Sprint hangs up on "excessive" complainers

Sprint Nextel Corp, which recently launched an advertising campaign to attract new customers, is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers for calling its customer service lines too often and making what the company called unreasonable requests.

The No. 3 U.S. wireless provider with 53 million customers said on Monday it started sending service termination letters on June 25. Sprint said the cancellations involved 1,000 to 1,200 customers who had called the company about 40,000 times a month in total.

"In some cases they were calling customer care hundreds of times a month for a period of six to 12 months on the same issues even after we felt those issues had been resolved," she said.

Singleton, noting that mass cancellation letters were not routine, said this call volume was 40 to 50 times more than average customer monthly calls. She would not say how often customers can call before being deemed too demanding.

The company also declined to say what percentage of monthly service calls the 40,000 figure represented.

Singleton said some of the cancellations involved customers who repeatedly asked for information about other people's accounts.

As someone who has worked in customer service, I can only say one thing.  Bravo.  Finally a company with the guts to stand up to people whose sole mission in life appears to be irritating customer support.  They didn't say what percentage the 40,000 calls represents, but they did say that it was 40 to 50 times the average user. That means that those 1,000 on average are calling about 40 times a month (that's more than once a day), which means the average user probably calls about once a month.  Which means those 40,000 (out of apparently an average of 53 million calls a month) would be 0.075%, as opposed 1000 normal users at 0.0019%.

I could easily see that small minority monopolizing so much of their time and considering they waived any remaining balances on those users' accounts and gave them 30 days to find another carrier, it's a more than generous situation.  I'm sure they'll get some PR backlash from the decision (and their stock has already taken a small hit from it) but I'm behind it.

For the next week or so I'll be doing most of my blogging here: http://blog.pbcy.org So if you just can't live without me for a week go there to see what's going on.

Couldn't find an attribution for this so I'm not sure to whom to link it, but I found this funny:

Ah, the "fairness doctrine".  Even the mention of the Orwellian name brings back to mind the 1990s when Limbaugh was king and the dems were desperate to thwart him any way they could.  Senator Feinstein is "looking into" bringing it back.  The article in full:

WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said Sunday she is "looking at" the possibility of reviving the fairness doctrine for U.S. broadcasters.

Feinstein, speaking on "Fox News Sunday" with Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said talk radio in particular has presented a one-sided view of immigration reform legislation being considered by the Senate.

U.S. talk radio is dominated by conservative voices.

"This is a very complicated bill," said Feinstein. "Most people don't know what's in this bill. Therefore, to just have one or two things dramatized and taken out of context, such as the word amnesty -- we have a silent amnesty right now, but nobody goes into that. Nobody goes into the flaws of our broken system."

Feinstein said the measure before the Senate "fixes those flaws" but that doesn't get presented on talk radio, which she said "pushes people to ... extreme views without a lot of information."

Asked if she would revive the fairness doctrine, which used to require broadcasters to present competing sides of controversial issues, Feinstein said she was "looking at it."

"I remember when there was a fairness doctrine," she said, "and I think there was much more serious correct reporting to people."

Ahh, that's the free-speech, capitalist society I like.  Don't like the opinions on talk radio?  Free market system preventing boring, unpopular alternative views from being aired?  Why, get the government to force 'em!

Cameron Diaz on a visit through Peru...

US actress Cameron Diaz has apologised for wearing a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes wearing an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People", perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan, printed in Chinese. The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some cities around the world, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead. "I sincerely apologise to anyone I may have inadvertently offended," Diaz said in a statement. "The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realise the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it." One prominent Peruvian human rights activist said Diaz should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.

To be fair, I suppose such a thing could happen to anyone.  Though, honestly, getting a bag in China with a bright red star on it?  It probably doesn't mean peace, freedom, and the American way...

I'm glad it's a big fashion accessory this year too.  Last year's "Hitler purses" were starting to get old.

I have more comments and videos from Vegas but this will have to suffice for the moment.  I give you the greatest stroller ever:

As promised, here's the view from our window.

