I once worked for Sprint and I can tell you that this is just SOP for them. They DESERVE to go out of business. It is very possibly the worst run corporation in this country . . . next to the White House of course.

sprint always has a tack on fee. it happened to me for a
slightly different reason, but still they wanted 200 and
some bucks more to finish the deal. what a bunch of jerks.
one problem is, they have too many employees that you have to deal with, who don't know what they are doing, then after going through a gauntlet of people who know a little bit more than the previous person, you finally get to the person you should have talked to in
the first place. and still there is the two hundred and something price tag to get you out of hades

Sprint is truly a plague. What other business can legally get away with a store that can sell you a service, but can't cancel the same service? Go to any Sprint Store. They will sell you a phone and a plan. Now go to the same Sprint Store and try and cancel. Can't be done! They will refer you to unending phone calls on hold, transfers and phone numbers with busy circuits. Unilaterally extending a contract based on someone else's verbal authority! Sprint "did it" to me too.

Add Sprint to the list of unethical companies capitalizing on hard-working people's last nerve. I was wondering whether Mr. Carner had considered visiting the address in MO where bills were delivered. Why didn't police or the FBI or whoever make an arrest?

My wife and I were Sprint customers from 2003 to 2007. We had a 2 year contract that went month to month after that period. I hardly ever used my phone so I thought I would switch to a pay as you go provider.

When I called Sprint to cancel they said I owed a $340 early termination fee. Puzzled, I asked how that could be. They claimed that I had verbally agreed to a rate reduction earlier in the year, which bound me to a new contract. This never happened. I paid my bill through my credit card, so I didn't look at my bill every month (lesson learned). Sure enough they dropped by bill by about $5/mo, but the original offer said I had to agree to it in order to initiate it, which I never did.

Well, it's been nearly a year and they have attempted to bill my credit card 4 times now, every time I dispute it and Chase refunds the money - Sprint never provides any proof on their end. At one point they charged my card AND had a collection agency sending me letters. I called the collection agency and they said I paid it (because Sprint had just charged my credit card).

Calls to Sprint have gone nowhere. The last 3 attempts have resulted in being bounced between a few people and then put on hold about about 20 minutes only to be eventually disconnected.

This has been such a hassle - I refuse to pay for something I never asked for. I've been documenting everything, plus I have my credit card company to back me up, but there seems to be no end to this. Any advice?

This is just another Reason T Mobile or Verizon Should buy SPRINT.... They have no idea how to run a company.

No surprise the churn is highest with Sprint.

Thank God I don't have Sprint!

Yes, I was a victim of Sprint ID theft, and they were practically useless. Their policies fore extending credit are way too lax, and lack common sense. Then the burden of proof is unfairly put on the consumer. They should be fined or face criminal penalties as well

My husband and I were victims of identity theft and we both had trouble with Sprint accounts being set up in our names. Apparently that company does not do any checking, they just set up whatever is requested. If the request seemed strange, why didn't they just call the home phone on the account for verification?

Typical corporate behavior. Sprint should be hit with a HEFTY fine for not immediately clearing all fraudulent charges.

This is why I will never have a cell phone with a service contract attached. I stick to pay-as-you-go phones all the way. MY ATT "Go Phone" has pretty good coverage and I've not had any problems with costomer service. When I wanted text messaging turned off, they did it, no problem. I laugh at the Alltel commercial where the "four weenies of the apocalypse" kidnap someone's dog to coerce a customer to stay with them, but the truth is that those commercials aren't far from the truth.

SICK OF SPRINT!!!!! Fraduelant charges and an extra phone on my line also. One employee said she would removed charges. Following month charges remained. I called back again. This time employee told me to prove it was fraud. Employee took half off and I paid the rest. When contract is over (1 phone at at time), I'm out of this poorly run company. No wonder stock prices "suck". What idiot would buy into this company.

I hate to tell you this, but I have been battling Verizon over some charges that were paid over 3 years ago. It is to the extreme that I have a copy of the canceled check that I sent them and they cashed. Even after sending them a check, they sent my account to a collections agency and it is now on my credit report. I call the collections people, and they tell me to call Verizon. So I do, and they tell me to call collections. Its a never ending circle. The worse part is, I don't dispute the charges that were there. They are mine, but I paid it a long time ago and still fighting them today!

This is a common tactic with Sprint, that's why I left them. Even after my contract was done I was still getting bill after bill. After many phone calls with many different departments within Sprint my account was cleared. 2 months later I get a collection notice saying I owed them 350 dollars. Infuriated I called Sprint and they said I owed them 350 dollars. My blood was boiling. I'm on deployment with the United States Navy. I couldn't get this completly settled so I'm sure I'll have to deal with it when I return. There customer service department is in the Philippines. The reps don't speak English that well and tell you what you want to hear.

WHY, if Sprint HAS the address of the thieves, aren't they being prosecuted and jailed?????

Sprint is an evil company with no mercy for customers who have been abused through no fault of their own. The phone lines on our block got crossed after the phone company did some "repairs". A second phone line assigned to our address became active in someone else's house. Sprint presented us with a $5000 bill before we became aware of it. We would have had to stand in the side yard at the phone box on the side of the house to use that line, but Sprint was unrelenting. It took almost a year of threats back and forth before it was dropped. At the time I believed that Sprint knew who was making the calls, but they prefered to bill and threaten us instead.

Wow! Thanks for the warning. As a current Sprint user, I'm going to start looking for another company. I don't beleive in rewarding incompetence...

I had a similar situation, only the thief added one phone but disabled my sim card and stole my phone #. Dealing with Cingular (AT&T) was a nightmare. The fraud department spotted it but was helpless to try and resolve anything. The cell phone industry is a joke! How stupid a concept is it to have an established account redirected to another address in another part of the country, receive a complaint and not be able to resolve the entire situation in a single phone call or certified letter.

SPRINT Sucks....bunch of thieves.
They pulled the $200. fee on me also, when the contract was over. Tried to tell me that I still had 1 year left on the contract. After X hours on the phone with them, they couldn't porve it so they dropped the charge. Word of advice....STAY AWAY FROM SPRINT/NEXTEL
Mr Barney (barney1717@hotmail.com)

Last year Sprint in Tampa, Florida, claimed a woman friend of mine contracted for several mobile telephones and long-term service plans. At the time they claim she signed the contract she was in Iraq, with the Army.

Sprint refused to provide any documentation or support for their claim, turning it over to a credit collections agency.

My gut tells me the Sprint Cellular salespeople are pushing these bad transactions through and the management is not challenging the practice.

And Sprint wonders why they're losing customers.

I was harrassed by Sprint for the last year. Their service quit working at my location. Another cell provider told me they had put their own tower out here and cancelled their roaming agreements with the local carriers. This only caused us to have no service where Sprints new tower didnt reach which was just about everywhere. I cancelled their service and sent their phones back. Additionally I was to receive $300 in rebates from Sprint with the phone service sign up as I paid $550 out of pocket when I signed. I spent 6 months trying to get the rebates which I never received so I finally gave up.

I received dozens of mail threats and collection agency phone calls at all hours from Sprint demanding payment for their contract. I sent 6 letters explaining that Sprint was the one in breech of contract not me. Sprint is a horrible company to deal with. They dont provide the service contracted for and they dont pay the rebates they have contracted to pay you. DO NOT USE SPRINT. Any company that operates like this should be out of business.

I cannot say I have been through what Mr. Carner has but I can sure attest to the poor customer Service Sprint offer's. I'm considering the switch to Verizon as well. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska and we have to Sprint Stores in the city. You cannot imagine how many times you go into the store to get something done and have to wait 30-45 minutes, or they tell you to drop it off and come back, like most people your cell phone is the only phone you have and your only way of communication. Also the past 6-times I went into the store to pay my bill at the payment center it has been out of order. (Talk about convenience)so they suggested I pay at the counter but I had to wait in line. I waited 30 minutes just to make a 45-50 second transaction. Where has the good customer service gone! I'm sure there are other companies as well but Sprint you should pay a little bit more to your customer's who of course keeps you in business.

