The customer is always right? No!

I saw this news story today and got a big kick out of it. "Sprint Ditches Customers Who Complain Too Much." Apparently they had about a thousand customers who had nothing better to do than call customer service and make up things to complain about. On average, each of these complainers called 40 times a month. This extrapolates out to 40,000 phone calls per month that their customer service department had to field, for possibly no good reason. So, Sprint sent them all letters letting them know that they had been relieved from their contract with Sprint and their final balances were being waived.

The reporter also spoke to a representative at Verizon Wireless, who admitted that Verizon has also cancelled customer accounts if they were considered to be abusive to the CSRs.

As a former phone operator, I give a Sprint a big thumbs up. I've never agreed that the customer is always right. Don't misunderstand me, in my own teeny-tiny business dealings (ebay and amazon) I always operate with total integrity and err on the side of caution even if it costs me more money. But I know for a fact that people can cross the line from customer demanding appropriate service, to customer making unreasonable demands, and I strongly disagree with catering to every unreasonable customer.