveils $99 'Unlimited Ev...