November 10, 2006
Sprint
So, last month, for let’s say the 6th time in two years, I looked at my Sprint bill and realized they had overcharged me.
And we’re not talking four or five dollars, we’re talking around twenty, and I call up and explain the situation to them and realize as I’m doing it that I’m tired of it being my responsibility to call every three or four months and have them remove a twenty to forty dollar charge that appears on my account for no reason at all, so I explain that I will be terminating my service with them and that I will not be willing to pay an early termination fee.
After some wrangling, I am assured that the service will be terminated and no fee will be assessed. I even call back later that afternoon to make sure that I have understood the earlier call correctly and that I will not be charged…. I get the bill today, and guess what? A $380 early termination charge (two phones).
So, I spent the day with the customer service of a company I no longer am a customer with, and boy has that been a pleasant experience. First of all, the woman I spoke with last month put down that I did understand the early termination fee and had accepted it, then all of the upper level managers who were supposed to call me back didn’t, then the last person I talked with (the third call today) refused to forward my call to anyone beyond his level.
It’s been a spectacularly, profoundly, fascinatingly, completely frustrating customer service mind fuck. As it becomes clearer that since I was lied to last month and the official record shows that I accepted their terms, I will have no recourse beyond throwing them at small claims court with no documentation. In some small way this post is my effort against them. I figure twenty thousand monthly readers might like to know how I was treated and let people who are considering phone service know.
comments
I’d like to sprint my phone up their b*stard arses.
Reading of your experience edges me that much closer to selective recording of my own phone conversations.
“This call may be monitored for quality assurance.”
This sucks.
Tell it to Consumerist.com. They occasionally succeed in shaming companies into fixing things.
Hey. I ran into Sprint a few years ago, and I had a similar customer mindfuck. What I did was call back, get EVERYONE’S name from the first human I spoke to, all the way up to manager and manager’s manager and on until I had about 3-5 names including the receptionist. Finally I got to someone who wouldn’t let me go farther. I then got his employee number. Once armed with this kind of information, they allowed me to switch and I told them that they had treated me so poorly that I wouldn’t be paying my bill.
I made sure I wrote down who ever I had annoyed at that moment. I believe everything was on record, and I didn’t pay my bill. I then received a check from them. This was a few years ago though… before the Number Portability Law signed by congress.
I’m not sure something like this would happen to you… I just wanted you to know that I’m a fellow ex-Sprint-er and I’m with you morally in your fight.
Cingular is better service in many ways, but can be equally as aggravating:
Pick your poison.
thank you. reading everyone’s comments makes me feel a little comfort.
Unfortunately, the so called “customer service” of all of them has deteriorated into a confusing and frustrating tangle of ineptness and indifference. We fight with BellSouth over our landline bill EVERY month. They simply cannot get it right. So every month when the bill arrives we spend another few hours over a couple of days trying to get them to remove charges for things we never had and don’t want. Cingular? Better … until we make any kind of change and then we’re in for 2 or 3 months of haggling to get it right.
Winston, I am currently haggling right now and, boy, is it aggravating.
That’s why I use prepay. It’s a bit more expensive, but you can walk with no chance of them getting you on the legal lingo. You might lack a few advanced features, but in the end I feel much less aggravation, and no bills!
The bummer is that they can get away with poor customer service BECAUSE they have a 2 year contract. It would be a whole different ballgame if the customers refused to accept a 2 year agreement. I have no idea how to organize something like that. Maybe the theme for 2007 can be “Refuse to renew your 2 Year Cell Phone Contract” Year.
Good reminder for those of us who have digital or tape recorders to hook em up to the phone ($5 converter from Radio Shack is all you need) and record such customer service conversations. Just be sure to tell the person on the other end that you, too, are recording the conversation.
I had the same thing happen to me last year. Though, in my case, I specifically asked if the remaining months left on my contract could be moved over to my wife’s phone without penalty. The CSR assured me this would be okay, and could be done without any sort of penalty. So I did it, closed my phone, asked that they append the remaining contract to my wife’s phone and thought I’d be done with it. Wrong. I got stiffed with a $175 or so early termination fee. I’m glad to be away from Sprint. And as soon as I was able to, I moved my wife’s phone away from them as well.
I don’t know if any of this will help at this stage, but here are two ways to get out of paying an early-termination fee. Other than this, I would just complain, write down people’s names, and continue asking that your claim be escalated to a higher level. (Publicity helps, too.) And of course, in the meantime, DO NOT pay that fee.
How to cancel early:
#1. Last month Sprint changed its text-message fee. This enabled customers to get out of paying an early-termination fee for their service. I think the get-away-scot-free clause ended Nov. 2, but you might have cancelled your service before then, right?
I read this on Engadget Mobile:
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/10/09/sprints-sms-price-hike-saga/
#2. One way to get out of a Sprint contract, from what I hear, is to tell them you’re moving to an area w/o Sprint service.
From a message board:
They will waive the early termination charge for the following reason: If you move to an area that does not have Sprint PCS coverage they will waive your early termination fee. Check out the coverage maps, come up with an area that does not have coverage, and give them an address within that area and tell him your moving.
http://forums.mobiledia.com/topic20949.html
Dig the contacts for upper-level management out of their website: I went through a few weeks of customer service hell with Verizon back in 2004 – clueless people on the phone, supervisors who repeatedly failed to call back, etc. I finally reached someone who was honest enough to tell me that the reason why they were giving me the run-around was because nobody at any level in that call center was allowed to refund early termination fees (they wanted to ignore the fact that I was two years out of contract at that point).
I was going to simply deny their charges, contact the BBB/PUC, etc. but I decided instead to start from the top down and found the executive office number buried on their website. They called me back a couple hours after I left a message and the person who called fixed the problem for me in about 15 minutes. Most importantly, it stayed fixed…
Here’s a really low blow – my father passed away in September and Cingular charged us an early cancellation fee on his cell. We fought it and they took it away but we shouldn’t have had to go through all that.
Sorry to hear about this Sprint experience. I’ve had similar problems when things were promised. What makes it worse is that their bill is totally unreadable (if you get free nights and weekends they charge you a fee at the top of the bill then give you a credit way at the bottom of the bill).
Whenever you have a problem with Sprint ask for Account Services (their retention department) or just tell the voice system you want to cancel. Account Services has all the secret codes that regular customer support doesn’t. I call them whenever I am renegotiating my contract.
with all of the companies, you can request that they find the recorded transcript of your conversation. it may take hours, but you can often prove that you were not given the information.