I will be firing my wireless company, the only wireless company I've ever had. I started out with Sprint in 2001, when I got my first cell phone. I stayed all the way through the initial 2 year contract. After my first 2 year contract was up, I went without a contract for a couple of years, then allowed them to re-up my contract in order to upgrade my service in 2004. I had been off contract since 2006, and happy to be so because I always got a great response from customer service since they knew I could leave at any time with no penalty. I'd rarely had any trouble with Sprint during the entire 8 years I've been with them, which lead to me often finding myself defending them against their many detractors who say their service and network were poor. Now I know why they have so many detractors.

In May, I needed a better phone for use as a tether for my laptop to access the Internet. My old Samsung phone worked, but was painfully slow. So, I called up Sprint, knowing that they'd offer me a heavily discounted phone in return for signing a new 2 year contract. I figured, "They've been good to me all these years, I can stand another 2 years with them". So I bought a new Palm Treo 755P from them. They said it was a $600 phone, which they would give me for $250 with a $100 mail-in rebate. "Sounds good", I thought. So I went through with it. I liked the Internet capabilities of the phone, and it would provide 3G speed as a tether to my laptop. Perfect. I was able to get on the Internet with my old phone, and occasionally did, but it was so slow that I only would do so in emergencies when no other access was available. The phone arrived the next day, and I spent a couple of weeks playing with it prior to leaving for vacation. Before leaving for vacation, I called customer service to add the  "Phone as Modem" capability onto my plan, which also required me to sign up to their premier data plan. Altogether an extra $45/month, which would more than double my current monthly charges. But, it would only be for a month, while I was traveling, and then I'd cancel down to minimal service again.

I went on vacation, I blogged from the phone, it did a great job as a modem for my laptop, it is a nice phone. No complaints there.

I got back from vacation, and in the ensuing week, I was paying my bills on-line. When I got around to my Sprint bill, I was met with a shock. Somehow, I owed Sprint $409 and change. I had been expecting this bill to be around $300 due to the initial cost of the phone and the higher data charges for tethering it. But this was rather unexpected. I looked at the detailed charges and found the main culprit: $69+ worth of "Casual data usage" at $.03/KB. Now, I'd used my previous phone to get on-line before, albeit infrequently, and I'd never been charged, to my knowledge, for "Casual data usage" before. So I called customer service to ask about it. I talked to a nice fellow who's name I don't remember, and it turns out that the salesperson that sold me the phone neglected to inform me that I would need a new data plan to use this phone's features. I explained that I would've happily signed up for the service if I'd been informed of it, but the rep let me know he wasn't authorized to credit me the charges. He offered to get me to his supervisor so I could request it from him, I agreed. After being on hold for a minute, he informed me that the supervisor "wasn't answering his phone" right now. Now, I know from having worked for a wireless billing call center before that this is usually BS intended to give the customer a run-around in order to discourage them from seeking out disputed charges. So, I asked the fellow if the supervisor could call me back, and he said sure. I doubted he would, but I was tired of dealing with it for the night. That was on July 8. The supervisor was supposed to call me back the following evening. Of course he didn't, but I was very busy, so I didn't bother to call and re-initiate the dispute again, thinking I'd deal with it when I had the time.

As I said, I've worked in wireless billing before. I know that once you pay your bill, you forfeit the right to dispute the charges on that bill, as paying is seen as agreeing to them. I also know that once a dispute has been initiated on charges, that account cannot be "treated" (IE: can't be considered overdue, can't be deactivated, charged late fees, etc) until the dispute has been resolved. Obviously, you have to resolve a dispute before the charges are actually paid by the customer. So, I didn't worry too much about it. Until 5 days later, that is. On July 14, I looked at my bank account, and panicked. I somehow had a negative balance. I checked the account details and discovered that Sprint, without my knowledge OR approval, had gone ahead and debited my account for the entire $409, including the charges I was disputing, on July 13. I never ever sign up for automated payments, because I want control over when the funds come out of my account, and don't want to give that control to someone else. I knew I'd never signed up for any sort of auto-payments from Sprint. So I called Sprint, again. The heavily accented fellow I got this time said he would cancel the payment. "Good", I thought, "they can still do right by me and keep me as a customer". After a short hold, he returned and informed me that it was too late to cancel the payment as it had been more than 72 hours since the payment had been submitted. "But the payment just went through yesterday, it says July 13 on my bank statement". He then told me that payments taken from checking accounts took 72 hours to process. "Let me get this straight", I quipped, "You can help yourself to an unauthorized payment from someones bank account, and by the time it shows up on their bank statement for them to notice it, whoops! It's already too late to cancel the payment. That's a great scam you've got going there". I was beginning to shed my normally polite, calm demeanor when dealing with matters of this sort. This rep assured me that if I called my bank to have the payment canceled from that end, that Sprint would cooperate as this was an unauthorized charge. He also told me that this sort of thing happens fairly frequently (class action lawsuit comes immediately to mind). He said that if I'd ever made a payment on-line (which I have, often) that I probably "accidentally" signed up for their automated payments. I told him I would never knowingly do so, and that if it ever presented me with a request to authorize such a service, I certainly would decline. I also pointed out that this was the first time Sprint had ever taken a payment from me, automated or not, that I hadn't put through myself. He said I must have paid before the 9th of the month every time previously, as it would only charge me if a payment hadn't been made by the day before my due date. I knew this was also false, because there have been several times in the past when I've been late for a payment, and I've never had that result in an automated payment being made. He again assured me that my bank would certainly agree to cancel the payment. I asked him, "what if they don't? I have a loan payment coming out of my account the next day (I did), and if that isn't covered, my credit rating gets screwed up, and that loan goes into default, what then? Is Sprint going to cover my overdraft charges, too?" The rep was very uncomfortable, and unwilling to enter that line of conversation, instead reassuring me that my bank would fix everything.

