Open letter to Sprint from a customer who YOU won't let ME give YOU money...

To whom it may concern,

I am writing this letter not in hopes to fix my situation, because the dozen or so representatives that I spoke to already made it loud and clear that that wasn’t happening. My hope is to give your company an understanding of what a loyal customer went through trying to give your company my money and my business. First a brief explanation of my situation:

I’m trying to upgrade my phone because the amount of memory I use doesn’t even allow me to utilize my phones options or make any software updates; I must delete photos, videos and/or apps in order to utilize the basic functions of my phone. I contacted Sprint on June 28^th, via the *2 feature on my phone, and was told I was eligible for an early upgrade… I was reassured of this offer while I was at a Sprint store and a Best Buy looking at new phones the same day. Now, being the savvy shopper I am, I went home and researched the phones and plans I wanted and went back in 3 days later to purchase my new phone and switch my plan to the Framily plan. I was told at the local Best Buy that I wasn’t available for an upgrade. Thinking this was an error I called *2 again and was told again, that I am not available for an upgrade. After questioning the validity of the representative’s statement to no avail, since she acted like she didn’t want anything to do with my problem, I went to the Sprint store where I was also previously told I’m available for an upgrade. It is at this point, many hours later, that I am told that the “early upgrade promotion” had ended the previous day. Just to clarify… It is at this point that I was told for the FIRST time that my availability for an early upgrade was “a promotion” and “had an expiration date”… And it just so happened that it expired the previous day. Just so we are all on the same page, there is documentation of me calling in on the 28^th of June as well as the many times I have called in during the days following.

Like most, I have had a cell phone for the better part of 14 years. I started with Nextel and when Sprint purchased them I have been exclusively with Sprint since. Like most American consumers out there I am very brand loyal; I only drink Coke, only drive Fords and rarely go outside of the Nike brand… That loyalty usually stops with service based companies because of competitive pricing, proprietary products and coverage areas. Sprint is not the only game in town. It is not the best game in town. And after my experience, their customer service team is far more worried about getting satisfactory marks on a survey then getting results.

I had one simple request during the many times I spoke with the customer service department: I need a new phone. Instead of coming up with a solution, I was blatantly told no… many, many times over. There is an old service industry adage referred to as “The customer that never returns”. It outlines that most people who have a bad experience never say and word and just simply don’t come back. The act of spending their money with a competitor and never giving you a chance to rectify a situation is more devastating than the customer who demands a refund or makes a fuss… Most times a company won’t even know that “the customer that never returns” had an issue that needs fixing in the first place. Enough of these customers will have a huge impact on the company in the long run. In my situation, I expressed my displeasures as an opportunity for your company to rectify the issue. Your company not only chose not act, but became completely apathetic. My situation was “escalated”, meaning brought to a supervisors attention, 3 TIMES… each of those 3 times I was told I would “receive a call back because the supervisor was in a meeting”. Those meetings must still be going on because I still have yet to receive a phone call back from any of the 3 supervisors. I hope the 2 week long meeting is about how to better the customer service department at Sprint.

At the end of the day I wanted to give Sprint my money to buy a new phone. I offered to send my phone into them (after one rep told me that my current phone wasn’t “paid off”, that’s why I can’t get a new phone… whatever that means) AND I would pay them for a new phone. I offered to purchase a refurbished phone. All the while not one representative could come up with a creative thought as to what we can do in my situation. I wanted to stay with Sprint as I defended them on numerous occasions to my friends who tease me about the lack of coverage, the many times they have service in areas that I don’t and the gimmicky “Framily Plan” they had to devised in order to recruit clients on a ultra-discounted, multi-level marketing approach to a cell phone plan. Instead, I made myself very clear to each representative I spoke to. Its math and very easy to understand:

Buying a brand new 64g Iphone 5s at full price from Sprint- $849+ tax

Or

Breaking my contract with Sprint- $225

Buying a new 64g iphone 5s at a discount with a new 2-year activation from Verizon- $199.00

Sell my iphone 5s 16g on e-bay +$400

I spend $24 and have the brand new phone I wanted with Verizon or $849+ tax for a phone with Sprint. Guess which one I picked?

At the end of the day, I wasn’t asking for anything for free. I wasn’t asking for any discount. All I wanted was what was promised to me… A 64g iphone for $35.21 per month on easy pay. The crazy thing is, if they granted what was originally offered to me, I would have paid full retail price over the 2 years.

So Sprint said no to me PAYING them full price for a new phone. Sprint said no to me CONTINUING my service with them. Sprint forced me to leave them. With such a large organization, it’s baffling to me as to how the simplest business 101 rule was over looked… It’s cheaper and easier to keep a current client than to go out and find new ones. I wonder if CEO Dan Hesse answered my call and I proposed my offer of giving him my money and staying with Sprint… If he would have allowed me to leave Sprint… I guess we’ll never know.

