SunCom Revisited
By Gil C. Schmidt
You’d think that after slamming a company for poor planning and awful service, I’d avoid it like avian flu. But it’s been said that one should never burn bridges for one never knows what paths Life takes, so I avoided burning bridges (I may have scorched a pylon or twelve) and I returned to SunCom.
I had run into an odd problem: because I haven’t bought anything on credit since the Bush Sr. Administration, I was being asked to fork over a $500 deposit to get my own account with Centennial thus and keep the number I’d used for almost two years under a corporate account. Five. Hundred. Dollars. To stay with the SAME company.
Salt in the wound: if I had shown a bad credit rating, my deposit would have been $150 max. Good fiscal management gets punished at Centennial.
I cruised other cell phone companies and, after sighing deeply, I also checked out SunCom. (I hate shopping, but when I do it, I do it carefully.) My wife still has her phone with SunCom, so that could be a benefit…
My first surprise was meeting María, the Customer Service Manager. A bright and cheerful mother of two little girls (ages 2 and 5), she was very focused and quickly got past the “no credit history” advantage (credit has a way of stealing your wealth) and went directly for a strong offer. Both my wife and I would get 1,100 minutes for both phones, free incoming calls, free phone-to-phone calls between my wife and I, free calls from Thursday 5 PM to Monday 5 AM (FREE calls all day Friday!) and free access to long distance, all for just $70 a month. Because of excellent credit (my wife’s and my clean record), we got the second unit at no charge and the activation fee was waived.
Oh boy! The whole transaction took less than 25 minutes. But it gave me time to talk to several other people in the SunCom office and they all had the same story: María was a jewel. In fact, despite a lengthy waiting time to see her, customers clearly preferred María’s attention than anyone else’s. It became clear that if the people in that office were a sample, SunCom owed a good deal of its success to María.
So here’s to María, a beacon of good service in what could have been another chapter in a sad story. And to all the “Marías” that keep customers happy…and loyal.
You’d think that after slamming a company for poor planning and awful service, I’d avoid it like avian flu. But it’s been said that one should never burn bridges for one never knows what paths Life takes, so I avoided burning bridges (I may have scorched a pylon or twelve) and I returned to SunCom.
I had run into an odd problem: because I haven’t bought anything on credit since the Bush Sr. Administration, I was being asked to fork over a $500 deposit to get my own account with Centennial thus and keep the number I’d used for almost two years under a corporate account. Five. Hundred. Dollars. To stay with the SAME company.
Salt in the wound: if I had shown a bad credit rating, my deposit would have been $150 max. Good fiscal management gets punished at Centennial.
I cruised other cell phone companies and, after sighing deeply, I also checked out SunCom. (I hate shopping, but when I do it, I do it carefully.) My wife still has her phone with SunCom, so that could be a benefit…
My first surprise was meeting María, the Customer Service Manager. A bright and cheerful mother of two little girls (ages 2 and 5), she was very focused and quickly got past the “no credit history” advantage (credit has a way of stealing your wealth) and went directly for a strong offer. Both my wife and I would get 1,100 minutes for both phones, free incoming calls, free phone-to-phone calls between my wife and I, free calls from Thursday 5 PM to Monday 5 AM (FREE calls all day Friday!) and free access to long distance, all for just $70 a month. Because of excellent credit (my wife’s and my clean record), we got the second unit at no charge and the activation fee was waived.
Oh boy! The whole transaction took less than 25 minutes. But it gave me time to talk to several other people in the SunCom office and they all had the same story: María was a jewel. In fact, despite a lengthy waiting time to see her, customers clearly preferred María’s attention than anyone else’s. It became clear that if the people in that office were a sample, SunCom owed a good deal of its success to María.
So here’s to María, a beacon of good service in what could have been another chapter in a sad story. And to all the “Marías” that keep customers happy…and loyal.
posted by Diana at
1:48 PM
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