I worked with a Construction company. We had similiar problems with Sprint. We have 48 phones. So you can imagine the chaos Sprint created. They would add services to our phones without our permission. Then when we demanded the removal they would remove it from a few but not all. With them always adding more stuff and us constantly having to argue with them to remove it. We calculated one day that over a two year period we paid $20,000 in bogus charges to Sprint just to keep our service going. I have never seen anything as bad as thier Customer Service...ever! I am still flabborgasted. Unbelievable really what they get away with.

Fraud is not the only department Sprint has problems with. I purchased a phone for my brother as a present and paid for it with my credit card. I am not a Sprint customer, he is. The phone did not work and was returned the first week of January. I have yet to recieve a refund and after numerous phone calls, one of which resulted in the lead supervisor of the finance department yelling at me that nothing in life is free, I have been told that I will not receive a refund my brother will on his bill and I need to talk to him about getting my money back.

Thar sounds about right for Sprint, and AT&T(cingular) was never any better. The only good thing is, call a lawyer or the press, and the phone companies drop the fees and stop the harassment. You just gotta stand up to them.

WOW!! WE'VE BEEN DEALING WITH SPRINT FOR THE LAST 5 MONTHS WHEN OUR CONTRACT ENDED (WHICH WAS EXTENDED WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE WHEN WE CHANGED OUR EVENING MINUTES FROM 9:00 TO 7:00). WE TOO SWITCHED TO VERIZON, BUT CONTINUE TO GET BILLS FROM SPRINT EVEN THOUGH WE WE'RE PAID UP IN NOVEMBER. THEY KEEP ASSURING US THAT WE DO NOT OWE ANYTHING...THEN COMES ANOTHER BILL. I HAD JUST SENT THEM ANOTHER EMAIL BEFORE READING THIS ARTICLE. I REFUSE TO WASTE MY TIME WAITING FOR THEM ON THE PHONE. PLUS I CAN'T GET INTO THE SYSTEM UNLESS I PUT IN MY SPRINT PHONE NUMBER OF WHICH I DON'T HAVE BECAUSE WE ARE NO LONGER WITH THE COMPANY, BUT KEEP GETTING THEIR BILLS. THE COMPANY ALREADY HAS A CLASS ACTION SUIT FOR EXTENDING CONTRACTS WITHOUT THE CUSTOMER'S KNOWLEDGE. THEY ARE SOMETHING!!

I was a sprint customer for 7 years and have had several problems with them, each starting after I visited a Sprint store. The first problem occured when I added my husband to my plan, I walked into a store and bought him a phone. When I did they put his address down as being in Maryland (even though I said he lived at the same address as me in New York). For three years I paid taxes for a phone in Maryland (which is totally my fault I should have looked at the taxes section more carefully I just didn't think). Sprint would only refund me for 2 months, the next problem I had was sometime after I got my husband a phone and before I discovered the taxes problem. My husband broke his phone so we went to the Sprint store to purchase a new one, he picked out a phone and after being guaranteed that we could get a certain price on it and signing all the paper work they said they couldn't give us that price. It was a total bait and switch and I wasn't going to fall for it. We said we didn't want the phone anymore and after being guaranteed that the whole transaction was canceled we left the store and went to Radio Shack where we got a used phone. When the next bill came I was horrified to find that they had changed my plan not only extending my contract for 2 years from the date we walked into that Sprint store but also changing us to a plan that cost more but had less minutes. I was angry and called Sprint and faught for 2 hours with manager after manager to get these things changed. After that I decided to change carriers, my husband and I waited our contract out for a year and finally have Verizon which has been very good (so far).

It's not a wonder Sprint has been noted as having the worst customer service department there ever was. I am suprised Sprint did not place a service charge on the customer for each time he called them.

People have no recourse thanks to the cell phone companies paying off Congress. Right from the start Sprint should have corrected the problem. Sprint knew it was fraud, but because Sprint knew it would never collect from the theif, Sprint went after a customer it knew was not responsible.

I transfered my service from EMBARQ to Time Warner. Because I was keeping my same number, Time Warner did the transfer/termination order. For 3 months EMBARQ continued charging me the base rate for the two disconnected lines. They stated that Time Warner had not terminated the service correctly. Now after over 2 years of emails, letters, personnel visits, and long phone calls. The problem has never been resolved.
Time Warner has stated that EMBARQ has done this numerous customers and that they had submitted all the required paperwork. EMBARQ still states that the correct paperword was not submitted until three months later. After one year EMBARQ turned the past due bill over to a bill collection agency. After numerous harassing phone calls, I finally paid the $291.36 on Dec 2007.
Presently I do not have any land line and will never do any phone business with either of the mention companies. I wonder how many other customers are like me and just paid.

I decided to terminate my account with a company just before they merged with Sprint in order to save money and improve service. I paid off my balance and paid an early termination fee on one of the five phones my family had because it was within the two year time period. After the merge Sprint continued to send me a bill for the terminated phones. I always document my dealings with companies but when the person you were talking to no longer is with a company names and times are useless. The automated calls and collectors became more frequent. My credit was threatened and Sprint representatives became more abusive. I decided to let them do what they wanted as far as my credit was concerned because I had enough of their threats and lack of common sense understanding. Eventually, I settled with an agent who must have been with some type of collection- arbitration firm. They just wore me down so I guess they won, but I will never be a Sprint customer.

I quit Sprint several years ago for similar problems of over charging and their failure to own up to it and reimburse me when I had overpaid. It took months to resolve. I will never be a Sprint customer again.

This is another example of the lack of service provided by service providers, who don't provide service, when the service they provide isn't provided as a service. It's also easy to point the finger at front line customer service and billing staff, but they are "just doing their job". It's a dumbing down of the entire workforce and the CEO/top management are to blame. If they were required to work one day a quarter in the call center and a retail store, without the big title, the front line service would improve, because it becomes a priority. The work force reflects the priority of management. If sales is a priority, commission sales guys will force deals. If customer service isn't a priority, there is no incentive to resolve issues and "move on", because "everyone" will let "someone else" take the call next time. An ugly cycle that is too common in much of USA retail, not just the cell phone companies.

This is why sprint has lost almost 500 thousand customers in the past 6 months. They (and most other cell providers) are nothing more than common day thieves.

I actually use sprint (notice the lower case) because its the best reception I can get. However; they are the most innane and cumbersome company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

I'm a republican and despise government regulation, but if there is one industry that needs to be slapped repeatedly about the head and neck by the justice department, it would be this slimeball corporation.

Their CEO should be held liable for fraud, racketeering, harrassment, incompetence and any other activity that would describe a criminal with a crack addiction.

e.h.

Sprint has really screwed me over too. I was a Nextel customer in Georgia before the merger. After the merger, I moved to Florida, and was told I needed to change my service to Srint, and I could roll my contract over since they were now the same company. I did that, and about a month later, I received my $ 200 bill. When I complained, I was told that "Nextel - Georgia is not the same as Nextel - Florida" due to some strange issues with the incorporation. It took six months, threatened cancellation by Sprint, and calls to the Vice President of Customer Service to get the issue resolved. The worst part of it all is that upon rolling the contract over, it was treated as a "new" contract again, so I went from having six months left with Nextel to having two more years with Sprint. The past year and a halfhave been filled with nothing but service outages in my own home, dropped calls, and billing issues. In fact, upon my most recent call to customer service, they told me that they were just going to give me 10% off my bill since I was such a loyal customer. While still on the phone, a few moments later (after they'd tried to sell me ten different phones) I asked if the 10% would extend my contract, the operator said "yes". DO NOT TRUST SPRINT!

I can feel my blood boiling too as I read this, and I sympathize greatly. no one needs a heart attack over this garbage. I recommend to anyone else to take major steps to reslove issues like this. ask to speak to the president of the company -- they cannot deny you contact information. contacting the attorney general's office, the better business bureau, the media, maybe also an attorney. put it in writing, take names along the way, and never stop. wage your own war, because no one else will do it for you. if a company's bottom line is profit, you individually really mean nothing to them, treat them likewise.