Sincerely,

Keith Strotz

 Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE iPhone

How to throw a bachelor party… For the love of God start planning it before you start drinking.

How to throw a bachelor party… For the love of God start planning it before you start drinking.

So I just recently got engaged. On top of pondering my own perfect bachelor party, I have been in charge of 2 bachelor parties, both of which went without a hitch... Both figuratively and literally… No one got drunkenly, “Hangover movie” married on either Bachelor party. But I learned some lessons that can be passed on to future Bachelor parties for efficiency.

1   1.) Put someone in charge. Pick someone who is organized, straight forward and who is up for the task; this may or may not be the Best Man. If you are staying local and the best man is from out of state, he most likely isn’t as familiar with the locations, directions, trends or local night life as someone else in the bachelor party. Make sure the person in charge is not scared to make a decision or take charge because odds are the group leader will most likely be the final voice on most decisions.

     2.) Ask what the groom wants and make a plan. Give the groom the chance to at least design the cornerstone of the weekend, and then make a plan to fill in the rest. If the Groom wants a relaxed golfing weekend, set up the weekend around golf with a few nights out. Likewise if the Groom wants a crazy, end all be all party… Grab some blow-up dolls, a few strippers, a case of penicillin and go to town. At the end of the day, letting the groom build the cornerstone of his last hoorah will allow him to get what he wants out of the party while the rest of his friends use it as an excuse to act like wild, adolescent assholes away from their significant others.

     3.) Give the group a voice. Create a Facebook page, an e-mail feed or a group text message feed. My choice would be a Facebook page; almost everyone has it and you can make it private, e-mails could get sent to spam and no one wants their phone going off every 5 seconds at work. The only downfall to a Facebook page are those “I’m too cool for Facebook” people that you have to contact separately to keep them in the loop… If there are too many of those, the other 2 routes may be better. Use the groups to communicate, vote and make decisions so that you can get some sort of itinerary set up. You can also ask the group for any hook-ups in the area; someone who can get in to a club for free, discounted drinks, discounted rooms or car rentals… you never know who in the group knows until you ask.

     4.) Get a payment app. Everyone paying up front is awesome, but something always pops up that the group needs to pay for and people always “need to go to the bank” because they didn’t bring enough cash. Use an app like Venmo or Chase quick pay and make sure everyone has it set up before the trip. Venmo is great because people can write descriptions of the payment to keep everything organized and remember who paid (i.e. dinner, hotel room or strippers). The worst thing in the world is being the person collecting money because you put everything on your card and people “forgetting” to pay you.

    5.)  Have a good time. Sounds easy enough right? Just make sure people are comfortable with what’s going on. This trip is all about the groom, so if he doesn't feel comfortable getting a lap dance, find a “no touch” strip club or sit away from the stage and enjoy the view… the rest of the heathen friends will be sure to spend all of their money on the back room delights if they choose to. Make sure to casually mention your with a bachelor party to the server or bartender (don't be all in your face with it, night life people hate that) and you may score a round of shots or get some good insight on where to go.

Plan the trip according to the group’s specs and you’ll be sure to have a good time. Keep the pictures to a minimum (don't agree to delete them at the end, that shit never happens) and for God’s sake don’t check in to places on social media… You’re just asking for a pre-wedding break-up.

How flossing can help you live past 100 and being sick for a Bachelor party.

Staying healthy isn't easy. I just read an article from longevity expert Dr. Sanjay Gupta that said flossing your teeth can reduce inflammation which in turn helps reduce inflammation throughout the body… which in turn helps lower the risk of heart disease. He said flossing every day could help you live past 100. So of course I went out and bought a case of floss from Costco. He also mentioned that he doesn't floss “as much as he would like to”. Hypocrite…

So I’m currently sick. I went to the doctor, which I never do, but I can’t be sick right now. I usually allow my body to fight off the sickness, it helps strengthen your immune system and I am not a fan of antibiotics as your body can become immune to them with over use… Our country is way too quick to pop a synthetic pill in order to “feel better” instead of giving your body what it needs to help fight off sickness with its natural antibodies. Anyways, I digressed, back to the reason I can’t be sick right now… So I have a bachelor party in 4 days… It’s not my bachelor party, but that doesn't make it any less important not to be sick. You only get a few reasons to go on a trip with your boys, act like complete idiots, drink incessantly, smoke cigars and play golf multiple days in a row (unless you have a wonderful fiancé like I do… She reads my blog)… and a bachelor party is one of those ways.

