Text Messaging Records Not Provided?

[Brent212]

I've been a customer of AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular, and now Sprint. I could be wrong, but I swear I remember my phone bills from AT&T, TMob, and Cingular always included text messaging activity (date, time, # sent to/received from). I never noticed that Sprint doesn't do this until the other day when I got my latest bill and saw that I was charged for 6 international text messages.

I've never sent a text to anyone outside of the US, nor have I ever received one from anyone outside of the US. So I emailed Sprint asking when these text messages were sent, and from/to what phone number. I got this response:

"Your account has been charged $1.20 for 6 international text messages on the current invoice. All these text messages were sent to United Kingdom. To get the details of time and phone numbers, please contact our Subpoena Compliance group at (800) 877-7330, option 3. They will require you to submit a notarized form that you are the account holder. If your request is part of a civil or criminal legal matter, your attorney can submit a subpoena for the information. Due to privacy concerns, the only text message information that I can provide to you is the number of text messages you have used."

WTF? They want me to go out to a notary public so I can get access to some information that could possibly lead to me saving $1.20? I'll spend more $$ in gas, not to mention the time I'd be wasting. They're the ones saying these messages took place, so they should have to cough up some sort of information about them.

I responded essentially telling them that unless they can provide some sort of evidence, that they can go f**k themselves with their international text messages. So they agreed to simply credit me the $1.20. Cool, but still, super lame that they can just claim something like that and not make any effort to back it up when I dispute it? I know I didn't send these simply because I don't send that many text messages to begin with and I can easily go back through my short history of messages from the last month and verify that there were no messages sent or received to unknown numbers (I don't have any contacts who live outside the US, and no one I know was out of the country recently). If I did think there was a possibility of the messages being legit, but couldn't recall sending them, I'd still expect Sprint to be able to give me the details so maybe I could be like "oh, that's right, I texted Jesse when she was in France earlier this month."

Do none of the carriers provide text messaging info?

[mulhiny]

I've never seen text info on any bill..at any rate, do you happen to have Seven push email app set up on your phone? I know when that gets set up it send an international text.

[Brent212]

Oooooooh, that's gotta be it. Just installed Seven about 20 days ago. Crazy. Does Seven only send the text message when a new account is setup, or will it be doing this each month?

Still, seems like there should be some way for them to give me some clue as to what I'm being charged for that doesn't require me to get a notarized form verifying that I'm me.

[mulhiny]

I think it sends the text when installed/setup. So if you flash a lot that's gonna screw ya. I do agree with your point about Sprint not providing the requested info. No way I would of paid the charge either w/o some proof.

[madcowmilau]

i always wondered why sprint doesn't keep text messages or let you have access to them on their website. (i bet if something illegal was going on they would be able to retrieve them) its BS