I only recently found this site and decided this morning to report on several issues I have had over the past 6 months with SprintPCS.
I have never had the misfortune of suffering from a service blackout in pouplated areas, though I have heard many complaints about this. My own complaints are with the billing process and the support personel.
Bill Payments: It only came to my attention after my phone was actually shut off that the online payment system (billpay) does not actually submit charges within 12 hours as stated on the website. This system may take up to 3 days to actually submit the charges to the bank. The charges do have a date in the description, but this date is generally one to two days after the charge was really placed by the customer (myself).
The company then adds an additional couple days after the charges are sent to the bank (supposedly the amount of time it took for the bank to get back to them) and uses this as your paid date. On two seperate occasionas I have had my phone turned off because the bill was not paid when the cycle turned to the next cycle, causing my account to be over the specified limit.in the first case the bill was due on the 12th (mon.) of the month. The initial payment was made on the website on the 5th (mon.) The bank processed the payment on the 12th (mon) with a description from Sprint/Billpay using the date of the 10th (thurs). The banks submission time was wed. Night. The phone was shutoff early Thursday (15th) morning. I checked the website and noticed I was marked as up to date on payments, with the payment being listed as made on the 12th (1 day late).
I attempted to call customer service but was automatically being rerouted to the automated pay system, from which there is no way to talk to a human. The local store does not open until 10am. I walked into the store at 10am, explained the issue, and had the phone on in under 20 minutes. The store rep was extremely helpful and mentioned that he had seen these type of problems before.
So we have numerous wrong dates from Sprint/Billpay. Since then I have noticed that the charges are always marked at least 1 or two days after I make them in the charge description, and generally are sent to the bank at least a day after the marked date (2 days from actualy payment).
Policy Changes: Do not do it online. Updated my policy online to include more minutes after going over one month. Kept a copy of the webpage for my records (as with all online transactions). Didn't notice that the policy hadn't changed until 6 months later when I went over again. Also be aware that your signing a new contract when you alter your policy. Yes you never sign, and yes you never see the contract, but that is what your doing. They will attempt to say the conditions and terms are the exact same set as was on your original contract, but if you call them on this they will admit the exact opposite and say you should have requested a new copy.
Billing: The numbers may or may not be correct. There is no way to verify these numbers as all incoming calls, despite having caller id, are listed only as incoming rather than by phone number. The account balance due on the website is almost never in agreement with customer service if you get them on the phone.
Minutes: You get x anytime minutes, x sprint-to-sprint minutes, and x night and weekend minutes. I am unable to get a clear story from sprint about whether the sprint-to-sprint minutes are used on the weekends nights or if they count those as part of your unlimited minutes. I have had this conversation on numerous occasions.
Customer Rep: The phone representatives are incredibly unhelpful and rude. On two different occasions I had the problem I outlined above with the billing taking a week or more to process.in both cases I had full documentation and the best they could do was "offer" to not charge me a late fee.in one case I was out of phone contact for 4 hours, a loss that can be measured at a minimum of $320 as I was doing off-site consulting. The other case was longer, but the phone wasn't as necessary to doing my job.
How much is my Bill? The website says one thing the phone service says another, and the customer rep has yet another number. There doesn't seem to be any relationship between these three sets of numbers and any payments I have made. I don't bother to look at the amounts on the paper bills anymore because by the time I receive them it has already changed in such a way that the number liste there couldn't possibly have ever been correct.
I actually asked a customer rep over the phone the following quiestion: "Which source does the automatic phone shutoff get it's data from?" Or in other words, which one of these three numbers is the one that you use to base the decision to turn off my phone. She couldn't tell me, only that she knew that the website was rarely correct and that the billpay system wasn't necessarally updated often enough either. Or, in a word, she didn't know.
In conclusion we have a company that lies to itself about billing dates, who's representatives cannot agree with the same policies, and who often reports at least two sides to every billing statement.
One thing to keep in mind. This company bills your for your plan for the next month and overage minutes for the previous month. Make sure they don't charge you for your plan on the final bill (ie, right after turning off their phone and going to someone else). Thats basically just giving them money for nothing.
Also keep in my mind that when you sign a contract with one of these companies (or change your plan), they may or may not fulfill their end of it, it only matters if you do (to them).
As for rebuttals, feel free. I have 15 pages of documentation to back up the majority of this as well as documentation for the two other occasions where Sprint made mistakes that cost me my servie for a period of time due to no fault of my own. I call that breach of contract, ie they didn't do what they said they would. I see no reason why I should have to pay anything to get out of this contract.
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