Sprint Is Totally Evil

I feel totally ripped off by Sprint, my mobile phone service provider. After a very reasonable 1-1/2 years, out of 2 on my contract, I went online made a change in one of the options on my service plan. I upped the number of monthly minutes I was receiving. It cost an extra $10/month, but my logic was that that would be cheaper than the extra minutes charge I'd hit myself with consistently over the last few months. Today in the mail I received a notice outlining the change in my plan. To my horror I saw that they took this opportunity to re-start my contract. They say I now have 2 years left and if I was to cancel early it'd cost me an extra $200!

After speaking with two incredibly inarticulate customer service representatives it became obvious that Sprint got me, and there is no way these fuckers are going to budge an inch. They don't even let you speak to someone who has the authority to do anything about a billing dispute. This is a scam. Sprint is evil. If for any reason you feel compelled to purchase a service from these scumbags, be very, very careful. Buyer beware.

Comments

[Megynn]

I had a Sprint account and was told upon signing that there would be NO roaming charges, which I believed meant that there would be no roaming charges. When my partner and I got our first bill there were tremendous roaming charges, due to the travel that my partner does. So we called Sprint and they gave some run-around-crap about the definition of "No Roaming Charges". Apparently that means that Sprint splits the roaming charges with the customer (in that case, anyway). So, we were screwed by the Evil Empire.
Do you know how little it really costs, in tangible value, for our little signals to travel back and forth? Nada. Nothing. Zip.
So, not only are we being screwed by policies, we're paying for air.

[Zen]

They all screw you with the fine print.

[Non-Prophet]

Yes, and this was exceptionally evil. Sprint sucks.

I'm trying to think up the best keywords to use to draw traffic to this post. The Google loves me and if you can put something in a comment here that people type into a search, a ton of people will read this post. Thousands and thousands. "sprint sucks" is pretty good, "worst long distance company" maybe is another.

I just think that guerrilla contracts like this need to stop. It draws attention to the worst side of our corporate consumer culture.

[Non-Prophet]

Oh, and that graphic is horrible. If anyone wants to post a link to a better one I'm all for it.

[Zen]

What I hate is how every friggen government entity under the bright shiny sun has found a way to tack on their tax to my cell phone bill. Depending on where you live, taxes are an additional 30% - 50% of the provider's fee. That is absolutely insane.

[Mikey]

You liberal dork. You probably could have negotiated a new handset, cool camera phone and more minutes by saying you were using the power of the consumer and switching to Cingular. Silly rabbit...

[Non-Prophet]

Mikey, did you read the post? They already got me for 2 more years. It'd be like threatening to give them $200. That, and I have a sweet Sprint Palm Trio phone. It is awesome. Sprint really does suck. :0)

[in8sworld]

It appears you are not the only one who hates Sprint, though I think this guy might be just a tad more pissed off than you.

[betsy]

yea i have sprint and my bill was supposed to be 59.99 but it is near the $100 mark. it sucks and i have been having dropped calls. AND they charged me for at least 2 months now for downloads when i didnt download a thing! prolly all cell phone companies have their own scams but sprint fucks your mind up to think you have a good deal. sooo bye bye for now

[Windypundit]

Speaking as the number one Google hit for "sprint fuckers", it's my opinion that getting out from under Sprint might be worth $200, depending on how you value your mental health.

I switched to Verizon. They haven't been perfect, but they're a lot nicer than Sprint. My phone always works, no suprises on the bill...

[Jamie]

After 4 years of service, we cancelled our service to go to Verizon and confirmed with Sprint 3 TIMES that our contract had ended. We cancelled with them and to our dismay they charged us $150 per line ($300 total)in our final bill for "cancellation charges". After over 2 hours on the phone today and an hour yesterday we have been given NUMEROUS stories on yes, Finance will refund us, no, no refund, here let me transfer you, etc. We haven't gotten anywhere... they are horrible! Their service has declined steadily over the last year but at this point, this is FRAUD. We will be terminating our long distance service with them and I will pay the "cancellation charge" to get my mother off their contract... 16 months early. I hope the $150 is worth ther loss of $1,040 in just my mom's 16 months of service bills alone. I strongly recommend not to EVER do business with this horrible company. May their stock plummet and all of their ill-trained customer service reps go hungry and their upper management be imprisoned!Hours of our lives and $300 stolen. Bad Business.

[Steven Chappell]

I just had my second bad experience with Sprint in the past eight months.

