| I HAVE HAD IT WITH sprint NEXTEL |
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Class Action Lawsuit for Authorized Dealers Against Sprint/Nextel I am one of the most well-known wireless leaders in Northern California providing wireless solutions for corporate accounts. The difference between my company and everyone else is my exceptional vision and leadership especially on the B2B side. Without sacrificing quality, integrity, and customer service, my abilities have gained me the knowledge and expertise to win numerous awards including top seller award for Northern California from a variety of wireless carriers. Having said that, I was approached by Nextel in 2002 to become one of their B2B Authorized Representatives as a result of my success from previous years. With my exceeding success through the B2B channel, Nextel approached me to do a joint venture on launching new retail locations in the Northern California market since there was no strong retail presence. With knowledge, experience, and expertise I put together one of the most dynamic teams of highly motivated and well qualified communication consultants. In 2003, my ex-colleague and dear friend was invited to join in this new vision. I launched eight locations in Northern California and I was invited to launch new locations in Arizona, Colorado, and Minnesota. In 2005, when the merger with Sprint occurred, the new management team: Mark Sadighian, Paul Harris, and Dennis McSweeney no longer shared the vision that Nextel had with my company. At the same time I found out that my partner was embezzling money and started a new wireless company with another carrier. When I approached Mark Sadighian with my new found news, the advise that I received was to separate our partnership and for me to start a new company under a new name. I was granted an exclusive dealer contract with Sprint/Nextel and their service center. Two months into my new company, I submitted six new retail locations that were denied to me for expansion, but at the same time were handed to someone else. Sprint/Nextel set me up for failure, after I invested hundred of thousands of dollars into the new company. Sprint/Nextel decided at that point not to support me in my visions, ideas, and ventures. As a result, I am seeking other dealers that have had a similar experience as me for a class action lawsuit. Before I posted my story online, I requested the immediate assistance from the CEO of Sprint, Daniel Hesse. He never responded to any of my emails, and at this point left me with no choice, but to put together a class action lawsuit for Authorized Dealers. I will not stop until my losses are compensated. If you are interested in contacting me with any questions, concerns, or to assist me in participating in this class action lawsuit please email me at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.nextel.bz
My name is Michele and i own a nextel/sprint store. I opened m y store in May
2006 after a long fight. First i applied to be approved to open a store and i was asked in for a meeting after i prepared my bussiness plan and it was reviewed. The manager and dealer manager were all present at the meeting. At the end of the meeting they gave me verble approval and also emailed me something giving me to ok.
I signed my lease after my location was approved and then got a call telling me that i was not going to be approved because another dealer had a problem with me.
I contacted an attorney and i was told that they had to appove me becuase i had it in writing. After a lengthly conversation with the manager he called me a lier amoung other things he asked me to email him the email that i received telling me that my location was approved. from that point on it was a nightmare. I received no dealer support, i had to buy all of my advertisements, that by the way all the other dealer were given the promotional materials. I had to go to another dealers store that had closed down to get a sign for my location because they would not give me one. by the way all the other dealers were given one. I was denied training, excluded from meetings and emails. On several occations my dealer manager has told me that he was going to come out to my store to give me some support and training. He never showed. As matter of fact he has never been in my store. Every other dealer had been approved to stock phones in their store, i submitted the application several times and they lost it and i am still not approved. I have lost alot of business because i can't stock phones. They still owe me for commsions going all the way back to when i started in 2006. There is a promotional program its called leads.com. I have emailed and spoken to my dealer manager on several occations asking if i could get involved with it. He replied telling me that it is customer based and for larger dealers only. When doing some researched i found that is not true. I have been struggling here for two years for dealer support and i'm getting more and more frustrated. My dealer manager called me telling me that warning letters are going out soon because i am not meeting my quota. My lease was up in may and i was warned not to sign a new lease. so I didn't and i just moved out. I also feel that I was set up for failure. If I can answer any questions for you please do not hesitate to call me
Sprint-Nextel are a bunch of jerks. I was a Nextel direct employee long ago when they first started up. They would give us "NEW INCENTIVE PLANS" which were pay cuts . .. every month. The harder you worked the more they cut. If you worked on activations only to make quota then your complaints would go up and they would call you in the big office for that . . .and if you took care of your customer issues then they would call you in the office for not doing enough new numbers. The more customers you activate . . . the more system problems would be generated in your accounts and eventually reaching an unmanagable level. The early days of Nextel billing were a rerun of MCI. Average length of a Direct Sales Rep was just a few months. Customers hated that.