So when my doctor prescribed the medication, she mentioned I have to take it for 10 days straight. I know you can’t drink while on antibiotics, so naturally I tried to negotiate with her. My offer for doubling the RX for 5 days didn’t really go over well with her… Something about hurting my liver or something, I don’t know I wasn’t really listening to her and she was obviously under the impression that my liver was still fully functioning… I didn’t have my 2006 Beer Olympics Gold Medal there to try and explain my drinking habits. She wasn’t having it either way.

When I went to the pharmacy I asked to speak to the pharmacist; I spoke to him about my situation. I feel as though this should be a more common question, right? As he starred at me with his disapproving eyes, he explained to me that this particular antibiotic does not counteract with alcohol but is processed in the liver, so excess alcohol wouldn’t make me vomit but it wouldn’t be the best thing in the world for my liver. So my adolescent brain naturally only heard one thing and I needed clarification… “So if I throw up it’s because of the amount of alcohol I consumed and not the medication, correct”?

On the ride home after I was asked to leave the pharmacy, I could only think of one thing… How much I hated flossing and how I just invested $37 in floss at Costco.

Why Crossfit is ruining the world and how it’s causing CANCER!

STOP! Before you throw a fully plated prowler at me or pelt me with weighted med balls, I am a Crossfitter and believe in a majority of what Crossfit stands for. But while you are here, you might as well read the article and understand what got you here, and why internet trolls are taking over social media.

I read an article on Facebook today that somehow connected drinking coffee to cancer… On my way to work I noticed that somehow I subconsciously walked by the coffee maker that I use every morning and didn’t turn it on. I ate the same breakfast this morning that I eat every morning with my coffee, but this time I didn’t notice that I didn’t have any coffee to drink. It didn't hit me that I didn’t have my coffee with me this morning until I was walking into work and realized that I not only didn’t I have my coffee but I forgot my lunch box, water bottle and protein shaker bottle; this morning was awful to say the least.

I read a different article a few weeks back explaining how some of the most common beers are so terribly bad for you that they should be banned from the shelves… Now I second guess myself every time I order a beer.

While my reactions to those stories are wildly true, it hit me that what we read on social media sites, blog pages and the random website from the darkness of the inter-web have such a huge impact on our psyche… If we let it. The new rage in Social Media advertising is what I like to call “Propaganda Marketing”. It is when a blog page, website or an internet troll posts an outlandish picture, video caption or blog title (i.e. my title about Crossfit causing cancer) glamourizing something to the point where you have to click on the link to see it (Have you ever seen one of those titles that say something like “This goat didn’t eat for days, then THIS happened…” yea, I clicked on that too). It is a cheap way to get hits on websites, videos and blogs but it often leaves more questions than answers.

With the amount of information now a days at our finger tips, it’s hard to distinguish between the truth, the half-truths and the outlandish lies… Because it’s on the internet so it must be true, right? The easiest way to make a buck on the internet these days are to discredit something trendy and popular. The one to guarantee the quickest response? Crossfit. Hands down Crossfit has changed the landscape of the fitness industry, mostly because of the cult like following it produces; if you’re going to fight Crossfit, you’re going to have to fight it’s fan based that has pledged their allegiance to the fast pace, chalky world of Crossfit.

At the end of the day, do your research. If a blog is siting sources from a major publication or a scientific study, then go check the source before you put faith in it (if they don’t site any sources, chances are they are opinion based and can most likely be full of half-truths and outright lies). Whatever you do, DO NOT repost something you don’t agree with or find holes in… you are then just feeding into their ploy and sending people directly to their site for more hits, more traffic and more money for them. The best thing you can do is just ignore them.

Now, for my opinion on the health and fitness world. … there, now that I got that out of the way. Any health professional or dietitian would be hard pressed to disagree with the thought that we should be consuming whole foods like organic vegetables and fruits (mostly in a raw state), organic meats, fats from nuts and oils as well as complex carbs. We should also stay away from processed foods, GMO’s and excessive amounts of sugars. Of course everything in life should be had in moderation and good judgment. As far as exercise is concerned, do whatever makes you happy as long as you are moving and active. If you want to do Crossfit, DO YOUR RESEARCH and find a place that you feel comfortable with and that has a coaching staff that is competent and focuses on form. If you want to join a big box gym, DO YOUR RESEARCH and find a place you feel comfortable with and that has a staff and certified personal trainers that are willing to help with basic exercise information (do NOT let them talk you into some sort of personal training contract that you don’t feel comfortable with, they are there to help not sell you something, even though most of their intentions are the other way around). If you have no idea what you are doing, DO YOUR RESEARCH and find a good personal trainer to help you with the ins and outs of working out and program design. If you want the ultimate workout and live in the Tampa, FL area go check out Core5 Studio (www.core5studio.com) for a comprehensive fitness program.

At the end of the day, do what works for you, but with all of this great information at our finger tips, there is plenty of tools to help you weed through the garbage and get what you need!

As Always; Peace, Love and Fitness!