I'm annoyed and frustrated at Sprint PCS.

You see, I use a Sprint cell phone for work, but text messages/pages don't seem to be working for my phone like they should. This is a problem because I need to be alerted when there's a networking problem.

So what did I do, Internet addict that I am? I logged on to the Sprint PCS web site (www.sprintpcs.com) to find out who I should contact. Since I'd forgotten my Sprint PCS password, I entered my telephone number, and almost immediately, a text/page showed up on my phone with my password.

Wow! Maybe text messages/pages were working now? I did a quick test. Nope. Sprint's web site must know the magical incantation that makes it work, but I have no such luck.

So there I sit, at my computer, happily logged on with my PCS phone number and password to the PCS web site. I click on the "PCS Mail" link to look at my Sprint PCS e-mail. Nothing but spam. Ah, what's that in the upper corner of the web browser? A "Contact Us" button! Sweet! I'll use it.

Up pops an informative little web window. I click on the "e-mail" link so I can type up my problem and send it to Sprint. It takes me to a page with a little web form to fill out. I do so, describing my PCS phone problem.

All's well, right?

Not so fast!

The next day, I check my Sprint PCS mailbox, and I've got a reply. What does it say? It basically says "call this number."

Wait a minute. I spent my time contacting Sprint and carefully describing the problem. In this day and age of instant Internet communication, how hard is it for someone at Sprint to just forward my message to the appropriate department? Why do they need me to call another number, and spend my time repeating myself describing the problem two, three, or more times as each person then figures out where to forward my call? E-mail makes things like this so much easier, since the problem can be described once, and copied and forwarded to anyone who needs to know about it.

I then replied to the e-mail message basically asking why my message couldn't just be forwarded to the appropriate person at Sprint. I added some additional helpful stuff suggesting ways that the problem could be tested. (They would be helpful to me, the Sprint PCS customer, at least.)

Today I got another reply. It was basically an extended version of "Call this number because there's nothing that we can do to help you." Ouch! Poor Sprint! A large communications company that can't communicate, that can't send e-mail internally from one department to another. That's sad.

That's not just sad, that's gonna hurt them if one of their competitor's customer service departments has a clue about modern communcations.

So, frustrated that Sprint's customer service department can't actually do customer service, I called the telephone number.

And what happened? Someone helpful answered -- after I navigated a horrible automated phone system -- and I described the problem. She forwarded me to someone else. He was helpful too, but I had to start from scratch and describe the problem to him. See what I'm saying? I should only have needed to describe the problem one time, but here I am doing it for the third time.

And what do you think this gentleman was doing? That's right, he was typing my description down on his computer as I was speaking. Isn't that crazy? If Sprint had a clue, they would have had an internal e-mail system in place that inegrates with their online ticketing system. The most anyone would have had to do was copy my description and [copy]paste[/code] it into the ticketing system, or forward the message as needed. No repeating myself, no mistakes in transcribing the spoken word. Each person who helped to diagnose the problem could add annotations.

I'm glad I've got a Sprint trouble ticket now. It's #7934719-04050. I hope that they can get it fixed.

Sprint, if you ever are open to suggestions, here's a big one: Make it easy for your customers to contact you just once, and explain problems just once, whether by phone or by e-mail or using your web site. Don't ever, ever force your customer service represntatives to have to reply with something as sad as "We can't help you because our company is in the stone age."

Here's hoping!