Jan 31 - Sprint gave R+ 5 days to pay it's bills. Then Sprint gave a notice of termination, effective Feb 1.
Feb 2 - R+ files lawsuit
Feb 3 - R+ member Edgar Dworsky (former Assistant Attorney General in consumer protection in Massachusetts. Founder of ConsumerWorld.org and MousePrint.org -- two consumer education websites) posts that R+ filed a lawsuit on Feb 2.
Feb 3 6pm pacific time / 9pm eastern time - R+ sends email to members advising them that Sprint will shut down R+ lines on Feb 11.
R+ obviously decided very quickly to file the lawsuit, getting it all ready during Feb 1 and filed on Feb 2nd. The suit includes the request to extend the shut down by 30 days, so Sprint had obviously already said no to them on that point.
So R+ knew on Feb 1 that the Feb 11 shutdown was likely.
Yet it was only at the end of the working day of Feb 3, pretty much a full 3 working days later, that R+ communicated with it's members about this terminal event.
Yet it was only at the end of the working day of Feb 3, pretty much a full 3 working days later, that R+ communicated with it's members about this terminal event.
***Thanks for the timeline. There probably was no good reason to wait, particularly since R+ knew how little time members would have to port and migrate from R+. I suspect R+ was having a hail Mary moment hoping that Sprint would change its' mind once the lawsuit was filed. But one would think that R+ had already mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit to Sprint prior this filing. It is difficult to know what R+ was thinking in the past as well as what they are thinking now. Also, one wonders how long would have R+ waited to notify its' members if Mr. Dworksky had not posted about the lawsuit a day after it was filed?
My guess is that RingPlus was working on a backup plan and was debating whether to tell people to port out or to wait for arrangements to be made with another MVNO.
If they said to port out and then were able to make a deal-- which is obviously what happened-- then people would be angry if they immediately ported out.
If they waited until the deal was in place, the people who didn't want to go to Ting would be angry that they didn't have more time.
If they didn't work out a backup plan, then people would have said that RingPlus doesn't care.
It certainly was not the easiest situation to deal with, and I think that tie up with Ting is something we should applaud R+ for.
But, the decision tree for what was going to happen and therefore what you could and should communicate was relatively straightforward on Feb 1. And I'm not saying this from hindsight.
Simply
Sprint has told us today that they're going to cut us off on Feb 11.
We intend to ask the court to extend this by 30 days.
Here is how you get your port out information.
We are exploring the possibility of having another MVNO automatically take over the lines to minimize disruption
I was expecting a R+ shutdown, which was why I started shopping around for a new carrier a week before all of this chaos started. I figured we'd get at most a day's notice but was leaning more toward no notice at all, similar to how SunRocket shut down without telling anyone, leaving people without home phone service. Given the almost non-existent communication we had from R+, I was expecting little to no communication prior to the shutdown.
Then the thread from Edgar appeared, and only after that, when people started comprehending they were going to lose R+ service and word started spreading, did the R+ email go out. I've always been one to root for R+ and really wanted to see them succeed, but they have significant flaws, one of those being insufficient communication. If that thread from Edgar hadn't appeared, I wonder if people would still be going about their lives not knowing their phone service was likely going to end on the 11th.
Yes the situation could have been handled worse. Yes R+ could have ignored the reactions and not sent out email and not had discussions with Ting or any other MVNO. But the situation could also have been handled better. R+ knew for many months that they were hurting financially, and I find it hard to believe they had no idea whatsoever Sprint was going to shut them down for non-payment. I didn't expect them to say, "Hey R+ users, we are hurting financially and might shut down soon," but they should have at least used the weeks prior to the shutdown to plan for the inevitable (such as programming a way to stop charging people for service days before the service is shutting down....). They could have done things like that without announcing they were strapped for cash and might be closing soon.
Anyway it's all coming to an end and it's sad to see how things turned out. It's probably been a good learning experience for everyone involved.
I was looking before all this happened as I had read about when this happens with new activation's its a gone sign.What is crazy I was banned for nothing in the forum so I cant ask a question or post.I am glad to be free of that company now.I hope you all find a good home.
[ol]
[li] Keeping whatever customers they had was the only way to bring in $$$ (and they needed it desperately) [/li]
[li] Review in hindsight indicates this was a load of . . .. https://social.ringplus.net/discussion/9288/important-info [/li]
[li] Just OOC, whatever became of that magical money making dialer[/li]
[/ol]
How long ago were you ousted? If it was your first time, it should have been removed by now. On the other hand, forum rules were/are dynamic. There's the publicly visible set of guidelines and there's another unpublished set developed by the mods.
