Sprint Lies, YOU PAY!

THE LESSON: IF SPRINT TELLS YOU SOMETHING OVER THE PHONE, YOU HAD BETTER ASK FOR CONFIRMATION IN WRITING, OTHERWISE WHEN THEY CHANGE THEIR STORY THE NEXT TIME YOU CALL, SPRINT WILL NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE LIES OR ERRORS AND YOU WILL BE STUCK WITH A FINE!

My story in detail:

About a year and a half ago I bought two new Blackberry phones for my wife and I with a new 2 year contract renewal. One day in July I received a call from a Sprint Rep telling me my contract had finished and asking me if I would like to renew for a 10% discount on my monthly bill. I declined and explained I wanted to consider switching to AT&T for the iPhone. She understood and made a calendar date some two months out to call me back and ask me again.

Then a few weeks later I called again to Sprint and confirm I was out of contract on both lines on my account and would not be fined if I changed service providers. Feeling confident I was out of contract a few months later I switched both lines to AT&T and shortly after I get a bill from Sprint saying I owe $234.98 with no reason listed.

I call Sprint for an explanation of the random bill and I find out it is a fine for canceling my contract early! And it turns out Sprint made and error on one of my two lines, making one of the two year contracts end early, and it was about that line that they had called. While the contract for the second had not had the same error so only one line had fallen out of contract and they were fining me for closing that line early; a very important detail two Sprint representatives failed to mention before I switched! So I was fined $234.98 for canceling the second line early. On top of that I found out that the sales representative who had called that day, had processed a renewal of my contract against my will!

Now having been essentially lied to twice, once telling me I was completely out of contract and safe to change to new service and twice that I was not renewing and that they would call back to offer the discount again at a later date, which they never did, because the rep just signed me up against my will on that day!

If your mind works anything like mine, you would think that is two wrongs committed by Sprint for which I am not responsible. I was the victim in both cases and received an unexpected and unfair fine as a result. In this situation I was expecting an apology and a swift removal of the erroneous fine, but that is not how it works in the backwards land of Sprint customer service. Instead, Sprint customer service stated that I was lucky that such an error had occurred because I should have owed them double the fine for both lines being canceled early and that it was my fault for trusting the Sprint representative rather than referring back to my original contract! That's right they write a contract but I am not to trust them when they call and refer to that contract! They admitted that the sales person may have renewed my plan against my will but would not then admit that sales rep was also responsible for misleading me into closing my contract early and being wrongly fined!

In summary:

If Sprint calls and says something over the phone, ALWAYS GET IT IN WRITING!

Avoid doing business with Sprint because they clearly have an unjust and irresponsible company practice that cannot be tolerated. I pled my case for more than and hour and they would admit little or no guilt and did not drop the fine, so I ultimately paid $234.98 for their mistakes!

The icing on the cake: They offered to drop the fine ONLY if I renewed my contract with Sprint by re-porting my number from AT&T...Not only would that result in fines from AT&T but that would mean I was choosing to return to the lying pig of a company that was robbing me in the first place!