These kinds of practices are and will continue to be business-as-usual until Americans realize that our government is owned by and thus serves corporate America. It's a sad day for all of us that our only recourse is pleading our cases to the news media. Shame, shame, shame... on us.

This is nothing compared to what happened to me. My ID was stolen and Bankcorp sued me for $250,000.00 and won because they never invited me to the trial which took place 400 miles from my home. It took 2 years and about $20,000.00 in attorneys fees to reverse the judgment against me. Bankcorp will not pay my attorney fee's even though they and everyone in the police departments knew it was ID theift all along. They are theives and should be put in jail. Our Federal government supports the theives and supports the idea that it is ok to steal as long as you steal from helpless people. Bankcorp should be stopped.

This is Sprint Customer Service in action; it is how Sprint does business.

I had a similar situation happen with me with Sprint, but I was able to settle that due to the fact I told them that I hired a lawyer. Once I gave them the name of the lawyer and a typed signed letter of what had happened. They dropped everything, including taking it off my credit report. Unfortuneately, my fiance had different run-ins with Sprint(before we even met). They credited someone else's account with his payment and he was charged late fees and sent to collections. Meanwhile, he was faxing them a copy of the check he wrote and they cashed. He had all the proof that they messed up and they still put it on his credit report. Three years later they took it off his credit report. They still to this day have a collection with one of the credit reporting agencies. He is still trying to get this taken off. We are still Sprint customers, but also have phones with T-Mobile. Once our contract is up, we are gone!

It takes a news reporting agency to get these people to do the right thing and then apologize? Screw the little guy, but heaven forbid that anyone hears about it! Politicians, where are you when we need you? We're dying out here in this digital age. At least we have Bob, but he can't solve everyone's problem.

It's also very scary that all it takes to "sign" a contract these days is a few clicks of the mouse, no identity check at all!

Bob, do you have any red-tape wrestling tips for this article?

Frustrating, but completely believable. I had an issue with SBC a few years ago regarding incorrect billing. After months and months and hours and hours on the phone they sent my account to a collection agency. I spent two final hours on the issue. The first, drafting a letter detailing the problem and advising them them I knew my rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act as well as applicable state law (i.e.-- legal action could be taken) The second, researching the names and addresses of their corporate officers. I sent copies to every single one. I received a call from the CEO's office within a week with an apology.

If this happens to you, forget wasting time on the phone with low-level employees making minimum wage. After a few initial calls to put it on record, start putting it in writing and make sure the legal dept. and corporate offices are seeing the correspondence.

Sprint was, is and will always be the worst carrier in terms of billing and customer service. Their corporate culture is lame, distrusting and generally speaking obnoxious. Six years ago, I got bamboozled by Sprint's billing departments without fraud on my account. I switched to Nextel to get away from them, and enjoyed 4 good years until Sprint consumed Nextel and began their abusive billing practices with me again. After I was finally out, they too claimed that my contract was extended, this time by a blatant act of slamming by one of their representatives. Even though I caught the error and someone at Sprint "corrected it" they still charged me the fee, and after spending 4 hours on the phone, a "LEVEL 3" account analyst removed only half of the termination fee.

Sprint is horrible and that is no joke. Long live T-Mobile and Metro PCS, the only people oriented carriers out there

A close family member just went through this situation with Sprint. The thieves ordered 10 phones on his account and had them sent to another state. After receiving a $5,000 phone bill, he called to report the theft and was assured the issue would be dealt with. After continuing to receive billing notices for the $5,000, he escalated within Sprint and found out the original Sprint fraud employee had never filed a report. Four months and a police report later, he is still trying to settle his bill so he can move to another carrier.

we didnt have this problem with sprint , but they were constantly shutting our phones off..weeks before our bill was due..we finally asked why this keeps happening when our phones were shut off at least 5 times in one week...they are now telling us that my husbands phone is giving off a signal and shutting the account down and they expect us to buy a new phone ..we have only had their service for 5 months..and they want us to put out another $150.00 for a new phone this company is horrible i would never recoment them to anyone

When my husband died in June, it took me a total of nine phone calls and visits to the Sprint store to remove his name from the account. I had to cancel the account because it was in his name and through his company but they still charged me the $200 early termination fee. The clincher was after I faxed my husband's death certificate, they called my house and requested to talk to my husband.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but why weren't the fraudulent cell phones' service turned off by Sprint once they were informed of the problem?

I once was with sprint myself. I was paying for a nation wide service that had no roaming charges. But Sprint was charging me roaming charges anyway.

I tried to resolve the issue with them and they would do knothing. Here I was paying for a no roaming chrge plan and being charged for roaming.

I quickly became a happy Verizon customer myself.

I once was with sprint myself. I was paying for a nation wide service that had no roaming charges. But Sprint was charging me roaming charges anyway.

I tried to resolve the issue with them and they would do knothing. Here I was paying for a no roaming chrge plan and being charged for roaming.

I quickly became a happy Verizon customer myself.

Sprint used to suck. Sprint still sucks. Sprint will ALWAYS suck. I went in circles with them for months and finally just walked away because they didn't know their a--es from a hole in the ground and their customer service reps were trained in Elbonia with the pointy haired boss from Dilbert. The whole experience was so unreal that truth really was stranger than fiction

Mr. Carner is lucky. Back in the 1980's, Sprint bought the letterhead of a disbarred attorney in Dallas along with a rubber stamp of his signature and sent out hundreds of thousands of collection letters to past due customers. The letters threatened a lawsuit. The procedure was stopped after the disbarred lawyer was sentenced to jail for practicing law while disbarred and a RICO lawsuit was filed in federal court in Dallas.

I have been with Sprint for about eight years and could tell story after story about their poor customer service and unethical tactics to get their customers to renew their agreements. The only reason I have not swithced providers is because I am not sure anyone else would be better.

I have also had an issue with Sprint. I orignally signed a contract for 1400 anytime minutes for 75.00 dollars a month. At first the bill was aroune 95-100 bucks per month. Then after about a year or so the bills started climbing upward until they reached about 280 or so a month. I read over my bill and there was internet access that couldn't be accounted for and charges for a texting plan that I never signed up for. Their customer service is horrible and not to mention none of their service reps speak english. When I press 1 for english I expect to be able to understand the person I am talking to. However They told me the charges were legit and that I had to pay. I then asked when my contract expired (it was supposed to cancel in that upcoming February) They told me my contract had been extended another 2 years just because I had called the customer service line with contract and billing issues. I argued with them for months and months. Finally they sent my balance to a collection agency and I ended up settling with them. I now have ATT and couldnt be happier. If you ever call with even a suspicion of a mistake or question a charge they take it off no hassle. Also my bill has been the same every month for 2 years now. Screw Sprint they are a horrible company only interested in their bottom line.

ID theft and Sprint-just about the worst cocktail of madness one could never hope to mix

THe Sprint rep was speaking balony and she knows it. We had a calling card for my step daughters to use. Their mother got hold of it and ran up hundreds of dollars on my bill in one month. I called Sprint, acknowledged that I had to pay for it and asked them to cancel the card immediately. Sprint sent me a card with a new calling card number, but never cancelled the old one. The ex-wife ran up another $1000. Sprint still forced me to pay it, even after they looked up in their records that I'd asked for the old card to be deactivated.

My husband just opened a new business with DSL, commercial lines and 10 cell phones. All with ATT.

I too am a happy Verizon customer after maddening attempts to straighten out my bill with Sprint. I wonder how they are going to pay for their NASCAR endorsement with all of these defections?

This happened to me with BellSouth now at&t home phone and I have been fighting the charges since August... it's not just Sprint

Just try reporting to Sprint that there's a problem with your text message billing. They claim (incorrectly) that they can't release a log of your text messages (sans content) without a subpoena, which is untrue. They recommend tracking your messages on your phone, but you have no recourse if there's a discrepancy. I've spent hours on the phone with every department there, including fraud, and got absolutly nowhere. Thank God I have a friend that works at Sprint, or it never would have gotten fixed.