One of the formative moments for the Buddha was when he, after a lifetime of luxury and security, ventured outside his palace walls and saw the suffering around him.  You can imagine the contrast between his plenty and the want all around him.

That's about how I felt flying into Las Vegas yesterday.  We are blessed with so many trees and so much greenery.  We should really share with Nevada some.  It's so sad.  The outskirts are all perfectly-aligned and obviously planned communities.  Everything's at right angles or semicircles and perfectly symmetrical.  Lots of low, orderly houses.  Between that and the bleak dryness and monochromatic landscape it struck me that this must be what Mars will look like in 200 years.

The flight was uneventful; taking off and landing right on time.  No fires in the plane this time (like on the way to Houston).  First thing we see on stepping out of the passenger loading bridge was, of course, slot machines.

There were more slot machines later in the day.  Personally I don't understand those.  I played some video draw poker - that at least has some skill to it.  But with the slots it's all random chance.  There's no way to influence it - best you can do is change how much you're betting.

Of course Leesa won $50 on the slots while I lost money on video poker, so that shows what I know.

The food's been great too, especially since it's not our dime paying for it.

I've got an unusually shaky video of the view out of our window that I'll post a little later (as soon as YouTube's done with it).  We both have work to do today.

CBS blames sexism for bad ratings

Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package.

"I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don't want news from a woman was startling," Mr Moonves said of the audience's reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.

Yes, of course.  That must be it.  It couldn't be the bias or the fact that the news is fluffy nonsense instead of actual news.  The truth comes out later in the article:

In the absence of specific research, some analysts took issue with that argument. “People get news from women all the time – on local news, on morning shows. I’m skeptical of his discovery of sexism,” said Andrew Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report monitors newscasts. He and others have criticized the style of Ms Couric’s newscast, which emphasized soft features over hard news – something CBS seemed to acknowledge this year when it replaced the producer.

Why!  Female local anchors?  In this day and age?!  It's enough to make the monocle pop right out of my eye and make me utter a profound "My Word!"

Yes, I'm sorry.  Nothing all day yesterday.  To make it up to you, here's a video of me looking very stupid in an indoor skydiving place at Pigeon Forge, TN.

Yikes...

(from the article)
A dozen riders on an Arkansas roller coaster spent half an hour hanging upside down — 150 feet above the ground — after a power outage shut down the attraction.

It took about 30 minutes for the city Fire Department to rescue the riders using a ladder truck Saturday evening, said Aundrea Crary, spokeswoman for the Springs & Crystal Falls amusement park.

Barney he's not...

From the article: (thanks, Steve)

The dinosaur, supposedly a week-old camarasaurus from the Jurassic era, makes even Furby -- once banned from the offices of the National Security Agency for fear it would learn and repeat classified information -- look like a sock puppet.

Pleo's surprisingly realistic movements are created by 14 motors and six processors. (Furby had one of each.) Thanks to a nose-mounted camera and 30 sensors, it's clever enough to avoid walls and table edges. It's also sensitive to touch, noise, movement, and even other Pleos. Its personality is so complex that [co-creator Caleb] Chung says it'll take years for each individual dino to come into its own.

Also more evolved, however, is the price tag $300, compared with Furby's $40. That's a bargain next to Sony's ill-fated robot dog, the $2,000 Aibo, but it's a couple hundred more than most toy retailers would like. So Chung is bypassing them, selling Pleo on Ugobe's website and through high-end retailers like the Sharper Image. Last year the company had more than $18 million in purchase orders.

"Pleo will have more impact than Furby," predicts the ever optimistic Chung.

Sorry, still lots going on at work.  And we're doing crafts at VBS this week.  And we're going to Vegas on Thursday.

So, yeah, should be an uneventful week.

Here's another clip from last year's SuperWow trip:

Tom Wilson ( ), probably best known for his role as Biff (and associated family) in the Back to the Future trilogy - though I still usually think of him as Maniac.  Today he's doing some really good stand up (especially considering he manages to keep it family-friendly).  He's also a man of great faith.  Anyway, among his other work he has a great piece called Biff's Question Song: