Good day,
I had the EXACT SAME type of BS from Sprint back in chase season of 2004. One chaser I chase with brought back a couple of sprint PCS vision cards when he was at the CES in Las Vegas that year. He got them free as a promotional effort.
My plan was to use the card for the time I was in the plains chasing, from May 13 to June 1 that year. On May 3, I activated the card, but it did not work until about May 7.
The plan was for unlimited access and was $90 a month, plus a rather stiffy $36 "activation fee". As foolish as I was then, I accepted paying $126 to have data on the plains. Or so I thought.
More than 60% of the time, trying to connect would give me a "remote computer will not respond" message ... And I called customer service about 6 times each with no resolution.
On one call, I was told my sprint PCS vision card would be bad. No problem, since I had some spares as per the other guy who brought them from the CES, who was also in my group. The spare card did not work either.
Oh, half these calls, I was transferred to one tech, had to explain the entire rigamore each time, then transferred to another one for "that area" who would transfer me back to the original "area" - Ofcourse the first person I spoke with won't answer, it would be a new tech guy, explain the entire thing all over again ... Round n' round n' round. Then, after nearly reaching the top of the ladder, get dropped.
One guy in our chase vehicle thought it was so funny of me getting pissed off on the phone he set the video camera on me. Was not funny at the time, but funny now watching me get dropped, me slap my leg, and throw my cell phone down.
Finally, after over an hour with a customer service technician, wasting MY cell minutes, I gave up on the issue, frustrated, and with no avail. With that, my Delorme GPS suddenly stopped getting "seen" by my laptop - I lost it shouting "This s--cks blistering hot ---- c-ck!"
The guy who got the cards, and had his set up at the CES did not have any problems. His card was working perfectly, and he knew the person who set it up for him. Unfortunately, he just kept it to himself ... In fact, he did not speak to me for a day or so afterwards because I was "losing my temper" too much.
Since the card worked only in some areas, I was able to transfer data then, and I uploaded all my final updates to my web site on June 1 when at DFW waiting to go home.
Trying to avoid going over a month of service, I promptly cancelled the service on June 2.
That June, I got a bill from Sprint. It was not $126, but $269. I was like "what da F--??" ... So I called them. I explained what happened, about the horrible performance, and tech supports failure to even resolve the issue.
They told me the billing "cycle" is at the 20-21 of the month, any usage thereafter accrues as a whole month. So the $36 plus $90 was complicated by another $90 and yet another $36 fee to cancel it. This makes $252. The $269 was for taxes and other crap.
I tried to dispute and / or get a discount for both the crap service and data errors. They said "well, since you uploaded 20 megs on June 1, we cannot do that".
I wrote to management in another email about this, explaining it in more detail than in this document, and a friendly reply came back saying "I cannot describe how you must be feeling, I really am sad to see you leave sprint and hope you have better luck in the future."
I just replied with "Why won't you just knock off $126 off the bill you sent me for only being able to use the service less than 50% of the time?"
A reply came back, saying "Had you not uploaded all that stuff on June 1, we most likely would not have charged you for that last month, since the only data transferred before June 1 was on May 20." June 1 was when I was loading my data to my web site while waiting to get on my flight back home from DFW - what idiots ey?
Low and behold, I had to pay the full $269 for one month of error messages and wasted phone calls with almost no data.
I vouch for you Tony, screw Sprint. I certainly will not touch them ... In fact, until now, I was wondering how you were doing "so good" with Sprint as I saw how happy you were with them. Guess the "collura" luck bit you in the butt just like it did me!