One phone call from the media cleared it up. Imagine that. No wonder corporate america is trying to buy up media outlets.

i've gone thru something simular. i'm still fighting over $95 they are say is interest from the fraud charges and they refuse to take it off my bill. sprint contradict themselves on everything. i have a bill i paid all but the $95 this past time. my contract was up on march 3rd. i wanted my phone shut off on march 3rd. i asked the girl in feb the only bill i should get is the $95 and nothing else since i have paid yall everything up to date then i get my phone shut off? i asked her this 3 times and all 3 times she stated yes you will only get billed for the $95 nothing else. well guess what i got another bill for another months worth of charges and no my phone can't be shut off until march 23rd the last billing day of the month. the only way i will get another bill after that is if i go over my minutes. i will have nothing to do with sprin/nextel anymore they are crooks. i still believe this thing with the ID thieft is an inside job because 6 of us friends got hit at the same time and the address the phones and services where ordered from where from Chicago and one from New Jersey. we are going with someone else at the end of the month too. DO NOT go for their new plan the unlimited everything plan. that plan is $99 PER PHONE LINE 3 phone = $298 bill a month not a good deal. they wanted me to go with that i just laughed at them.

This happened to me with Bellsouth now at&t. I have been fighting it since August with them and the collection agency. It's not just sprint.

Amazing..you have to wonder how little Sprint customer service cares when it seem obvious that something was not right. I'm glad I read this. I was going to switch to Sprint but no way.

Sprint officials said they couldn't discuss details of a customer’s account, citing privacy issues. But spokeswoman Roni Singleton confirmed the company was investigating the situation.

"When a customer accumulates incorrect charges on their account due to fraud, we will always work with the customer to ensure he or she is not charged for anything more than the appropriate balance," she said in an e-mail. "We are investigating the internal handling of Mr. Carner’s situation, and we will work directly with him to resolve any remaining issue."
---

What a load of BS. I hate PR.

This is not unique to Sprint. I had the same thing happen to me with AT&T a few years back. My phone got "cloned" while in Mexico. After a lot of back and forth, AT&T took off the calls but wouldn't refund the taxes. Their excuse was that they had no way to back out the taxes I had incurred. I told them I wouldn't pay it and they sent me to collections. It cost me about $2K if I recall correctly to fix the situation. It was a nightmare. Same thing with the cancellation fee. Except that I didn't have MSNBC to help back me up. This story really scares me though, because I have Sprint. Their customer service is the pits and I can only imagine what the experience must have been like.

in aug 2007 we upgraded our phones. 3 months later i got a call from a collection agency indicating i owed $2000.00. 4 extra phones had been added and contracts terminated resulting in the $500.00/each charge. i called sprint and got the bounce around with the fraud department; however, the charges were dropped and all was settled in about a month.

I have had NOTHING but problems with Sprint since I got into their contract. Thankfully, I haven't (yet) been a victim of ID theft, but I have had error charges on my Sprint account (that they errored on) which made me spend hours upon hours dealing with them (mostly on hold) - and/or getting bounced from one rep to another having to start the process all over again.

Trust me, when my contract is up....I'm switching service. Sprint can kiss this customer bye-bye!

The same identical thing happened to me!

I applied for a sensitive job with Unisys doing gov't contracting for the TSA. An employee at security firm hired to investigate my background stole my information gave it to her boyfriend.

Since the background check was the source of my identity theft, the thief had everything (mothers maiden name, hospital where I was born, weird stuff) It happened to 4 employees at Unisys within approximately a few months of one another, but the company refused to take any responsibility. HR took note of the incident and made no changes.

They got into my bank, my credit cards, everything.

The worst possible consequence was Sprint! The individual who stole my identity opened countless numbers of accounts with Sprint under my name. I spent probably an hour a day for 4 - 5 months trying to get the charges completely refunded.

As soon as I would get one account closed another would be opened. Sprint insisted they had no way of preventing me from opening future accounts even though it wasn't me that was opening them.

As soon as I would place a call, the individual who stole my identity would call in later that afternoon or the next morning, and change my account information making it harder for me to dispute the new charges the very next day.

This went around and around for a couple of months, until I decided to take matters in my own hands. I'd called the police multiple times, but they said there was nothing they could do. I decided to request a copy of my bill and start harassing the people who were called using these fake accounts to see if I could get at the bottom of the story.

I went down the list and called perhaps 15 - 20 of numbers of my bill, until I came to the realization that all of individuals had the same last name. I pieced together that this guy or girl was calling his family members with the stolen phone. He wasnt using this phone in particular to call fellow drug dealers, but to call his poor old grandma-ma.

So going down the list I got grandma's number. AND I annoyed the hell out of her. I asked whose number this was and she said it was her granddaughters. I venture to guess the same woman who works for the Unisys security firm. I told her that her granddaughter was a criminal and stole my identity. She got very upset SO I called grandma 3 more times to reminder.

It was like kicking a bees nest. Pretty soon I started to receive harassing phone calls in the middle of the night. They blatantly told me to stop or theyd make my life hell. Seeing that it was my only option I kept calling grandma. One night I got a call at 3 am and decided I couldnt take it anyone. I called the police whom I asked to come to the apt. I begged the young female office to help me. She told me there was nothing she could do. She was actually mildly attractive so I tried flirting. Finally I convinced her to call some of the family numbers on the list.

From there the identity theft stopped, but my battle with Sprint had just begun. It took another 4 months to convince Sprint to remove the charges. Much of the time I did not have a phone since they shut it off for late charges.

Anyway... theres a lot more to the story, but thats it in a nut shell. Thanks for reading.

Sprint customer service is the worst. It's been that way for two decades. It's just something about their corporate culture. I once had a problem that the assistant to their CEO tried to help me with.

He couldn't fix it after many months and basically advised me that "sometimes these things just don't work out."

Can you believe that?

I had a similar experience. I rely heavily on my cell phone. One morning on my way to a clients office, my cell phone was terminated due to $1250 in returned checks to Sprint. I don't write checks, I do everything online. I fought for weeks trying to understand what was going on, and I continued to get returned checks added to my account. My phone service would get disconnected, after assurances that it wouldn't. After the 4th cutoff and accumulated balance, I finally said I would cancel my account. at that point, Sprint took action. An employee at a Sprint store had taken my credit card information and was using it to purchase phone cards, only problem, he didn't write down the BRAND (VISA or MC) and was giving an inappropriate BRAND. Sprint was very disorganized. After all of that, they canceled and reinstated my account for another 2 years. After many other problems, I just left and am with T-Mobil, very happy to be here.

Just one more reason NOT to use Sprint!! If they really did care about their customers, they wouldn't do this!!!!!!

Good job Sprint. You make me proud to be an American.
I hope all those people who kept harassing him rot in hell.

Unfortunately, it's not just Sprint this happens with. My husband & I have been with Verizon for nearly 4 years. I spent nearly 2 hours on the phone 1 night with a customer service rep (not on hold) trying to get her to explain a charge & it's validity as well as a discrepancy between our billing statement & what shows on our account online. She kept giving me the runaround. Finally, she admitted there was an error & fixed it . . . after saying most people just give up & pay the difference. I'm not "most people". I can only imagine the additional revenue these companies make from people not insisting that billing errors be corrected, because it's too frustrating to deal with. When I was talking with this person, it's like they were a Stepford-person, and reading a script; never deviating from the party line. Egads, what ever happened to good old fashioned customer service?

Working with Sprint for any type of account issue or error is an absolute nightmare. I don't understand how Sprint still has customers with the attitude of their customer service representatives. True stories such as this, and the talk amongst customers, have ruined their reputation. I would never recommend Sprint to anyone. I can only hope that the same situation doesn't happen to me.

ADVICE:

I was a Sprint customer for five years, until a lightning strike on the only tower in my area knocked out service - when the tower was repaired I could no longer receive a signal in my home, where I primarily used my phone.

