My Sprint TV saga, be forewarned

[sanjsrik]

Hi all,

I'm seeing all the folks here talk about Sprint TV so I'll tell you a tale of Sprint TV and the charges that should never have been.

First, let me say, I don't disapprove of Sprint TV, I think it's probably a nifty idea, just never saw the use for having it on my device.

That being said, I noticed about 3 months ago, a charge for approximately ~$18something on my SERO plan. Now, being the cheap person that I am, I wondered why my $37/month plan (not including tax) was now approximately ~$50-60. Upon calling Sprint customer service.

Oh, a digression here. I realize that Srint and Nextel merged. Yet, when I called the ONLY number on my bill after trying to resolve it with the customer service rep, she finally informed me that "I" had called Nextel and that she couldn't help me. WTF?? I never called Nextel, I called the number on my bill. Their internal phone system randomly sent me Nextel and wasted my time... *sigh*, she transferred me to a "sprint" operator.

Then, after more finagling and hemming and hawing, the rep refunded the charges for both Sprint TV AND Sprint Premium channels. Neither of which I wanted.

Month two: I see the same charges AGAIN. I call up, talk to a sprint operator who tells me that "I" have to unsubscribe from my phone to Sprint TV. I say I never subscribed in the first place. She INSISTS that they cannot unsubscribe me from their end because it's "on the handset" whatever that means. We go through the hassle of escalating to tech support, who "walk" me through unsubscribing. Only thing is, we can't find Sprint TV on the device. It's simply NOT there.

So, the guy sends me the software, we install it, try to access Premium channels and on both HIS AND MY Moguls the application crashes.

Again escalating to 2nd tier support where they will unsubscribe me.

This month:

Another two charges levied against my account. Call up again, they tell me I have to unsubscribe from my phone and that the notes state that I had been given instructions and refused to follow them. WHAT?? HUH???

Again escalated when they "walk" me through the process. See, hard resetting won't get rid of this, the software isn't even ON my handset, but Sprint keeps insisting that the only way to unsubscribe is via my handset. I cannot unsubscribe because it's not on my handset. I get repeated phone calls from tech support. They alternate between, unsubscribe from your device, to we'll submit a ticket to unsubscribe you (something they have repeatedly said THEY cannot do from their side). One rep told me that it's a "third-party service over which we have no control." I have no idea at this point what is going on.

So, now I await my next months' bill. I've been assured that the charges will not appear and that I am unsubscribed from the service to which I never installed the software and never asked for the service.

I share this tale with anyone who is getting this service billed to their account even though they never requested it. You are not alone.

[GhettoBSD]

I have gone through this for MONTHS with other issues. I have about 10 phones on my account. Because of the billing issues i've been able to reduce over $1400 from the bill! Thrown in a few free phones and a few extras. So on my personal line (mogul) i have unlimited inet for free but pay $15 for unlimited txting. The line is free (no $9.99) but i do pay $7 for insurance. Not to bad I think! Other lines have free inet & txt msging, but pay $9.99 per line.

If you have 1 line it's a lot easier to deal with, but with 10 lines I had to be very organized with my spreadsheets and kept calling back. So now instead of a $600+ bill every month it's barely hitting $400 after taxes!

Use the problems to get credits/discounts/free options. Call and say you want to cancel. They'll try to help you but say "that's it, i don't want it anymore because of problems." They'll send you to retention and then tell them it's too many problems with billing etc etc and they'll ask if they can try to help you and say i guess hahaha.

It's only fair you screw them the way they screw you. They have no remorse or bad feelings when i met my gf and we talked for ever in 1 month... giving her a $800 bill when she HAD sprint to sprint. For whatever reason it was removed from her account 3 months ago - just long enough for their policy to say it couldn't have been an accidental removal eventhough she never asked for it to be taken off. So the $800 had to be paid in full IMMEDIATELY! WTF! The billing time frame had another 1-2 weeks but when she called to question the bill they said they had to take payment at that time! So derr she paid with CC.

Anyhow, that's why I always say what goes on with my account on the forums because shoot, they've screwed me and others i know of personally, so this for me, goes both ways.

[auto_exec]

Originally Posted by sanjsrik

Hi all,

I'm seeing all the folks here talk about Sprint TV so I'll tell you a tale of Sprint TV and the charges that should never have been.

First, let me say, I don't disapprove of Sprint TV, I think it's probably a nifty idea, just never saw the use for having it on my device.

That being said, I noticed about 3 months ago, a charge for approximately ~$18something on my SERO plan. Now, being the cheap person that I am, I wondered why my $37/month plan (not including tax) was now approximately ~$50-60. Upon calling Sprint customer service.