Then, I went on to be an Indirect Dealer for them. While they were Nextel only it was not too bad. Lots of billing screw ups that had to be handled and a fair amount of network issues and product failures but workable. Then came the Spring buyout and everything changed. Screwy commission programs, lots of unpaid activations, runarounds, product shortages. A real nightmare. The program became unworkable and the customer service issues became all too time consuming and I closed my business.
Nextel had the potential to be a key player in the US Communications market. It was a incredible product with a tremendous dedicated customer following. But Sprint had no idea what they were buying and simply thought they would consume it and switch all of the Blue Collar customers over to their wierd network. Didnt work out that way . . .
I cant believe that the Mark Sadighian guy is still around. He was there doing shaddy deals back in my time. He has that annoying East Coast nasal accent and wears those starched XL shirts and does the chimp arm hang with that little half pint frame to try to hide the fact that he is such a little man . . . . he used to annoy the hell out of me.
But Paul Harris was always a stand up kind of guy as I knew him. Through many companies . . .his word was always good and could be trusted. Either he is in now chained to the paycheck or that little whiny half pint . . Mark Sadighian guy . . is crapping on him . . . which I would believe more.
Good luck with your lawsuit and keep me posted. I hope you can win some of the money back that they have ripped off from the Indirect Dealer network as well as from their own Sales force.
What a soon to be sad ending to what started off as such a great product and network concept.
Anonymous said... I had a store in florida, that on july 25th of 2008, My rep took me out for lunch and informed me that as of august the 1st, sprint was not renewing my contract. Plus they informed me that they were cutting of my residuals that i am supposed to get for three years. I was a small cell phone store and was just trying to make a living and my residuals where about 4000.00 a month, which i basically lived on. well whenthey cut that off , it has ruined me financially and, has forced me to claim bankruptcy and possiblity of losing my home. I feel that they owe me the 100000.00 plus that i was supposed to get, because that was for business i had sold, but they just conveintly cut me off. I have benn to a couple of attorney, but haven't found anyone that will jump on it. I am outraged because they have ruined me financially and caused me a lot of worry and stress, They just don't care. Thanks:
Anonymous said... I am an ex-Nextel AR, now Sprint AR with multiple locations. Like you, I have found that Sprint is the single most unethical corporation still in existence--I say still, because they are doomed to fail. Time and time again Sprint lines it's pockets at the expense of it's own employees (class-action lawsuit by their own Sprint Retail employees for fraudulent commissions), it's customers (witness last month's record-setting legal loss in California, and yesterday's filing of a $1.2 Billion class-action lawsuit in Federal Court), it's affiliates (Sprint has lost every legal battle against iPCS, yet is still stiffing them), and of course it's dealers (witness the new debacle of massive chargebacks on the Oct Non-Unit Adjustments reports that are completely and fragantly bogus). Unfortunately, as dealers we are pretty much at the mercy of Sprint, as they can terminate our contract at any time for any reason, yet we generally have large obligations like leases, staff, inventory, etc. The only thing you can count on Sprint doing is doing something wrong. Both ethically wrong, as well as just plain messing up whatever it was they were trying to do.
1. R.B. November 3, 2008 09:35 am 2. Sprint/Nextel did something similar to my dealership. We were one of the 6 original dealers in California, signing our contract in 1993 to become an exclusive Authorized Representative of Nextel. Since then, we’ve maintained high add-ons and even have gotten award for lowest churn. We attended all trainings and maintained the highest customer service, going well beyond simply selling phones and services. About 2 years ago, they approached us with a new contract, putting us in the B2B segment. Not too much later, they took us off the B2B and put us back to GB. This caused a lot of heart ache with incorrect commission amounts as well as a loss of all our co-op money. We finally got it all straighten out. After some time, we received a new IAE who was new to the company. We got no support at all. We received no call backs and no responses to several emails pleading for help with new customers as well as some much needed approvals on some deals in the works. They jeopardized our business. Finally, we received a letter of termination from Sprint/Nextel a week and a half after our dealership had been terminated. The reason given to was that our numbers were too low. When calling to get some clarification, we were told our IAE should have been out to our location to try and help us to prevent this from happening. We hadn’t seen or heard from her in more than 3 months. Basically, we were penalized for problems that were coming internally, rather than from our dealership. After 15 years and thousands of new subscribers, we got a Dear John letter from Sprint/Nextel.
1. W.A. November 3, 2008 09:33 am 2. I know how you feel, Sprint/NExtel did our company the same way. I am not surprised at Sprint's lack of customer service. The never cease to amaze me on how completely arrogant they are. I had an issue with them about a year ago that resulted in a long-standing disagreement with them that they continually put their head in the sand over.
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