[Dang...posted this to the wrong group. There was so much about Sprint
in the AT&T group, I though I was here when I was there. If you read
this over there, nothing new here--just a repost in the right group!]

To recap an earlier posting, to set the scene:

I had a family plan with two phones. Both were out of contract.
One of the phones was malfunctioning, so we went to our local Sprint
store to get a new phone to replace that. Expected result: pick the
phone, Sprint puts it on the account in place of the old phone, that
number gets a two year contract, and we are out the door in 10
minutes.

Actual result: Sprint employees futz around for nearly an hour
trying to put the phone on the account, and finally tell us it is
not possible, unless we let them change our plan to one of their
current offerings. So we let them do that. So now we've got a
worse plan, and they've put two year contracts on both of our
numbers!

Fast forward about a year. We leave Sprint. I have no problem paying a
$200 ETF, because we bought that new phone a year ago, and used the $150
discount. But my phone had been with them for something like 3 years.
It should not have an ETF. Yes, we changed plans, but only because they
told us that we HAD to change plans to keep service--that should not
reset the contract (especially since the new plan was not anywhere near
as good a deal as the old plan).

I had occasion to call Sprint three times as part of the process of
leaving Sprint. (Because the first two times, they neglected to
actually cancel one of the lines. It took three calls to actually get
that to stick, and make sure they didn't try to sneak an extra month in
there, since the third call was on the second day of a new billing
period--after I called the supposedly dead number and it still worked so
knew the second call to cancel had not actually worked!).

On two of these calls, I complained to the rep about being charged two
ETFs. One sympathized, but said there was nothing she could do. The
other said she'd put a note on the account that I wanted to dispute it,
and they would call me back in a few days to talk about it.

No one called. The second ETF fee showed up on the next bill. I paid
it--so my account balance with Sprint is now $0.00. This was about 3
weeks after they were supposed to call.

Now, a couple weeks after that, they finally called back about the
disputed charge and left a message on voicemail. The message said
something like "We are calling about dispute #soandso on account
#whatever, and we see that your account is at $0.There is no ETF charge
on it. Thank you for being a Sprint Customer".

Great job of investigating the dispute, Sprint. I guess it didn't occur
to them to look at last month's bill?


--
--Tim Smith

Archived from group: alt>cellular>sprintpcs