They insisted I pay a $250 termination fee even though it wasn't my fault that I could no longer use my phone.

After two months of frustration of countless phone calls, I contacted the Better Business Bureau in Kansas City where they are located.

I ended up having to pay $35 rather than the $250 - which was still ridiculous, but rather than go on dealing with the issue for another several months and having no cell phone, I just paid it to be done.

They are horrible to deal with and I would advise anyone having issues to contact the Better Business Bureau in KC - it seemed to get their attention.

I know you are relieved that the situation has been cleared. Thank goodness for msnbc for doing such a great service for problems such as this. I do think you should be able to sue Sprint for the lost business caused by the problem, as well as emotional loss caused by the harrasment. If they had to dig deep, maybe they would be more anxious to stop the problems right away.

My mother was in a nursing home...someone, somehow called a military base in Japan for $195.00. Sprint could not help us find out who made the call. The nursing home made an investigation, ould not find that any of their employees made the call...they paid, but told me the next time I would have to pay.
We hated to leave poor mother without a phone, but we had to remove it.

John, Sneads Ferry, NC

I think a part of the bigger problem is that people have come to actually believe WITHOUT QUESTION what the little box in front of them is telling them..."That's what is says on my computer, so it MUST be right". They need to THINK for themselves and use the computer as a tool, not an omnipotent ("having very great or unlimited authority, power or knowledge") entity. p.s. I too have Sprint, but am in the process of switching!

Sounds to me like there is some sort of inside link to the extra phone lines and easy hook-ups. We instill trust into the telemarketers who answer these calls at the service centers. I have known people who work in this field, and they can be pretty shady.

I called to open an account with Sprint. I asked for a plan they were prompting at the time. When I got my bill it was NOTHING like the plan I signed up for. When I called back the Sales Rep.he told me mine was a "Secret" special account. They could not put on paper the great benefits I would receive. By keeping me Hanging on thru another Billing cycle (30) days They figured they had me locked -up. They are Liars and Sprint should be Class Actioned out of business.

I had Sprint service briefly in 2000 with no problems (no contract), but when I tried signing up again some years later, it cost me. I signed up but soon discovered the coverage was nonexistent. I sent the phone back less than a week after I ordered service, well within the 14-day return window. Naturally, I received a bill for the price of the phone, activation fee, a full month of service, AND an early termination fee. A phone call took care of the ETF and service charges, but I still ended up out about $95 for the phone and activation fee, both of which should have been refunded in full according to the account agreement. Never again! Verizon for me.

Yes, their business practices are abysmal. Since leaving Spring in 2004, I have received several "Won't you try our service" sales calls, and ask each one, "Well, where is my 'refundable fee' of $80 I paid in 2002?" They immediately hang up, and I don't hear from them again for about a year... (Sprint blames the lack of records that any fee was even paid, let alone owed, to the fact that the 'payment center' closed down, so it was the 3rd party center's fault... Problem? It was owned by Sprint, not a 3rd party!)

When I was in college, my roommate was on the phone literally every month when he got his Sprint bill over some sort of mistake. But it's a mistake to believe that only Sprint is like this. To some degree, all cell phone companies are awful to deal with.

I had a similar situation with Verizon. Wireless companies are all the same. Horrible customer service and billing, but we can't live without it unfortunately...

Maybe I am the lucky one...but I have had Sprint for almost 9 years- I have good connections, good data and never had an significant customer service issue...as a matter of fact..I must say their service has gotten better too...an example is my company started paying for my phone...so they transferred it to my company, it did cause an issue w/plans on the other 3 phones on the account...but 1 call got the plan squared away and the proper credits issues...10 min on the phone,,done...

When I was a Sprint customer, I would never get my calls and they would automatically go to voicemail and then the alert wouldn't let me know I had a message until days later. I called Sprint and the response from the "customer service" representative was, "Well, you can't expect to receive EVERY call." I asked, "What is that supposed to mean?...of course I can...I DO expect to receive every call!" and she said, "Well if there are any trees or buildings in the way of your signal you won't get the call." I said, "Well, then I guess you can't expect to get ALL your money...cancel my contract and I will sign up again if I move to the Sahara Desert where there are no buildings and trees." So, she cancelled it and sent the $200 bill. I refused to pay it and they put me in collections. And screw them, I will leave it in collections till the end of time.

This is why I do not and will never have a cell phone. I can easily live without them and the BS that this man had to go through was outrageous.

The best defense to this sort of thing is to limit your 'exposure' as much as possible. In the end, it is really worth it.

I had very similar problems with Sprint a couple of years back. And yes, the couple of hundred dollar thing over and over. I took my family and my company and moved to Verizon - and I won't ever look back.

So far, Verizon has been very good to us.

Just a thought, why does it take two months to realize there are problems with your account? If he pays his bill every month, wouldnt he have noticed if he didnt get a bill one month? I cant argue about the service, but sometimes there is some personal responsibility called for.

Sounds to me SPRINT should be charged under the RICO Act, with the ID thieves.

I made the mistake of going with Sprint when I got my first cell phone. All calls, incoming and outgoing were dropped. Sprint even acknowledged that there was a problem so I gave them back their phone and said no thanks. I then spent the next year battling them because they said I owed a $200 fee. For what??? I never received service! Stay away from Sprint! I can't believe they are still in business with their scams.

Just went though cancellation hell with Sprint.
I had a Sprint account for a whole week before I
had enough. One call to customer service was all it took for me to get pissed off enought to cancel. Then the nightmare started. For three months they tried to collect an early termination fee (which is not owed if you cancel within 30 days of service). I can't even tell you how many phone calls it took along with the hours of frustration and the constant hangups and discontects.
"Shanika" at Sprint customer service is not only rude, but also uncaring. Their entire workforce should be fired. Every single person I have ever dealt with at sprint is either an idiot, or just plain dismissive. I hate that company and I can't wait for them to go out of business. Nobody who works there even deserves to be employed. By anybody. I hope to God they all lose their jobs.

I had a similar, but WORSE experience with Southwestern Bell, now Cingular/AT&T. Someone stole my identity to get a cell phone. THe put his name, address, and drivers license #, but used MY SSN to obtain credit. For years, I knew nothing about it until I received a credit card off that said, "don't ruin your credit, pay your cellphone bill that is $2500 using this new credit card." I didn't EVEN HAVE a cell phone and started investigating what had happened. After the fraud, SWB, without even contacting me, had sold "my" uncollected "debt" account to this collection company. I knew the name, address, and drivers license of the thief, but he wasn't arrested. They wouldn't even go after him. The police, the Wal-Mart where he got the phone, or SWB. Too little fish for everyone but me. Meanwhile, I kept getting collection notices, and the balance due kept growing because of penalties. It was over $4000 for a phone I never even had. Finally, I got them to agree to leave me alone. Then 2 years later, that collections company had sold the "debt" to another company and the trouble began again with more letters threatening me. Thank God I had saved copies of all the letters from the first round, the affadavit that my identity had been stolen, the original offer of "credit" to reduce my "debt," and everything else. I will probably have to keep that stuff for the rest of my life! I understand that SWB had a practice of selling "debts" that they knew people hadn't made!

I recently went through an experience like this with Sprint however I was transfered to an "off shore" help desk were English was not their first language. They were incredibly rude and not in any way helpful. I was told I couldn't speak with a supervisor or manager because the customer service rep had done nothing wrong. She then hung up. Somehow charges for a ringtone service were added to my bill, the next service rep insisted I had authorized the addition with a test message. After about 3 hours and 4 phone calls later, I ended up in a call center in Salt Lake. They were able to help me. Sprint is making a huge mistake exposing their customers to rude or offshore centers.

Hmm, maybe I am the lucky one...but good service, good customer service..and getting better...have been a customer service..I mean they are't perfect...but no worse then anyone else...had an issue and it took one phone call for the proper credits to be applied...

