My heart started beating faster when I opened my email, checked my Sprint bill and saw that $1525 was about to be automatically withdrawn from my checking account to pay for this. I’m signed up for automatic payments so that part wasn’t a surprise, but the amount definitely was.
What happened was that a long time ago, I was given free roaming on my account because I was having lots of trouble connecting to sprint towers and I was dropping phone calls about once every 5 mins. It was driving me crazy and after about 3 hours of working with Sprint Technicians I was ready to drop Sprint and go with another company. However, they eventually suggested I put my phone on “Roaming Networks Only” and that did seem to solve my problem. They told me they would give me free roaming so that I wouldn’t be charged.
For some reason, my free roaming got turned off but my phone is still set to “Roaming Networks Only” so I was racking up those roaming charges which resulted in my astronomical bill.
I called Sprint Customer service, which if you notice at the bottom of the bill, is provided “free of charge”, and I got it worked out. I was on the phone for 1 hour and 34 minutes but after getting up the chain a little bit, they were helpful and solved my problem. Just think of the disaster I would be in if I didn’t catch this in time.
I really have been treated well by Sprint Customer Service which is why I’ve been a customer for 7 years now. They truly value me as a customer and they prove it by giving me a really great deal on my plan. The service could be improved, but I don’t know of any cell phone company where that isn’t true.
My contract is actually up in one month so I’ll entertain the idea of switching, but probably will stay with Sprint.
What cell phone company do you use and how do you feel about them?
Sprint is evil.
We were customers for over 10 years and left them for Verizon. Why? When you as an existing customer gets a lesser deal to renew than a new customer walking in off the streets, I feel I am no longer important to them as a loyal customer. As a new Sprint customer, you get better deals on plans, phones, rebates, etc. As an existing customer, you can keep your same plan and phone, well, they will cut you a small deal on a new phone. Sprint’s phone selections didn’t meet our needs. Their customer support in dealing with these and other issues was “well, we dont really give a flying monkey ******* about you”. Since they didn’t care about us, we didn’t care about them. We’re much happier with Verizon. Sprint has been bleeding hundreds of thousands of customers over the last 8 months and may be at the point where they will actually try to keep their existing customers. The killing points we had with them was when they switching their computer systems last summer and deleted all our online pix, changed our account number, etc etc. In today’s world, if you have to make that major of a change to your internal systems, you HAVE to make it transparent to your customers. Their remedy for the disruption? A 20% off coupon on buying one new accessory for our phone! WTF!?!? And then when we found out they renewed our contract for two years “just coz they hadn’t heard from us when our contract expired so the system just went ahead and renewed it for you automatically.” Of course, the system didn’t magically renew our contract until we cancelled our service with them, in which case they decided to bill us $400 for early termination of our contract.
Several phone calls, written letters, and including the attorney general’s office, Sprint decided that maybe they made a mistake and we really didn’t have a contract with them and they’d be glad to change our bill from $400 to $0. Yeah, not a fan of Sprint.
But that’s my rant…. If you worked out a “free roaming” deal with them, keep it! But make sure you get it in writing! Even to the point of sending them a written letter, certified mail, along with a copy to your state’s attorney general/customer protection agency.
I’ve heard really good things about Verizon and when my phone is set to roaming only, I’m actually using Verizon towers, and they seem to be great. I agree with you that the sprint phone selection sucks, so I’ll see what happens once my contract is up!