In August, I moved from Missouri to Tennessee. As such, I needed a new local number. Aside from the fact that took nearly two hours in the local store, at least it worked. Then, I needed to change my automatic bank draft from my bank in Missouri to my new bank in Tennessee. I found out that was pretty much impossible to do. After eight hours on the phone with customer service, a trip to the local Sprint store (where I was told to call customer service) and a phone call to the corporate office in Kansas City, where I told them they could try and get money out of my old account, but there would be none there to get, I finally got someone to cancel my automatic bank draft. I now mail them a check, because I don't trust them should I ever move again.

Then, today, I thought I would upgrade my phone. According to the Sprint Web site, I am eligible for the "New to You" plan, where you get $150 credit toward the purchase of a new phone. I went to the local Sprint store, where I was told that was inaccurate. When I got my new phone number, I lost that opportunity and it would be June of 2008 before I could do that again! I told the guy he was full of shit. He told me I had to call customer service, because the store employees aren't allowed to make any changes to anyone's account, nor are they allowed to call customer service on the customer's behalf. I asked him if he could tell me when my contract expired. He told me it expires July 21. You can bet your bottom dollar that July 22, I will have a new cell phone provider. I told him that. He just shrugged his shoulders and said I could do whatever I wanted, he didn't care. I told him I hoped every Sprint employee dropped dead tomorrow, because the world would be a better place for it, and I left the store. I will never set foot in a Sprint store again.

Sprint sucks big- After being employed by this blood sucking company for 8 years, I have finally parted ways. I have seen it all people! The company policy is to protect Sprint Nextel FIRST, customers SECOND. They are trying in desperation to change their ways in the last month or two because they are sinking. Unfortunately, I do believe it is too late for Sprint. I was soooo loyal to them for so many years. However, if you ever had the luck of meeting me in that time and I assisted you with your issues, you received the BEST damn service Sprint had to offer!

[matt]

A few months back I started receiving astronomical bills from sprint, and since I had it drafted, I always budgeted my 60 bucks a month....well one day i get this phone call saying I was 215 bucks past due....come to find out...i "mysteriously" did not have ANY text messages built into my plan. But in up until March, I never had a problem with Text Messages...
So an friend told me that Sprint has secretly been changing the names of existing plans and your plan defaults to this new line of service.....F Sprint!!!!!

[River Styx]

Im doing a writeup on sprint right now actually. I figured id do 2 minutes of research and find out what everyone has to say about sprint.
What happened with me was one of their "Safe Drivers" backed up off the on-ramp to get on the local freeway in california. His bumper sticker said Safe Driver, but I beg to differ :P
To make it worse, he pulled a U-Turn then beeped his horn and flipped me off (I was walking and saw what he did and yelled something silly)

Hope this helps, check my site if you get a minute.

[stephane]

I wish i could cancel mine, i have called customer service many times and they want me to pay a 200 dollars fee to do so, as we have 3 phone that will be a fee of 600 dollars !!
This is ridiculous, i have no reception at my house anymore, when i do get calls at the Office they get dropped withing minutes. My text messages download 50% of the times.
I wish i knew a solutionm or something i could do to cancel my contract asap, if anyone has any tip on how to do so, for the Love of god let me know.

Thanks.

Stephane
fiapman AT gmail.com

[Cocoa03]

I have been a Sprint customer for almost 4 years now. I had never had any problems until I decided to order a data card for my laptop computer. The sales reps were so nice and helpful. I could not believe it. I was told that I could try out two data cards and send back the card I did not want once I received a return label. I said ok, that is nice. I then happen to look at my normally $115 bill to discover an almost $800 bill!! I had been billed for both data cards, activation for both lines, shipping fees for both and double monthly service charges for both lines. I was outraged. I use my cell phone a lot and I could not seen myself paying that much for a cell phone bill. I called Sprint. They then tried to make it seem as if it was no big deal and that the charges would fall off. I was then credited for the fees that I had no idea would be added to my account. My cell phone bill is still showing $600 plus dollars even after I have sent back one of the data cards. I was told that now it is too late to send back the other data card and that I would be charged a $200 early termination fee. I called and stayed on the phone over 2 hours one night trying to get this situation corrected. Long story short, I am very depressed and hate that this happened. I then called again today and spoke to someone who told me that I would not be charged $200 if I sent in the other data card. I am afraid that I may not be credited and charged the early termination fee, so I was even thinking about keeping the card at first. However, after reading all of this information, I do not think I am going to do that. I am going to send it back and see if I am credited for my early termination fee for the data card. I have already called verizon and I am thinking about switching. I was thinking that Sprint had improved but I see that I had just been lucky. They are still horrible.