I had a really bad experience with Sprint. I got out and I now warn friends who are thinking about joining Sprint to not do so unless they like fighting.

in the future, keep a record of what happened and file a complaint with the BBB and get the media/your Senator/Rep involved.

Oh that article just made me seethe. I HATE SPRINT. I had a sprint cell phone for years. I paid for insurance, I had a phone that was in my house when there was a fire. I called sprint and told them I needed a new phone, they said fine and I picked out a new phone, they said to send the old one back, and they sent me the packaging to do that. I dropped the phone in the mail and figured it was over with. Then the next month I had $599 tacked on to my bill, apparently they never received the phone. Well, they told me, I should have just lied and said the phone was gone or stolen and the issue would have been over with. Every month I would get my phone shut off and have to call them back, they would extend it another month. I was working half the month in Canada and I switched my plan to extend it, I had a plan that gave me 10,000 minutes a month. I added the international calling onto it as well. Then I get a bill for $3,500!!! The person who I spoke to about switching my plan had removed the intl calling and I was being charge 1.99 a minute for roaming! Once again, every month my phone would be shut off and I would have to call them and spend 1.5 - 2 hours on the phone getting is fixed, all they would do is make a note and extend it. It got to the point where when I would call and give them my name I would here "Oh my... Wow.. hang on I have to read this" there were flags all over the account, it was insane, eventually I ended up canceling the service, they sent me to collection and now I have a negative mark on my credit. SPRINT IS TERRIBLE, THE CUSTOMER SERVICE IS TERRIBLE, DO NOT USE THEM FOR ANY REASON!.. Wow my blood pressure is up. I am an internet marketer by trade, this has re-sparked my venom for Sprint, I think I will start my badmouthing campaign online again, its no problem for me to get my articles read by 50,000 people.

Where do you think Sprint is getting all of the cash to "sponsor" NASCAR??? Vroom vroom...

My husband works in NASCAR (Ha ha the Sprint Cup Series!!!!) They all have Sprint phones and NONE of them work at any of the racetracks. The sponsor of the series cannot even get their Sprint phones to work at a Sprint NASCAR race!!!! They are such a joke! The NASCAR officials who have Verizon have no trouble making calls during the race weekend. We would love to get out of our contract, but everytime we call to say the phones don't work, our contract gets extended!!!!!!

This exact thing happened to my father's cell phone number. I had called to discontinue service with Sprint as he had passed away after a long battle with cancer. No sooner had I called to cancel, insane phone usage started to show up from an "added" line in another state! Imagine the emotional turmoil I had to go through battling Sprint on behalf of my dead father so soon after his passing! It went on for months. I will never use Sprint.

Typical of Sprint, not wanting to return a payment for a phone oedered and returned, they said they could not find where I had paid for it until a letter from Ohio's Attorney General reached them after providing the details of this fiasco on wanting to get a refund. Finally I got to talk with a human without waiting over an hour with each call to their customer service.

One previous dealing had me calling home office before someone was reached that could make a decision on a rebate and get the earned check in the mail. I thnk we should be able to bill them for the time spent on hold trying to resolve their mistakes.
The worst customer service in the US, or is it in the US still?

My experience with sprint 10 years ago was my last. I signed up and they sent a phone without a charger or battery. They told me it would take 3 weeks to receive one in the mail or I could drive to the "closest" store 35 miles away. I live in a major city and the closet store was 2 miles away but they only authorized the pickup at the farther store. I told them to cancel and I would return the phone. I was billed for 6 months and an early termination fee before it was resolved even the the phoen WAS NEVER USED. I will never give them by business again.

No surprise, I also had many years of wildly fluctuating bills, overcharges on family plans, erroneous charges, overtaxation and many hours battling customer service reps who I swear at times were high when I talked to them. Although I have sinced switched to Tmobile (and enjoy a hassle-free experience and consistent billing thank you), I did want to share my tip with current Sprint users on how they might get their problems resolved more quickly - it worked for me. In years past when I used to have Sprint problems it occurred to me after a while that the telephone reps were UTTERLY USELESS when it came to complicated account/billing questions that would actually require any type of research to resolve. Through all of this, I finally discovered a hard-to-find Sprint customer service group in London, Kentucky that was really first-rate. On at least 3 occassions, after numerous, repeated and frustrating attempts to get the regular phone reps to even understand the basic math involved in my billing problems, I took to the course of writing a letter explaining my particular situation and sending it off to this particular customer service group. Not only did they actually understand, quicly correct and fully compensate me for my troubles but if you can believe it I actually got a New Years card the next year from their office saying that they appreciated my business as a Sprint customer. THIS SOLE GROUP within the company seems to be truly outstanding and very customer-focused based on my experience (the rest of the customer service clowns at Sprint outside this group not so much). I still had to ultimately switch to Tmobile to keep my sanity, but without this particular group I probably still would be battling Sprint over billing problmes today. By the way, Sprint seems to now be doing everthing it can to keep the contact information for this group from their external website. Therefore I'm going to publish their contact info here. I hope this is helpful to some of the current Sprint customers - I feel your pain! Here it is: Sprint Customer Support, PO Box 8077, London, KY 40742

It's a drag that so many people have these problems with a service that is so vital to our way of life. It's the public's responsibility to demand better, but what options do we have? Verizon and TMobile are the same, and it seems that none of these companies care. Make noise people! Incidentally, I switched TO Sprint from TMobile 5 years ago for customer service reasons and have been delighted with my service ever since.

Maybe MSNBC can get Sprint to start sending me my bills again. I have been trying to get Sprint to fix the trouble for months, and every month they say its fixed but its not. So I am now to tired to fight. Someone please help.

THis sounds like one more example of someone not being persistent enough and not paying attention to their bill. The problem with identity theft is that it causes all kinds of issues and if it was easy to deal with then nobody would worry about it. Obviously Sprint needs to step up to the plate but this is common corporate behavior now and while it is not necessarily good it also should be expected and the consumer needs to be armed and ready to deal with it.

As for the crap about fees, find a company that doesnt do it. Just make sure you are CERTAIN when you sign up for a contract with cancellation fees attached, they sure as hell never snuck that crap on me I knew what I was getting into when I signed a contract with an early termination fee and Ive been a customer for 7 years.

Sprint/Nextel has the worst customer service that I have unfortunatley had dealings with in my entire life. The reps do not hide the fact that they clearly do not care about "Customers". I have more than a couple of bad Sprint stories...I am now with Verizon and still fighting with them about service I have been trying to discontinue for a while. I am now in the process of having an attorney intercept.

Too bad Sprint is a major employer in my city. They lay off they're workers all the time and I hear it is a morale busting place to work. Our new SPRINT Center arena will probably have a new name shortly. P.S. I left Sprint as a customer and went to T-Mobile and never looked back.

Well the dumarse. He should have CANCELLED the account IMMEDIATELY and resolved the final bill then and there. Instead, they let it drag out months and months.

I just wanted to add a comment to this board....I should be shocked by these comments but after dealing with sprint for 7 years, NOTHING surprises me....seriously, I had it all...the extra bills, the extra charges, the continous changing of my plan, the constant phone shutoffs followed by long LONG hours dealing with their sorry a$$ excuse for a customer service dept from somewhere in india or wherever there is cheap labor...not to mention the lies and deception and CONSTANT extentions of my contract...I too had my identity taken back in 2001 by someone local...at the time I thought it was because I had lost my license in a hotel room...now i wonder if it wasnt something more sinister...however to Sprints credit at the time my situation was corrected fairly quickly and I was never billed again, altho I am sure my supposed "BROTHER" who the phone was for was never caught and enjoyed some great free phone service at my expense. That being said, Sprint corrected the problem but keep in mind this was when Sprint was fairly new to the cellular phone industry and therefore had some honest people working there....since them I have had nothing but problems though, although I can tell you its not just sprint....I have since switched to T-Mobile prepaid (to avoid the hassle of a plan) and have had some problems too although even if TMobile burned down my house, shot my dog AND took a knife to each and every piece of clothing I own, they would STILL be a FAR STEP above the evil, lying, theiving company that has come to be known as Sprint

I had a similar situation happened w/international calls to the Dominican Republic. I know no one there. To get rid of the charges it took approximately 4 aggravating months, where I would call to try & fix the situation & got one idiot after another (hardly speaking English). During these conversations I would document the time of the call;the name of the person. In the long run this was what saved me from paying hundreds of dollars for call I did not make. The representatives are not that nice & not that helpful i.e., they stick to their guns as this is what has been taught to them (robotic). My service expires in November & I cannot wait to change to another company.

