A Sprint store in Boston, Massachusetts, as seen December 15, 2004. Sprint Nextel Corp. sent letters to about 1,000 subscribers June 29 terminating their service agreements for calling customer care too often. - AP

Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-largest wireless provider in the United States, has axed about 1,000 subscribers, saying the company's records showedthey had made frequent calls for help with questions about billing and other account information.

"While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs," said the letters sent June 29.

The customers were told their service agreements were being terminated, they wouldn't owe anything on their final bill, and the company would waive early termination fees.

They also were told to switch to another wireless provider by July 30 if they wanted to keep their phone number.

In debate on the Internet, Sprint's move has attracted criticism that the company is penalising consumers for trying to get what they paid for, or that the frequent calls are more a reflection of poor customer service by Sprint itself.

But Sprint officials said Monday this is not a case of someone being flagged by a computer programme, and that an internal review lasting six months to a year focused on the types of problems the callers had and what information they were seeking.

"These accounts have been researched very carefully," Sprint spokeswoman Roni Singleton said. "We feel strongly that the decisions we made, we stand by them. These decisions weren't made lightly."

40 to 50 calls a month

Singleton said the targeted subscribers each made an average of 40 to 50 calls a month to customer service. She would not say how that compared with the overall number of calls logged by the customer-service department in a given month.

Singleton said the review also found that the subscribers often were calling about the same problems over and over after Sprint officials felt they had resolved the issue.

She said some callers were repeatedly asking for information from other customers' accounts, which customer-service workers are not allowed to divulge.

Officials at competitors AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless said that while they may terminate customers who are abusive toward customer-service operators or violate other terms of their service agreements, they don't terminate customers because of customer-service calls.

Sprint, which has about 54 million subscribers, has been trying to upgrade its customer base, tightening credit requirements and attempting to attract customers who will spend more each month on data services, such as Internet browsing, music downloads and streaming video.

During the most recent quarter, the company said it gained just 600,000 new customers, while AT&T and Verizon gained 1.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively.

- AP