sprint stores - just pathetic

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:52:12 -0500, joe broni <joebroni69@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>I wanted to get a new pcs phone so I went to the sprint store. Ten
>people in line ahead of me. Turns out seven of them can't pay their
>bills/had their service turned off for non-payment.
>
>Sprint should have two lines - one for people who pay their bills and
>want to buy products or services and one for deadbeats who can't pay
>their bills.
>
I am on the road all day so I pay my bill at Sprint stores all over my
metro area.

If I pay near a less affluent area I see a lot of gangster and drug
dealers types. (Cash and pre-pay customers). There is a better
class of people way out in the suburbs.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Well, I don't live "way out in the suburbs". I don't live in the
suburbs. I live in the city. Sprint PCS does not have any stores in
this city, only two in the suburbs and tree way out in the suburbs. So
all the classes of city people that want to go to a store, go to the
suburbs or way out in the suburbs. At first I used to pay over the
phone, through punching buttons, but now I just have it paid
automatically from my checking.


Hotel S wrote:

> On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:52:12 -0500, joe broni <joebroni69@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>I wanted to get a new pcs phone so I went to the sprint store. Ten
>>people in line ahead of me. Turns out seven of them can't pay their
>>bills/had their service turned off for non-payment.
>>
>>Sprint should have two lines - one for people who pay their bills and
>>want to buy products or services and one for deadbeats who can't pay
>>their bills.
>>
>
> I am on the road all day so I pay my bill at Sprint stores all over my
> metro area.
>
> If I pay near a less affluent area I see a lot of gangster and drug
> dealers types. (Cash and pre-pay customers). There is a better
> class of people way out in the suburbs.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Jerome Zelinske <jeromez1@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Well, I don't live "way out in the suburbs". I don't live in the
> suburbs. I live in the city. Sprint PCS does not have any stores in
> this city, only two in the suburbs and tree way out in the suburbs. So
> all the classes of city people that want to go to a store, go to the
> suburbs or way out in the suburbs. At first I used to pay over the
> phone, through punching buttons, but now I just have it paid
> automatically from my checking.

I actually find the cash payment machines to be quite convenient. I was
extremely happy when I moved out here and found the Victorville Verizon
Wireless corporate store has one.

As I've said before, I used to live in Mentor on the Lake, Ohio (solidly
middle-class suburb in Lake County), and our closest Sprint store was on
Mentor Avenue in Mentor. You couldn't make an assumption about the type of
people visiting the store based on where it was located. They might be
coming from the east side of Cleveland, or from Painesville, and not have
a ton of money, or they could be coming from a few minutes away in Concord
or Kirtland Hills and live on a million-dollar estate (yes, there are some
out there in southwest Lake County). Assumptions like the one Hotel S makes
are generally stupid.

--
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Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
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Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

"Steven J Sobol" <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote in message newsuOdnTjszMLgjYzcRVn-hA@lmi.net...
> Just because you like paying cash doesn't mean you're a low-income customer.

Agreed, but someone who insists on paying with cash should accept
the inconveniences that go along with that. Personally, my time is
valuable, and I don't want to waste it by having to go through the
machinations of making a cash payment.

--

John Richards

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Nathan Strom wrote:


> Frankly, I don't see why people want to pay in person in the first
> place. Just because you're low-income doesn't mean you can't get a
> free checking account (most of the local banks offer them), and just
> about every checking account these days comes with a Visa/Mastercard
> debit card.

Without going into a political or social discussion, there are basically
only a very small number of reasons for not getting a bank account
regardless of your income level, and all of them have to do with one's
own personal choices they've made in their lives:

1. The money the person makes isn't exactly legal
2. They fear/mistrust banks for whatever silly reason
3. They've written a large number of hot checks, or bounced checks and
never covered them. Such things do get reported on a system similar to
that used for obtaining a person's credit rating, so if banks see that
on your record, they often won't open an account for you.


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Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Isaiah Beard <sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com> wrote:

> Something's not quite right with this statement. If you're berating
> cash-only customers, then why are you even visiting a sprint store to
> make a payment?

The poster you replied to is not the same person as the one who was
complaining.

> There's no need to even set FOOT in a Sprint store to make a payment,
> unless you're doing it on a cash-only basis.... basically only if you
> are a "ganster or drug dealer type" whose funds aren't exactly bankable.

This is still a foolish generalization.

--
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Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Isaiah Beard <sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com> wrote:

> Agreed, but it defies logic why anyone would waste the time and gas to
> drive to a Sprint store, wait in line, and then present cash to a
> payment machine, when you can do all that without ever leaving home.

Because sometimes I happen to have cash and am in the neighborhoood
surrounding the store, so the store is a couple minutes or less from
where I am.

