Sprint Cell Refuses to Save Baby Until Sheriff Department Pays $25

Imagine you work for a cell phone company and one day you get a call from the Sheriff Department. It seems that your company has precise information that can save a baby from kidnappers. Would you give the information? Or would you follow company policy like a mindless robot and refuse to give out the information?

That's exactly what happened when a thoughtless Sprint Nextel customer service representative refused to give the Sheriff Department the GPS location of the kidnapped baby. All new Sprint cell phones now have GPS capability.

The massive ethical and public relations blunder is already reaping punishment for Sprint as the true story of the December 23 kidnapping spreads across the internet as a modern tale of corporate greed and policy overcoming common sense and human decency. January 11th the Riverside County Supervisors sought to ban Sprint Nextel from building any more cell phone towers in the county.

How did a huge cell phone company coldly refuse to help rescue a ten-month infant? The Sprint Nextel employee callously cited company policy, and refused to reveal the child's location to the Riverside County Sheriff's deputies.

The Cochran family of Eastvale, CA loaded their baby into their SUV in the home's driveway. The father, Jason, placed their 10-month-old baby and came back inside for their 3-year-old. When the father returned to the driveway the baby and the SUV were gone.

According to the NBC4 report..."When the parents called 911 they also realized that the father's Sprint cell phone with GPS locator technology was also in the car.
NBC4 reported that Sprint wouldn't provide a location to the parents or to the deputies...The deputies were told that Sprint had the location of the vehicle but that they could not disclose it to them because they needed to pay the $25 fee for a subpoena or fill out some forms," said the child's mother.

Two and a half hours later deputies found the boy safe in the now abandoned SUV.

In a classic case of closing the barn door after the horse is gone, Kathleen Dunleavy, Sprint's regional spokeswoman said "We're not sure what happened. We act immediately when it is an emergency." ...

The normal $25 fee to processing the paperwork and activate the program is waived for law enforcement in emergency cases.

"It's just unfortunate that something went wrong in this case," Dunleavy said. "We're trying to find out what happened so it doesn't happen again. Sprint is very concerned, and we certainly apologize to the family."

My PR advice to Dunleavy and Sprint Nextel:
1) Take responsibility for causing this problem.
2) Admit the company made a mistake and aggressively spread the word through news media and across the internet.
3) Develop a simple and clear solution to this problem so that Sprint Nextel employees will never refuse to help when a person's life is in danger.
4) Aggressively publicize the new policy in news media and across the internet.

Sprint Nextel must follow these steps to regain public trust. Sprint has aready earned a measure of public ill will in internet forums and from the Riverside County supervisors.
See the whole story in the Desert Sun newspaper article.