Holy crap. We've had sprint for about 3 years and even though we've had the occasional goof-up here or there, we haven't experienced ANYTHING even close to the nightmares posted here.

I've never once had an operator fail to inform me when an account change (adding a new line, upgrading for a new phone, etc) would extend our contract. Only one time did any fraudulent activity occur with our account (some secondary company began charging us for some weird premium texting thing that we never requested or authorized) and that took a little work to convince the Sprint personnel we didn't request it, sign up for it, or in any way allow ourselves to get duped into signing up for it. I disabled all premium texting services and they eventually removed all the charges.

The difference I've noticed is when you can catch a CSR who's actually from the US. God help you if you end up in one of their overseas call centers. I can't tell you how many times my call has been dumped out of the queue or hung up on by a CSR to "improve" their hold times.

Remember, most call centers are evaluated on their hold and call times. That CSR on the other end of your call just wants to get your call resolved as quickly as easily as possible. They likely don't have the greatest training in the world or aren't solely focused on listening to you. (They're typing, looking at screens, etc, while taking your call.) Making yourself as clearly understood while remaining polite, yet firm, will get you the best results. But sometimes, you're just better off hanging up and calling back to play CSR roulette.

My son set up a Sprint cell phone account and gave our home number as a contact. They "slammed" our long distance service. As we didn't know it we assumed the bills we were receiving were for our son and sent them to him. They did't get paid. Sprint cut off our phone service. It was a nightmare getting it straightened out. I would use smoke signals before I would use Sprint.

Sprint is acting as all other business's act, SOP. Contact anyone you can to recoup as much of the loss as possible regardless of who is at fault!

Personally, I do not have a cell phone, they all are rip off artists.

Turn off the TV, Turn on Life!©

One more reason not to use Sprint: I paid my monthly Sprint/Nextel bill using their website, thinking it would be easier than using my bank's bill pay feature. About three weeks later I get a call from Sprint saying that my account is past due. I called my bank to see if the charge had cleared and it hadn't...Sprint never accepted the charge from my bank, so after five days, my bank refunded the money to my account. Sprint wouldn't accept the fact that their company had screwed up and berated me on the phone for about 15 minutes before I hung up. My contract with them ends in 26 days and it couldn't be soon enough.

I don't know why you all have this problem. Must be something in the water. I have had Sprint for over 7 years and had my account set up so that no one could do anything in my account (phone or internet site) without either the rep or the internet site asking for my password. I cannot believe that everyday the same people see ID theft in massive amounts and they don't do anything to protect themselves. Shame on you. If you cannot think far enough ahead to head off the thieves and criminals, you almost deserve what you get. And of course, none of us ever want these things to happen to us, but it takes vigilance on our parts to help the companies that also lose millions of dollars because we want to blame everyone else but ourselves for our own stupidity. And no, I am not a Sprint employee and I have been the victim twice in my life because of my own stupidity. At least some of us learn from our mistakes and took the initiative to stop other people from having control.

I find it hilarious that I'm reading this article today, considering that before I came to work my boyfriend and I were trying to figure out our own Sprint problems. We both use Sprint and got the phones for good reasons--I got it because of the nation-wide roaming which makes it so much easier to call my parents in Alaska. He got his Sprint phone because it would mean we could call each other for free. Little did we know they had the world's worst customer service! Our number one problem would have to be their "security" issues. We've had to change the passwords on our phones and on the website several times over, and it's gotten to the point where they tell us to change it several times a month, we pay our bills late because we can't access the pay-by-phone or pay it online due to the lack of correct passwords, PINs, usernames, etc. Our latest problem is that my boyfriend paid his bill last week sometime, which was by the due-date. He normally pays around $65 a month, but he's received every sort of harassment saying we owe them $175! Apparently they only just withdrew the money from his account THIS MORNING, and since they show it as being all of maybe 5 days late, we have to pay an additional $110! If I find another plan that easily covers my Alaska calls, I'm switching.

Same SPRINT story here...I signed up for a certain plan and when I received my first bill, it was for a different, more expensive plan. When I called and asked about it, they acknowledged the error, but said I could use the plan I signed up for. I requested termination and they agreed, giving me directions for dropping off the new phones at a SPRINT store. When I went to the store, they told me I had to pay the early termination fee. I was absolutely dumbstruck. I had documented everyone I talked to and cited the customer service reps name and the conversation....but they said that was all well and good, but that the early termination fee still applied no matter what the customer service rep stated. They said go ahead and sue us...you'll spend more on a lawsuit than by just paying the termination fee. This went round and round for 2 more months even though I had cancelled service and was using another carrier. I finally paid the termination fee out of frustration so I wouldnt have to deal with endless hours of their customer service run around. To make it interesting, I paid them 4 cents extra...so they keep sending me a monthly statement which shows I have a credit....this has gone on for 2 years now and I laugh everytime I think of the money they spend on printing and mailing me this every month!!!

I attempt to resolve the problem with a company like anybody else. After two times dealing with a company, if the problem is not resolved I will ask for their company's complaint department mail address. I then compose a letter stating the situation, the problems I have encountered, the people from their company I have spoken with (Name and employee ID), time, date and the response I have received from their company. The last paragraph of my letter I ask for a certified return letter from them responding to the problem. I also warn if I do not receive a response from them within an acceptable time frame, 2 - 3 weeks, my next letter will be sent to the State Attorney General, Consumer Protection division with a copy of all our correspondence. I then send my letter to the company, certified return and wait for their response. The two times I have done this, one company immediately fixed the problem and the state did not become involved. The other company challenged us so I contacted the State and they became the arbitor. Even though I did not "win," the company became very responsive to the States letters. I just won't put up with a companies ineptitude.

I have been a Sprint user for more than 10 years now and yes I have had problems with them. The BIGGEST problem that I had with them was at one of the Sprint stores. When one of the kids phones had problems working wwe would take it back to the store where we bought it. The person there would look at it then say "You have water in it, and you need a new phone." This went on time after time, until one day I bought a phone else where and took it to the store and told the manager there that something was wrong with my phone. He took it, looked at it and told me that there was water in the phone and that I would have to replace it. I told him that I just bought the phone less that two hours ago, took it out of the package in my car while sitting in the parking lot, did not charge it at all....how can there be water in the phone? I told him that this is what he tell everyone when they come into this store. The manager left thru the back door and I have yet to see him again. I called Sprint customer care and filed a complaint, I must have gotten some one that knew what they were doing and corrected ALL of the problems that we had had in the past, and extended my contract at NO CHARGE. I am not sure if that was a good thing or not, but so far all of the problem that we had in the past ARE GONE at no extra cost. Yes there are a lot of problems with Sprint, ATT, Nextel and the rest......but what are we to do? If we think that is is bad here.....try living overseas like I have and deal with the cell phone compaines. What we have in comparision is a walk in the park.

Sprint is a mess. I've never had a Spring account, but had an identity theft issue where someone opened Sprint accounts in my name. I only found out when I had a collection agency track me down. Sprint had let people open an account over the phone and then shipped phones to at an address that I had never lived at. It's unbelievable that they can do that without any kind of identification or anything.

When I called Spring to figure out what was going on, it was a nightmare to get somone on the phone because I didn't know an account number to "enter your account number". It took hours out of my life to get someone one the phone to cancel the accounts and stop the collection. Their fraud department was next to useless.