[Lisa]

Sprint is the worst company I have ever encountered. The customer service reps are stupid and they lie! I had one tell me yesterday that he was "going to educate me" on Sprint. How degrading is that, coming from someone who isnt native to the language. Then he went on to question me if I knew how my bill could increase other than standard charges. I couldnt help but to then scream at him to not call me anymore after 30 minutes of an unsolved issue being tossed around. I cant believe how many people on this post have shared my exact some problems. Its good to know Im not alone. I am now a prisoner of the Sprint hell until my contract ends in 06/09! Whatever you do, never sign a contract with these people!

[Non-Prophet]

I had the experience of not being able to log in to my online account. After trying once in a while for 2 weeks I finally gave them a call. I was on hold for about 45 minutes, and then I got a customer service rep who said that my number was not showing up as a Sprint number, an obvious mistake as I was using the phone to call them. That csr then transferred me and I was disconnected. I started again, went through several reps and eventually one had the ability to reset my online account and get my number and login to function. This took hours and hours. I told them I wanted the 3 (or whatever) hours -- most of which was spent on hold -- of my life back in minutes. That took a lot of doing and in the end they lied, telling me they'd given me 120 minutes but in truth it turned out to be 60. Yes. Horrible. A couple of weeks ago I experienced their website broken again.

I've since bought my way out of hell and joined with AT&T. Wish me luck.

[in8sworld]

We got a pay as you go deal with AT&T and have saved over $300 so far this year. We can quit at any time with no fees. Not a good idea for somebody who uses the phone all the time cuz the charges can add up quick, but if you don't use a cell phone very much (and don't suddenly end up having an emergency need for it), the standard phone contract plans are just a massive rip off.

[OleMel]

Sprint still has my 150 bucks for a new phone I returned because the dumb outfit shipped me a Nextel phone instead of a Sprint phone. If I do or don't ever get the money refunded I'm reporting them to the state regulatory agency.
They said wait for two billing cycles. Then they credit my account instead of refunding the amount. If I ever get loose from these blood suckers I am going to Alltel FAST.

[watch out]

Don't sign a new contract or get sprint service. They'll charge double the first month, They charge you a month in advance and think thats ok, wrong! wait untill you get your first bill! You'll die

[MaxDemian]

Here's a good one. Had a Sprint account with two phone numbers and my contract was running out. I received an iPhone as a gift and couldn't drop Sprint fast enough. I made multiple calls to customer service to make sure this would be a clean break which they assured me it would be, everything would be fine. Well, a month later I get a bill for the second phone number that they never canceled. I complained, they transfered me to Retention Services and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. A free Touch phone, 3000 mins, unlimited text, MONTH to MONTH contract all for $25/mo. I knew it was too good to be true but fell for it anyway. Sure enough a bill for $59.99 came shortly after with a nice new 2 year contract that I never agreed to. Customer service couldn't believe by story even though I had the rep's ID that made me the offer. A couple of transfered calls later things seemed resolved as soon as I send the Touch phone back. These reps CAN NOT be held accountable for anything they say or do. It's unbelievable. Run run run from Sprint! They are indeed evil.

[Niko Van Kolk]

I'm done with Sprint. I'm done with phone contracts. I'm done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-7XwboOx98

[DallasDeb]

I called in today to cancel my Sprint datacard. I originally got the card to use with my laptop because Time/Warner Cable took over my internet cable service from Comcast, and it became unstable and unreliable. The first year was okay, then in March of this year I began getting daily fluxuating speeds that were 50KB/s downloads up to the promised 700KB/s. After many attempts and service orders and finally verifying that the card was fine but the service wasn't...I thought I should try and terminate the contract that had six months left on it. I looked up "cancel Sprint datacard" on Google and for the first time saw the 5MB limit vs. unlimited change. Hurrah! Since they are changing the service agreement, I can legally cancel my service without penalty easier than canceling for poor service.

Calling Sprint was an experience in itself. I was literally shaking with anger as I tried to control my voice and what I said. Of course, the rep didn't want me to cancel. She wanted to deny that the contract was changed, or that I could cancel without penalty, but I had already verified I could with a service agent a week prior. The announcement of the change was in this month's billing statement. I finally said she needed to pass me on to someone who was able to cancel, since I wasn't willing to answer any more questions regarding "solving the problem of slow data downloads/uploads". She placed me on hold and came back and said I would be cancelled.
Now I plan to call back and verify the cancellation is indeed in place and that I won't be charged a cancellation fee. From all the post I've ready on various sites, the most important keys to getting things done is documentation and checking back. An informed consumer is a powerful consumer.

p.s. DSL is now available in my area and is my next source of frustration, no doubt.