--
JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Steven J Sobol wrote:


> Because sometimes I happen to have cash and am in the neighborhoood
> surrounding the store, so the store is a couple minutes or less from
> where I am.

*shrug* I guess. I prefer to keep my cash for places that don't take
plastic or checks (i.e. some eating establishments and mom and pop
businesses), or in situations where cash is more convenient than plastic
(i.e. splitting a dinner bill with friends). If I just use cash-on-hand
to pay my bills in person, then that increases the likelihood that I'll
have to then visit *two* machines: the Sprint payment machine, and an
ATM machine when I find I need cash again later.



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Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Isaiah Beard <sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com> wrote:
> Steven J Sobol wrote:
>
>
>>>There's no need to even set FOOT in a Sprint store to make a payment,
>>>unless you're doing it on a cash-only basis.... basically only if you
>>>are a "ganster or drug dealer type" whose funds aren't exactly bankable.
>>
>>
>> This is still a foolish generalization.
>
> Then offer a reason why someone would want to live cash-only, other than
> the ones I've already presented. Seriously, I would like to know what
> legitimate advantage one would see in being unbanked.

(a) If you can't get a checking account.
(b) If you don't want Sprint ever having any access to your checking account.

(b) sounds outrageous, but there is a bank through whom I used to have a
couple credit cards that I closed, and I'm now paying them off. I trust
this particular bank so little that I will not ever, EVER give them my checking
account number or routing number. I pay $8.50 for each monthly Mastercard
payment that I make, and $8.50 for each monthly payment on the Visa I had
through them (one MC, one Visa), because I would rather pay $17 per month to
make cash payments through Moneygram than risk someone at this particular
bank taking money out of the account that they're not supposed to take.
Needless to say, my experiences with them have not been good.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that a given customer may not trust
Sprint with anything other than cash. Likely? No, but possible.

--
JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Isaiah Beard <sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com> wrote:

> *shrug* I guess. I prefer to keep my cash for places that don't take
> plastic or checks (i.e. some eating establishments and mom and pop
> businesses), or in situations where cash is more convenient than plastic
> (i.e. splitting a dinner bill with friends). If I just use cash-on-hand
> to pay my bills in person, then that increases the likelihood that I'll
> have to then visit *two* machines: the Sprint payment machine, and an
> ATM machine when I find I need cash again later.

Well, we pay a lot of bills in person just because we prefer not to mail
them and many of the utilities charge money to do Internet or phone payments,
but we still *generally* pay using checks. This includes landlines (I can
pay my landline bill at the local Verizon Plus store), water, trash, electric
and gas... On the occasions I've paid a utility or other bill in cash, it's
generally been because the other option is kiting a check (like if the bill
is due a few days before my paycheck comes and I don't have a ton of money
in the bank)


--
JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Chris Pisarra <Chris@pisarra.com> wrote:
>
> The world is more than East Cleveland.

as a matter of fact, I was referring to Cleveland itself, not East Cleveland.

> Try driving around East Oakland, for instance. Or
> Harlem, NY. Or Compton, CA. Damned few banks to be seen.

I'm willing to believe there are few banks in Compton. You sound like you're
from the Bay Area so I believe you about Oakland. NYC used to be my second
home growing up, but I spent most of that time in Manhattan - never ventured
out to Harlem.

But the fallacy in your statement is the one that assumes that there is
only downtown, the ghetto, and the suburbs. Even East Cleveland, a dirt-
poor suburb of Cleveland, has its more upscale areas as well as the neighbor-
hoods where you'd better not poke your head out of your car or it'll get
shot off. Your assumption doesn't work for most major cities - not for New
York, not for Los Angeles, I'm sure not for Oakland or San Francisco, and
not for most of the less populous large cities either.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

--
JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

"Chris Pisarra" <Chris@Pisarra.com> wrote in message news:wjEQc.252153$Oq2.39565@attbi_s52...
> Steven J Sobol burbled to the world:
>
>>> It's hardly an advantage, but an enormous percentage
>>> of the black population has no bank account. Perhaps because there
>>> are no banks in the black areas.
>>
>> This is utter BS. I grew up in Cleveland and lived there until last
>> year. Lived on the east side. I could drive up Chester or Euclid
>> Avenues from downtown, though neighborhoods that are mostly (or all)
>> black, and still see banks.
>
>
> The world is more than East Cleveland.
>
> Try driving around East Oakland, for instance. Or
> Harlem, NY. Or Compton, CA. Damned few banks to be seen.

Banks are in commercial areas, not residential areas. I happen to
live in a mostly white Bay area town where one can drive for miles
without seeing a bank. If I want to visit my bank, I have to drive
downtown, about 5 miles from my residence. Banks don't have
to be physically close to be useful. My paycheck goes in by
direct deposit, and if I need cash, most grocery stores will let
me use a debit card to get $50 cash back.

--

John Richards