Sprint - fucking criminals

[sbj405]

Two months in a row, my home account has been slammed by Sprint. Without my permission they have changed my long distance (from none) and then charged me for calls (I don't even have a phone on the line). Fuckers.

[Haole Girl]

1. Two months in a row?

Why don't you contact your local news stations about this. The ones in our area recently did a story on it, and perhaps your news stations might think it's an interesting consumer story. It's worth a try! Good luck. :hug:

[MrCoffee]

2. An odd-sounding question...

Do you sign up for contests at stores and stuff where you drop your info into a little box to win a car or something. I'm asking because there are loads of those that, just by "entering", you agree to switch your long-distance service.

Then again, they could have it out for you. The US Postal Service has it out for me, the swine.

[mainegreen]

6. The postal service has it out for you? Sounds interesting. nt

[MrCoffee]

8. I don't know why they hate me, but they do.

[mainegreen]

10. Do they cover your mailbox in jam?

Send you tax forms to Mali?

[sbj405]

13. Nope. I don't have 'em for cell service which is another way they get you

[SlavesandBulldozers]

3. hate sprint. hatehatehate,

[ThomCat]

4. You should be able to have your local carrier

put a "PIC Freeze" on your account. A PIC is the code that determines your long distance carrier. If you change your PIC back to "None" and put a PIC Freeze on the account then nobody should ever be able to chance it without a writen order. Not even you.

You can also contact your state's Public Service Commission (Or Public Utility Commission, the name varies from state to state) and complain. They regulate all utilities in your state, including all phone companies. They take complaints seriously. They can not only get the charges removed, they can also fine Sprint for slamming you.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk about this. I manage telecom and deal with this kind of thing regularly.

[LiberalHeart]

5. I did that ... the phone company had to call me to verify all changes...

Then I got slammed, and complained -- and they tried to tell me I had called in and had that protection removed from my account. When I asked people all the way up the chain of command why in the world anyone would phone in and ask to have that removed, they all went silent, and finally I got it restored and got my money back.

I have been slammed three times. All of them happened right after I had called in to the phone company for a change of some sort, such as adding an outlet or some such thing. I got to thinking there was someone on the inside who was grabbing the numbers (to sell the info) of people who had recently requested extra services because those people would be expecting their bills to be higher. When they got slammed, they wouldn't be as apt to notice it.

It took me a while to get the phone company's security people to take me seriously, but once they did, they discovered that I was right.

[ThomCat]

9. Good. I'm glad you were persistent.

I'm convinced too that the Long Distance companies pay people inside the local phone companies to help them with slamming. It's too common, too convenient, and ignored too much for there not to be some kind of collaboration. People are making some money on the side arranging this type of fraud.

[sbj405]

12. I got a PIC freeze after the first month.

Verizon was surprisingly helpful and removed the charges and put the PIC freeze on last month. Of course, it's Saturday so I can't talk to anyone until Monday.

[mainegreen]

7. I have road runner phone. No such thing as slamming.

I love it. $34 a month. Period.

[ThomCat]

11. Digital phone service is wonderful

but it has some drawbacks.

If your cable goes out you loose your phone service too. And if the power goes out you loose everything.

Analog phone service stays on when the power goes out, because the phone company sends powers over the line to to keep the service running.

I won't get digital phone service precisely because I want to have one service that stays on in the event of another big black-out, storm, or any kind of event.

[China_cat]

14. Vonage has a backup

for power failures/cable failures, etc. They allow you to assign an alternate number (such as your cell phone) to route your calls to in the event that your primary contact is out.

[ThomCat]

15. That does not help if there is a power failure.

Cell service goes out too.

[China_cat]

16. Most power failures are localized

and do not involve the cell towers. If you have a situation where the cell towers are taken out, it is most likely that you wouldn't be able to call in or out from a landline, either, due to circuit interruptions.

Not losing calls with localized power or cable outages is the best you're going to do. In something like Katrina (or when we were hit by Hugo) your ability to contact others is going to depend on your ability to send smoke signals.

[ThomCat]

17. That big east coast blackout a few years ago

was a case in point. Everything went down, except land-lines.

I've been in blackouts after blizzards when I lived in upstate NY (Syracuse and Buffalo) where power everything was out except the the phones.

Right now in Buffalo 300,000 people have no power and a lot of areas have no working cell towers. But the land-lines work.

That's just anecdotes, of course. I don't know how often this kind of thing happens. But it's often enough that I take it into account.