This event took place over the course of a few months.
During the month of November, I spent nearly 3 weeks in Thailand. At that time, I had my cell phone unknowingly stolen from me. The phone was put on a temporary hiatus because I had been studying abroad for 10 months prior to my trip to Thailand. So at that time I paid a minimum fee to keep the service but I was not able to make phone calls. When I came back to the United States, I had my phone service turned back on but discovered I couldn't find it. At first I thought that I had lost it while unpacking my bags in my house so I didn't immediately have my number turned off. Several weeks had past and I had checked my " Sprint PCS together with Nextel " invoice because I was going to have my phone canceled since my contract had expired. This is when the issues began.
-Beginning of the problem-
When I had first checked my account I had a balance of 518$ for a little over a couple weeks of phone calls. I had no idea what had happened, so I called and asked the customer service rep what the deal was. They had claimed that I had made phone calls "to Thailand" during the month of January. I had explained that I was in Thailand in November but had not made any phone calls to the country. I was in a bit of confusion at the time. I had called the fraud department and after several days of speaking with them they had credited the 500$ back to my account. After that situation was over I called again to cancel my account. But this time I had 2,700$ charge on my account. At this time I couldn't believe what was going on. I called back, and had gotten the same story. I explained that I was living in the U.S. But had been to Thailand a couple months ago. I had also explained the first time when I called that I had misplaced my phone and wished to have my account suspended until we resolved the problem. After being shuffled through 3 different departments, I later discovered that the phone calls weren't being just made "To Thailand" but were being placed "In Thailand" to other Thai numbers. That's when I had realized that my phone must have been stolen. I then asked why my phone service hadn't been suspended when I called about the original bill. I was told that I had never requested to have my phone suspended. I had argued for about 2 hours explaining the fact that I had lost my phone, had the charges, and asked for them to suspend my service. I produced the customer service reps names that I had talked to and the time and dates that I had called and what we had spoke about. Shortly I had a supervisor on the phone telling me that there was nothing they could do about the situation. I had tried to understand and have them explain to me how I could be liable for charges after the fact that I had asked to have my phone service suspended again. They said there was nothing they could do for me.
-The Issue-
As far as i'm concerned, I should have been responsible for the original 500$ if anything. I had contacted them and was reassured that my phone service had been temporarily suspended until I could find my phone.
MOST IMPORTANT. I had signed up for a regular consumer account which had a spending limit on it. After the whole ordeal ended, and I had secured another student lone to pay Sprint for something I thought that couldn't be helped and had later found out that my account had been switched to a corporate account. I believe this happened and that's how they were able to charge me in excess of 2,700$. At the time I was a college student in my final semester of university. I had no money and thought that aquiring a lawyer would have been triple the cost of what I had to pay sprint. If I had any resources I would have fought this case because I believe that I was clearly cheated and manipulated. I felt that it was me a university student just about to prepare for finals exams, trying to secure a job, and without a dime to his name, against a gigantic corporation.
So I guess my point of this is make consumers aware of what cell phone companies are capable of. I know I am somewhat at fault for loosing my cell phone, but I know that I was taken advantage of by Sprint. Please do not use any of their service or products.
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