Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
As the Sprint Nextel board pushed their CEO out the door yesterday I got yet another call from their collections department over my billing issue. A (not so) short chronology of events:
I got the new Mogul in mid-July. (I still love the phone, BTW, but that's for another post.)
I paid my current bill in early August as usual, then got a notice in the mail that Sprint was transitioning our account to a new billing system, which meant that I couldn't use the web-based payment system for a few days. No problem, as those days fell well before the next bill came due. (The letter came with assurances that if a bill was due during that time that there would be no penalty for late payment.)
I got a larger than usual bill in the mail. This was to be expected with the upgrade and the partial month's service on the Mogul. About this time my husband got notification that he was approved for a discount on our phone service through is new employer. (He's had the same job for seven or so years, but different employers with buyouts and the like. Such is the nature of the tech business.) We'll get a new account number with the September 9 bill. Peachy.
August 30. I go online to pay the bill. I can see the amount of the bill, but I can't pay through the web site. Sprint says that online payment is down. Fine. The bill isn't due yet, but I drive down to the Sprint store and pay at the kiosk. My duty discharged, I await my shiny new September bill, complete with discount.
The following Friday: Two bills arrive with different account numbers and different balances on each. I can't make heads or tails of them, so I call Sprint. Turns out one is the old account and one is the new account. I'm told to disregard the balance on the old account. Great.
The next Monday: A demand letter arrives, threatening terrible things if I don't pay off the balance on account #1. I ignore it, assuming that I'd taken care of the whole issue and the demand was already in the mail.
Sprint's collections department calls me on the 26th, a couple of days after they'd called one of the cell phones. We returned the call on the cell phone and was told there was no outstanding balance on the account. I explain the situation to the collections guy; he says he'll call back in a couple of weeks. Yeesh.
Friday the 28th: Another demand letter. I call the collections number and am unsurprised to discover I have no past-due balance. I get online and discover I can now pay my bill, so I pay the amount due on the new account. (It's not even due yet, but I'm trying to show I care, even if they don't.) I call Sprint. A rep tells me that I do owe the balance on the first account. Great, says I, I'd like to be able to pay it. Should I go to the Sprint store, or can it get transfered to my new number and I'll pay on the web? (Yes, I'm miffed, but if I really do owe the money then I want to pay it. I just wish someone would tell me the truth.) She puts me on hold and we get disconnected. ::headdesk:: I call back and get in touch with (of course) a different rep. We discover that what probably happened was that I paid the balance on the old account in full, but for some reason the payment got applied to the new account. However, this doesn't explain the leftover balance on the old account, which was about 1/3 of what I paid. (BTW, the balance on the new account was less than the outstanding balance on the old account.) He put me on hold and then came back and told me that I didn't owe anything. Was he sure, I asked. Yep. He'd also put a note in my account. If I got another demand letter I was to ignore it. If another collections person called I was to tell them there was a note on my account. Great. Super.
Yesterday. The collections agent called back. Still no Caller ID, but he's not asking for any personal information. I told him the story and he said he'd put it in the database.
The upshot is that Sprint really needs to get their CS issues ironed out. All of the reps I spoke with during this ordeal were very nice - some even taking pains to note that they were based in the US. Still, this is intolerable. It shouldn't take a month for this to get straightened out. And if I find out they've reported this to the credit bureaus, there WILL be hell to pay. We've worked hard to get a high credit rating, and I don't want it trashed because of something outside of my control. I paid on time.
Just checked the Sprint site, and my next bill isn't online, but I show no outstanding balance. We shall see.
Tags: Sprint Hates Me