When I finally got out of my Sprint contract I was greatly relieved. They automatically renewed my contract, then claimed I was the one who extended it, and refused to show me a signed copy with my signature. Not only that but when I finally did get it cancelled, I was assured that I would not be charged a cancellation fee. But lo and behold, I was charged the fee. I argued with them and finally contacted the Atty Gen's office in my state. I was also continually hit with roaming charges in areas where there was coverage. I will never go back to Sprint

We signed a 2yr. contract with sprint in 2000. The first year we suffered through endless billing problems that never seemed to be corrected. Finally ended up just paying over $170.00 in misc.charges that were "supposed" to be removed as they shouldn't have been added in the first place.
In 2001, we moved to another state and had 8 months
left of the 2yr. contract. Sprint had no tower in the area we moved. We tried to cancel service on our 2 phones and went with Verizon. Sprint held us accountable for early contract cancellation fees, even through they could provide absolutely NO service within a 10 mile radius of our home.
We took it to the BBB, the FCC and the local senator. They stopped collection calls, but never would remove the collection bill from our credit report and went against the advice of the BBB to allow exception of cancellation for no service as included in the original contract. Sprint is not worth the money, time or effort.

This happened to me. Someone opened a T-Mobile account in my name. I never knew it (because I had a different carrier.) I only found out when I started getting collection calls. It was so obvious that I didn't open the account, but I was harassed for over a year. The only thing that helped was contacting my State's Attorney. They really stepped in and helped resolve the situation. When T-Mobile realized they couldn't push me around (I had a police report and the state gov't on my side) they bent over backwards to clean up the situation. I have no idea how my identity was stolen. I do know I WILL NEVER do business with T-Mobile. Ever.

Although I did not have ID theft, I had a problem with Sprint unilaterally extending my service agreement and then charging me BOTH a termination fee and continued fees for service. It went through several collection agencies and did not stop until I went through the Better Business Bureau. Luckily, I still had my original service agreement or I would have been screwed. I don't understand how this corporation stays in business. My brother also had a problem with Sprint.

I've never been a victim of identity theft, but my experience with Sprint was just this bad-I would completely pay the bill, and then get shut off because they said I owed them an extra 25 cents, even though I had proof the bill was paid in full. When my contract was up and I decided to switch to Verizon, they charged me the termination fee, even though the contract was done...I would never go back to Sprint, and question the sanity of those who deal with them.

I dropped my Sprint land line about 10 years ago before cell phones were hip. They gave me a horrible run-around and massive bogus charges when I moved to a new house. Personnel at the local office were so rude and vicious to me, others in the long line were astonished. I swore I'd never use Sprint again and I'd tell everyone to do the same.

I had a very similar incident with a stolen cellphone. It was reported within 10 minutes to Verizon. They started doing downloads and i started receiving $1000 a month bills. I would call them every month and go through the nightmare & tell the story each time. It took 6 MONTHS for Verizon to shut off a stolen cellphone! I was put through the ringer, lied to & told it was taken care of and they could not use the phone anymore, transfered all over the country, etc and the next month was the same thing. After I finally threatened in writing to call my attorney, someone figured it out. Is it rocket science or what???

I renewed a two year agreement over the phone with Sprint(Nextel). Six months later they add $16 per month to the service. They said they had no record of the agreeement. I stopped paying and got AT&T. I have been fighting with them ever since. Bait and Switch. I am hoping for a class action lawsuit. They need a final blow to put them out of business. They have ripped way to many people off.

I would never under any circumstances do business with Sprint, and fortunately never have. Any time the subject comes up in conversation, I always encourage people to avoid them at all costs or switch if they're a current customer. I'm really amazed that there's not a class action lawsuit against them for the stuff they pull.

I have Verizon for my cell service, and I've never had any issues at all, so in truth I can't complain about them. However, as much a racket as these phone companies have going with early cancellation fees and so forth, I admit that I've nevertheless been tempted to switch to a pay-as-you-go provider. Now if I can only get my cable company to stop their futile efforts to sell me land line service. (I haven't had a land line in 5 years.)

Before you get a cell phone, you should definitely check out the provider first. New security measures have been implemented by cell phone companies to prevent this type of fraud. For example, US Cellular does not extend contracts over the phone (and does not extend them for things like rate plan changes, etc). The account holder has to go into the store and be verified with a valid photo ID to sign the contract. You can't even get an account balance at a store without presenting a photo ID. While it may seem like a hassle, I'd rather show my ID any day than deal with what companies like Sprint do.

SPRINT IS THE DEVIL. We had a customer service rep basically LIE to us when we tried to end our service. We were willing to pay the early termination fee but he tried to get us to stay on our plan for 5 more months to avoid that fee and he reduced our plan (we weren't using our phones as much) to a special rate. Well five months later when we tried to cancel our plan the CSR stated we would get an early termination fee of 250 dollars cause our contract was extended. I was totally floored. We told them what the other CSR said and they were like "we have no record of that happening." They said we verbally agreed to have our contract extended. wow. We argued with them on the phone for an hour and they eventually HUNG UP on us. We got the BBB involved and just called sprint over and over. eventually one csr relented and we had our contract expire in a month. the day OF i switched from sprint to verizon and i will NEVER look back.

I have been a Nextel/Sprint customer for more than years, and I have never been able to figure out their bill. As long as it is the same (or very close) every month I just pay it. The bill should be simpler to read and understand

None of these large telecomunications companies care about their customers. I for one have had no problem with Sprint and have been happy with them for 4 years now, however in dealing with Verizon its like being held hostage. I recently had Verizon FIOS installed in my home and the installation charges were advertised as free, yet within the first two weeks I had a new Verizon bill for 400.00. After spending over 10 hours on the phone with Verizon and getting transferred from one state to another and one department to another I eventually gave up dealing with their customer service. I contacted my local newspaper, the Daily Record, and they intern worte and article about Verizon treating their customers poorly. After that article my fees were waived, it doesn't end there though. I tried ordering HBO and Starz numerous times but of course I couldn't do that because I had to wait on hold for an hour or two at a time just to get through to someone to order HBO. This seems like a no brainer to me, don't you think Verizon would want to make it easier for clients to order services, when its so difficult it slost revenue for them as far as I am concerned, but I think they are lazy and cheap....Finally after getting through (a couple of months later) I ordered my HBO and STARZ but they talked me into adding the phone line getting the "tripple Play package" but promised I would get a free TV with the order. Well its now 3 months later and I have yet to see a free TV. SURPRISE SURPRISE. Now of course Verizon has set up an appointment for me to come out to my house and establish my phone service, the appointment was set for exactly one month later and I had to take the day off from work. I had a bad feeling just because I don't trust Verizon anymore but my feeling was right, I sat home all day and no one showed, I called spent hours on the phone and still no one showed. Finally at about 6pm frustrated and pissed I got through to a technician who proimised they would be out the next day, so now I took another day from work and to my amazement after all the promises what do you think happened, they never showed up again!!!! I called and once again spent hours on the phone to finally be told they were to busy and could not send anyone out and that I would have to set up another appointment. venetually within a week a very nice service technician came out and set my phone up. The sad thing is even the service technicians believe Verizon takes advantage of their customers and are unorganized. Back to the free TV once again trying to find out where my free TV is I have to wait hours on the phone to get an answer but no answer yet as to where my TV is and fianlly Verizon charges me 1.00 a month to have my telephone number unlisted which is a total scam, because literaly 1 hour after having the phone service turned on we started recieveing sales calls non-stop, of course they knew our name, what does that mean, only one thing, that Verizon sold our information to telemarketing companies, There is no way that a telemarketing company could have our telephone number and information within 1 hour of having our service turned on. Veirzon sells personal information even when you pay them not to dislose personal information. I have since signed up for the do not call registry, but that doesn't even help because Verizon is obvioulsy still selling my information. Should't they be fined for that. I believe it is time for the government to step in and start regulating these companies and their practices, oh but that won't happen because our government and its leaders; democrats and republicans alike stand to make something from these large corportaions. I just don't understand how these business models work for these companies, its the customers who keep them alive yet they still mistreat all of us. Wouldn't you want to make your cu