Oh, a digression here. I realize that Srint and Nextel merged. Yet, when I called the ONLY number on my bill after trying to resolve it with the customer service rep, she finally informed me that "I" had called Nextel and that she couldn't help me. WTF?? I never called Nextel, I called the number on my bill. Their internal phone system randomly sent me Nextel and wasted my time... *sigh*, she transferred me to a "sprint" operator.

Then, after more finagling and hemming and hawing, the rep refunded the charges for both Sprint TV AND Sprint Premium channels. Neither of which I wanted.

Month two: I see the same charges AGAIN. I call up, talk to a sprint operator who tells me that "I" have to unsubscribe from my phone to Sprint TV. I say I never subscribed in the first place. She INSISTS that they cannot unsubscribe me from their end because it's "on the handset" whatever that means. We go through the hassle of escalating to tech support, who "walk" me through unsubscribing. Only thing is, we can't find Sprint TV on the device. It's simply NOT there.

So, the guy sends me the software, we install it, try to access Premium channels and on both HIS AND MY Moguls the application crashes.

Again escalating to 2nd tier support where they will unsubscribe me.

This month:

Another two charges levied against my account. Call up again, they tell me I have to unsubscribe from my phone and that the notes state that I had been given instructions and refused to follow them. WHAT?? HUH???

Again escalated when they "walk" me through the process. See, hard resetting won't get rid of this, the software isn't even ON my handset, but Sprint keeps insisting that the only way to unsubscribe is via my handset. I cannot unsubscribe because it's not on my handset. I get repeated phone calls from tech support. They alternate between, unsubscribe from your device, to we'll submit a ticket to unsubscribe you (something they have repeatedly said THEY cannot do from their side). One rep told me that it's a "third-party service over which we have no control." I have no idea at this point what is going on.

So, now I await my next months' bill. I've been assured that the charges will not appear and that I am unsubscribed from the service to which I never installed the software and never asked for the service.

I share this tale with anyone who is getting this service billed to their account even though they never requested it. You are not alone.

I had almost this same experience with my brother's line (on my account). They tried for 2-3 months in a row to unsubscribe him, but it kept on charging.

Pro-tip: Try signing on to sprint.com and going to the "My Content" link. From there, look around and see if it says you are subscribed to anything. If so, hit Unsubscribe. Might take a month or so to finally come off, but that's what worked for me. If the unsubscribe does work, I'd probably call and have a Sprint rep make a note on your account detailing what's happened so that they'll quickly be able to reverse future charges in case it continues to charge for another month or something.

On a side-note, make sure you sign into sprint.com with a sign-on that's registered to the actual line number you're trying to unsubscribe (in case you have multiple lines on your account).

Hope that helps, it solved my billing issues (well, at least that ONE billing issue ).

[sanjsrik]

Originally Posted by auto_exec

I had almost this same experience with my brother's line (on my account). They tried for 2-3 months in a row to unsubscribe him, but it kept on charging.

Pro-tip: Try signing on to sprint.com and going to the "My Content" link. From there, look around and see if it says you are subscribed to anything. If so, hit Unsubscribe. Might take a month or so to finally come off, but that's what worked for me. If the unsubscribe does work, I'd probably call and have a Sprint rep make a note on your account detailing what's happened so that they'll quickly be able to reverse future charges in case it continues to charge for another month or something.

On a side-note, make sure you sign into sprint.com with a sign-on that's registered to the actual line number you're trying to unsubscribe (in case you have multiple lines on your account).

Hope that helps, it solved my billing issues (well, at least that ONE billing issue ).

Guess what, that was one of their first "resolutions" they didn't even check to see if I had any subscriptions via Sprint.com, I didn't. The rep walked me through it, used my login to view what was viewing and I could hear him scratching his head wondering if he had done something wrong.

By and large, the quality of the CSRs goes from very good to absolutely clueless. I've had some who had no clue what a Mogul was, one insisted that I was making up a name until I pointed her to the Website and she said, "oh, I didn't know we had a phone like that."

What's their slogan now?

"Sprint/Nextel perfect together"

What they need to add is "just without you."

[nursie]

I have the everything plan, but when I go to sprint tv it tells me there's a monthly fee. I exit out & don't subscribe, because I've also had nightmare billing issues that took me months to fix. I'm just wondering why they advertise free tv & radio but list a monthly charge.

[sanjsrik]

It's like the unlimited up to 5Gigs.

Apparently that's a definition of unlimited I'm not familiar with.