At this point, I decided to take his advice and call my bank. Thank you WaMu (now Chase). They did cancel the payment, which wiped out the overdraft charges, and left enough in my account to pay the loan and provide me with coverage for my expenses until my next paycheck, which was on 7/17.

Once again, I was tired of dealing with Sprint, so I decided to give it a few days to not think about it. Besides, my dad was coming to town this past weekend, and I again wouldn't have much time to deal with it. So, I didn't think about it again until Monday night (7/20) when I tried to make an outbound call and was instead routed to the Sprint billing system. At this time, I found out that $25 in canceled check fees had been added to the $409. So much for Sprint cooperating, as the heavily accented rep had assured me. I explained to this newest rep all of the above. She said, "You're disputing the $69 in Casual data charges?" "Yes", I replied. "That's all?" she asked, seemingly incredulous. "Yep", I said, adding: "I'm now also disputing the canceled payment fees, as well, since I was canceling an unauthorized payment". Without complaint or significant effort, she credited all the disputed charges back to the account, and I paid the remaining balance. At this time, I again pointed out my concern that Sprint went into my account and helped itself to my money without my permission, essentially stealing. She said she didn't understand how that could happen, and that they didn't even have my checking account number in their records. I pointed out that it obviously did happen, and said that I would like an explanation, or at least some assurance that it would never happen again. She said it couldn't happen again because it shouldn't have been possible in the first place. This is flawed logic, since it did happen, but I was again tired of arguing about it.

The next night, last night (7/21), I tried to call my old college buddy, Jesse, who is in town for a conference and for Comicon, because I was meeting him at a movie theater. Again my call was directed to Sprint's billing center. I waited until a rep was on the line, and I simply asked "Why can I still not make outbound calls?". He essentially said, "Oops", and removed the block.

Today, I got a robo-call from Sprint, which hung up on me before explaining why it was calling.

So, to summarize, in 2 short weeks Sprint has convinced me to fire them as my provider because:
1. Sold me a phone without informing me of the changes I'd need to make to my plan in order to use it's features.

2. Charged me $69 for using those features.

3. Representative claimed he couldn't credit charges when I called to dispute them, offers to get me to his supervisor.

4. Supervisor "not answering". Asked to have Supervisor call me back.

5. Supervisor never called back.

6. Made unannounced, and completely unauthorized automated payment, essentially stealing from my bank account.

7. Charged above payment despite the fact that some of the charges included were being disputed and said dispute was unresolved.

8. Claimed that payment, which shows as 7/13 on my bank statement, was actually made on 7/9.

9. Claimed unauthorized payment couldn't be canceled, as it had been more than 72 hours since it had been placed by the time it appeared on my bank statement on-line.

10. Agreed to cooperate with my bank if I canceled the payment through them, but instead charged me a $25 fee for canceling the payment.

11. Fee mentioned above was added to the existing balance as overdue, despite the fact that I was still disputing some of the charges, and hadn't been offered any sort of answer or resolution to the dispute, and that paying the charges is tantamount to accepting their validity.

12. Upon paying remaining balance once disputed charges were finally removed, the representative neglected to remove the outgoing call block from my account.

13. Just for good measure, gave me an automated hang-up call the day after everything was finally resolved. (assuming it actually is).

So, for those of you out there considering Sprint as your wireless carrier, this is a long time, loyal Sprint customer saying, "DON'T!"
Even if it isn't right away, even if it's years down the road, they will eventually screw you, probably in a very big way. Your loyalty to them will not result in loyalty from them. Everyone you talk to will do as little as possible to resolve your issues, not wanting the headache. No one Sprint representative will ever have all the answers to your questions. What one Sprint rep tells you will usually contradict what another has told you. Getting any sort of resolution at all usually requires extreme measures, such as not paying your bill until they want to talk to you. They may very well result in damage being done to your credit rating. So, STAY AWAY FROM SPRINT.

After all this has been said and done, I was lamenting the fact that I can't simply cancel their service, because there is an early termination fee of $100. Then, as if sent by god in response to my struggles, yesterday I received my mail-in rebate check from my phone purchase, for exactly the $100 needed to fire Sprint. Now, I need to go out and shop for a new carrier.

How about you? Has anyone else out there had similar issues with Sprint? If anyone else has had unauthorized payments taken from their accounts, I will gladly join in any class-action lawsuits, and am considering looking into legal representation.