the backchannel on mmeiser blog: Well beyond humane - How Sprint's greed causes it's picture mail product to fail

Well beyond humane - How Sprint's greed causes it's picture mail product to fail

Sprint is driving me nuts. I've had multiple conversations with them since deciding to renew my service with them and getting a camera phone. All other things a side I've decided to just blog my frustrations since they no doubt will show through anyway when I attempt to moblog.

Today's picture, A beautiful shot of white castle? Yeap. Why? I needed something to try out Flickr with the Sprint phone and it was there. Consensus, Flickr does rock, in fact it works better for moblogging then moblogging directly through blogger.com. I still however have one problem. I haven't yet found a way to not use Sprint's fixed and very problematic title "You've got a picture share!" as the title of the post. Blaa. Sprint sucks.

The good news is it does successfully remove all of the Sprint promotional GARBAGE (such as advertisements and promotions from the sprint picture mail) successfully, and Fickr does actually display the text comments I input into the phone to send the mail.

In related news I was able to send a picture mail successfully to someone with a mac.com account. This now marks three, I repeat THREE people I know whom can receive a picture mail from Sprint. This is laughable. The other two ISP's beside mac.com that don't simply block Sprint picture mails include yahoo.com and a small time local Chicago ISP. I'm compiling all my failed picture mail attempt to submit them to Sprint and will also display them here. RIght now as we stand only 3 out of about 15 emails I've sent have gotten through to people.

That's a whopping 20% success rate! Way to go Sprint! You suck! : ) Why has this this problem happened. It could be that Sprint's picture mail email server has some how gotten blacklisted, but I suspect it is in fact...

a classic tale of how corporate greed has caused a company to fail it's customers

Say what? Yes, I suspect the fact that Sprint's Picture mails have a 80% failure rate (in my testing thus far) is directly related to their need to put in inordinate amount of ads and promotional material in my personal emails to friends that actually take up more space than the primary object of the communication itself, the picture. Yes in what could only have been understood as an act of pure greed Sprint has chosen to piggyback my personal communication to SPAM my friends by turning my picture mails into a giant ad for Sprint. Go Sprint! The fact is I now pay $15 a month (in addition to regular service) for a service that works only 20% of the time because Sprint has crippled it with their greed. I AM impressed! Please laugh with me at how much Sprint sucks one more time!

So, the obvious. Why have I not dumped Sprint? A variety of reasons including lock in, money and time invested, the time/cost of moving with my number to another provider and because they're the only ones with high-speed wireless data.

So, what in the hell am I doing ranting about it on a public blog? Shame and public humiliation! If sprint feels no shame that their greed has caused a complete failure in service then I feel no shame in displaying it publicly in the hopes that others in the blogosphere will pick this up on the "sprint sucks" meme and that it will become widely published as did Sprint's debacle with disabling the bluetooth on the Treo 650, which by the way has NOT been resolved and has garnished to date nothing but lip-service from a Sprint public relations "agent of spin". I simply hope Sprint will either be humiliated and/or find humility, repent, stop being so damn greedy, fix what is wrong, and apologize not to me, but to all their customers. You can be rest assured that I will post an update here when they fix this problem and it will be more then cordial. If you're reading this and there is no update, then you know sprint has not fixed the problem.

FURTHER LINKS:
the "sprint sucks" meme on mmeiser blog

the "sprint sucks" meme in the blogosphere

If you have comments regarding sprint please feel free to share them in the comments. Especially if they are about sprints picture mail service and can either corroborate or refute my research thus far.

6 Comments:

Not a comment a question. I posted anonymous because this may be a stupid question. I have sprint and was sent messages via email and I could not receive the pic, only a link that tells me where the attachment is located. Is there any way to receive the pic on my phone? Thanks for replies if any.
Posted by Anonymous @ 10:29 AM

I do hope you find my reply. Sorry it took so long. It is such a simple question to answer.

I must admit i have not recieved a picture mail on my cellphone, only sent them out to regular email acounts. I assume the email you recieve on a cell phone is similar if not the same to that recieved in a regular email account. In fact it would have to be, but now that you've peeked my curiosity I'll have to double check.

Anyway, your question is not a stupid question at all. I asked sprint this myself. As it turns out they do not include the image as an attachment because most cell phones can't handle attachments. This makes sense to me, so I'll buy it. Instead they upload the image to their server and you have to click on the link in the email which then should take you to the image on their server .... eventually... where you can download the picture to your phone, theoretically. I haven't tried it I must admit, but it would be completely assinine if you could not download the image to your phone as this is the purpose of sharing pictures... actually "sharing" them.

