In short, I have a giant cell phone plan so that I won't ever go over on my minutes. And, until last month, I hadn't. But since I was out of town for an entire month of July, I managed to rack up around 50% more minutes than are in my plan. (Note: quite a few of these were for dropped calls.)
When I got the bill, I called a friend of mine who just last month quit Sprint, where he worked as a customer account rep. He gave me all of the tips on how to have the $400+ in additional charges reversed:
- Explain that you've been a customer for 3 years
- You have one of the most expensive plans they offer
- You're a good customer
- In LA, you experience TONS of dropped calls that you never report b/c before this, you've been way under on your minutes
- In Malibu, where you went to school, there were NO Sprint cell phone towers, but you kept Sprint for the entire 15 months you were there, despite this. (Literally, I had to just shut off my phone as soon as I drove through the gates at Pepperdine. Also, there are certain roads in LA that just don't get Sprint service... and certain turns that when you take them, you ALWAYS drop the call.)
- It's outrageous for them to charge you this much for overages
My friend basically talked to me about going through all of these points. He said that at a minimum, they should take 50% off my bill, but he expected that they would take off all of the charges (As a side note, I take responsibility for my excessive calling, but this is just over the top... However, if this is the game that they want to play with customers, then I guess we'll play).
My friend also mentioned that if I had noticed this HUGE bill before it was printed, Sprint sells additional minutes to its customers for $5 / 100 minutes. So, that's $50 instead of $450. Hmm... seems like a deal, no?
Well, for me, no. The customer service person I spoke with claimed to have no power to help AT ALL. She wouldn't sell me minutes for $5 / 100 minutes because I called after my bill was printed. She wouldn't credit my account. She wouldn't do anything!
Finally, I said, "you know, I don't even get good service in LA. The last thing I need is a huge unexpected phone bill too. I guess I should just cancel my account."
She just basically said okay and put me through to the cancellation person. According to my friend, it's this person's JOB to convince you to stay with Sprint. They are allowed to do anything: credit you a huge amount of minutes, give you a free phone, etc. They'll bend over backward to make you happy.
Well, apparently whoever normally does that was off today. The person I spoke with said, "okay, so you want to cancel your account?" To this I replied, "Yes, I have been a good Sprint customer for 3 years. Since I've been in LA, I have tons of dropped calls and no service. The last thing I need is for a bill that is 5 times my normal bill to show up because I used 50% more minutes. This just makes me feel uncomfortable as a customer." And to that, the person who is SUPPOSED to be part of a retention team said, "okay, can you just validate your mailing address for me so I can cancel your account?"
!!!!
GEES! How is is that I'm the person who always pays everything on time or ahead of time and the one time I mess up, customer service could care less if I stick around?
AAAARG. It looks like I'll be getting a new cell phone soon...
3 comments:
I wonder if this is a cross between Sprint re-evaluating their "save" tactics in lieu of the AOL scandal, and possibly reviewing your account to see that your aren't a profitable customer for them.
You know, I'm starting to wonder if you might be right!
I called back yesterday to temporarily reactive my phone until I have a chance to switch to another carrier. The last thing I need is to accidentally have my service lapse and loose my phone #.
When I called and explained that I wanted to reactive temporarily (until further notice), the operator on the phone said, "Are you sure? We won't turn off your service until the end of August."
Since when do they ask if you're SURE you want to keep being their customer???
I must really have a good deal. lol.
Try THIS experience. I cancelled my service (by phone) over 8 months ago when my contract was up. But I contiued to receive bills. After 3 months I sent a letter via certified mail (return receipt) to point out that they were billing me for service I no longer had or used. No Reply. And the bills kept coming. So today I am packaging everything (the phone, the charger, the user manual, the bills, etc. and mailing it to them with instructions to 'put it where the moon don't shine.' Do you think they'll get it?
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