I have been appauled and pissed that I have to click through SEVERAL screens full of Sprint promotions and ads in order to get to the actually picture. This is needless and assinine. A simple link from the email directly to the image would do fine. It's an obviously greedy and short sited attempt at Sprint to get as much mileage out of abusing their customers as possible. Needless to say, the people they are assualting with these extra click-throughs and pages of promotions are non-the-less THEIR OWN CUSTOMERS already, and hence will not obviously benifit from ads trying to sell them services they ALREADY HAVE. Once again this is just typical of the idiocy, and the convoluted greed of Sprint.

BTW, As of this writing I still have Sprint, and still have my picture phone though I must admit the picture mail has not only been a complete WASTE OF MONEY, but it has also been much more of an annouyance than it is worth as everytime I do attempt to use it, it not only does not work, but consistently frustrates and wastes my time. On top of it all the camera seems to burn through batter juice like crazy so I can't even enjoy any good talk time. Finally I STILL have not recieved my $150 "rebate" back from sprint for this phone. I'm very tempted to walk into a sprint store and refuse to leave until they either pay me the $150 that they owe me or give me a complete refund on the phone. I am a pissed off customer indeed.
Posted by Michael Meiser @ 4:50 PM

This page is kind of old, but perhaps someone Googling with the same problem will find it.

Any luck with removing Sprint's lame "A Picture Share!" Subject line? I'd really like to use the camera phone with Flickr to post to my blog, but I don't want that subject to be the title for a bunch of posts.

I doubt Sprint will make any progress, so my only hope is that the good folks at Flickr will institute a workaround at some point. I posted in the relevant threads in their forums, but anyone with this problem should let them know a fix for Sprint's greed would be appreciated.

Sorry for the length of this comment.
Posted by Brian @ 1:13 AM

I have been going on with this for the last three days and then I saw your post and I'm glad to find that I am not the only one who is annoyed with Sprint's new Picture Mail system. I have put this on my blog so I will just copy and paste from it:

Okay, I have finally got pics to post back on my blog via my cell phone but the problem is that Sprint has slaughtered my pics with friggin ADS!! I pay $67 a month for my cell phone service for them to murder my photos with advertisements and promotions??? WTF!!! Before Sprint changed their system last week, I could post pics and it would ONLY be the pics but now there are ads promoting their new line of phones, new Picture Mail service and everything.

I don't appreciate Sprint using my pay-for service through them to advertise their products. They are a well-known multi-million dollar company which really does not need any introduction than to go around putting ads on the things that people who already pay for their service skewing everything up.

I also don't appreciate them putting my CELL PHONE number within the advertisements. I don't want my email address displayed to every Tom, Dick and Harry on the Internet that I send an email to. But anyway, I'm on the phone with Sprint now trying to resolve this but I don't think they can because my cell phone is WITHIN the advertisements.
Posted by Yahooligans @ 1:49 PM

Jacksonville, Florida * Jan.13.2006,

Do you have Nextel before they became part of sprint, or did you happen to only have sprint as your cellular
Phone provider? If you answered yes then your already aware that Sprint together with Nextel has pretty
Horrible coverage areas, has inconsistant billing, has rude and obnoixus customer service associates
And even lie to you whenever possible.
Sprint/Nextel Corporation headquartered in Virgina has thousands of complaints filed against them
with the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications commission, Attorney General's office
and also the Better Business Bureau. According to the BBB, Sprint together with Nextel has had 4778 complaints Filed against them in the past 36 months.

If you have a complaint about Sprint or nextel please feel free to logon to this website;
http://www.SprintStillSucks.com
Posted by Anonymous @ 3:11 PM

Sprint customer service reps are taught to lie or act like they do not no what is going on. The stores are the same it is all in the name of profits for thirty days now I have tried to have a phone replaced which is bad no one will help the stores or customer servie you call 611 they say we can not send new pohone go to store they tell you we can not give you new phone call 611 for 4 weeks now. No wonder the companies own ceo rips of shareholders thats were is starts at the top. So the reps figure lets rip of the customers. If you sign up with sprint be prepared to throw away your money thanks herb buyer beware
Posted by Anonymous @ 9:42 PM

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