I hate telephone companies!  My long distance service is presently cut off
because of a stupid bureacratic mess.  Several months ago I switched my
long distance from AT&T to Sprint, because they were running an offer
where I got 10,000 frequent flier miles for switching, and I was annoyed
at AT&T for raising their rates.  So I switched.  My long distance calls
started showing up on my Verizon bill as Sprint.  Fine.  But then I got
separate bills from Sprint.  I didnt pay those because those bills were
the same calls itemized on my Verizon bill, and I paid those as part of
that payment.  I told Sprint I did not want separate bills.   They sent
them anyway.  I figured its their waste of postage and ignored them.  I
pay one check for my phone bill every month, which includes all long
distance and other calls.  I write one check.  I like it that way.

So then some months pass and I get a nasty letter from Sprint notifying me
that I havent paid any of my long distance bills and they are cutting my
long distance off.  I called Sprint, I said I've paid for every long
distance call every month.  I sent my money to Verizon.  They said they
never got any money from Verizon.  What?  I called Verizon and asked, 'why
havent you been sending my money to Sprint?'  Verizon said they HAVE been
paying Sprint.  They are contradicting each other.  I had the Verizon
operator conference in a Sprint rep.  It turns out Sprint never got
notified that I didnt want separate billing.  I was supposed to call
Sprint and tell them that.  Nobody told me that.  "Fine" I said to the
Sprint rep, "as long as you turn my service back on and acknowledge that I
paid Verizon and they paid you, we're good to go"  

Didnt work that way.  The Sprint rep told me that I must pay them three
months worth of long distance calls in a separate check made out to
Sprint.  Calls which I already paid for in checks to Verizon!  I asked
the Verizon rep if I did that, could I get my money back from them so I
dont end up having paid for those calls twice.  "We cant give you your
money back, we already paid Sprint"   So the Verizon rep hangs up and I
still have the Sprint rep on the line.  She says I have to make this
duplicate payment and this will later get straightened out, they will
eventually send money back to Verizon and Verizon can send it back to me.

I told her I refused to pay long distance bills again that Ive already
paid.  The Sprint rep said thats the only way my long distance can get
turned on again, that they have to get this dupe payment from me first
before anything can happen.  

Nothing got resolved.  A couple of days later I got another letter from
Sprint, this time saying they are reporting me to the credit bureau, that
my credit rating could be adversely affected for nonpayment of my long
distance bills.  Which bills I can prove I paid.

I hate long distance phone companies.  I'm going to go out and buy a
pre-paid calling card or something.  

32 responses total.

that's exactly the kind of crap that has made me not order long distance. i
would not even have local if i didn't need the modem access. sprint are
assholes. i have a sprint cell and it's been a nightmare with them too.

call tehm back, ask for a supervisor, tell them you will be calling the stae
Attorney General adn reporting them BOTH if they do not get this straightened
out and your service turned on immediately.

threaten to report them .. should be in the front of the phone book - who you
call when you're getting screwed. public services comission it's maybe
called...

i di that once with at&t and they got their shit together.

well verizon is part of the problem, they dont know what they're doing
either.  Too bad we dont have Ameritech in NYC I guess

Skip calling them and threatening, you have a legitimate basis for a 
suit.  Call the AG and ask if there is a violation of the law or whether 
you merely have a civil case.  At very least, the public service 
commission should hear about this.

I hope you recorded tha names of the conferees on that three-way call.

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I was all ready to enjoy a post of richard whining about some curiosity that's
irrelevant, but you've won me over.  Start making some legal-minded phone
calls.  If Verizon has been paying Sprint for your phone coverage, there is
NO REASON that you should pay Sprint for them yourself.  

And check your credit rating by applying for a loan or something.
If it is denied on account of negative information that Sprint 
provided then you have a lovely Federal case to find a lawyer
for (bucks in those things).

We use 10-10-811. $ 0.50 for ten minutes or less, $0.05/minute 
beyond that. No monthly charges. (That's half the minimum time, and
lower per minute cost, than the "other" highly advertised 10-10-er.

www.BigZoo.com-- 2.3-3.3 cents/min, no connection fee, no monthly fee, 
no fees, period.  You do have to set things up through the website and 
dial an 888 or a local access number first, but if you have a phone 
with memory function, that's easy to get over.

http://www.bigzoo.com

I can't believe I just reading a comment pining for Ameritech service.  
Richard, Ameritech is no better than Verizon, just different.  Many of us 
out here stuck with Ameritech are pining for somebody else as well, but 
all any of us really wants is enough competition to stimulate these 
monopolistic entities to behave like they're operating in an actual 
marketplace.

There was a report on NBC sometime in the last week, outlining a scam 
whereby a company has bought up a whole bunch of phone numbers that are 
similiar to cheap long-distance access numbers (1-800-COLLLECT instead 
of 1-800-COLLECT and so on).  When some fat-fingered fella misdials, he 
thinks he's getting ATT or somesuch, but is actually getting an access 
provider that charges $5/minute or so.  NBC traced the offending company 
back through numerous corporate shells, and it turns out that the whole 
mess is owned by....Sprint!  Isn't that nice?

That's why I use an alternate carrier.  Cavalier Telephone (based in Richmond
VA; expanding through the Mid-Atlantic).  They provide local, long-distance,
(9 cents/min in or out of state; 3 cents/min if the other person is also a
Cavalier subscriber) and DSL.

Qwest starts at 9 cents and gradually drops to 5 cents but it is 11 cents
in-state.  I ran across something called UNITEL that was 4 cents instate and
about the same out of state, no monthly fee but there might have been some
universal service charge, I did not check.  Qwest has managed not to do
anything particularly stupid or anything stupid that they did not manage to
fix within a few months and you pay for 1 min if you call for 1 min.  The rate
drops .5 cents every 6 months, I think.  9.9% added on as universal service
charge, better than companies that tack on $1.50 regardless of the total.

And the Dingell-Tauzin bill would make this all so much worse by killing
off competition for both Ameritech and Verizon!

I had a problem with Sprint once, too.  When I left East Lansing to go to
grad school in New York, the final bill from Sprint came to $160 and
change.  I talked with them about setting up a payment plan, but then I
came up with the money and paid it all off in one check.  The check
cleared my bank with no problem, and I thought I was done.

But at my new address in Ithaca, I started receiving dunning letters and
dunning pre-recorded phone calls from Sprint.  I tried to reach Sprint's
customer service, but funny thing: the same 800 number dialed in different
parts of the country reaches different regional centers.  Called from
Ithaca, I reached the Sprint center in Purchase NY, which had never heard
of my account.  I had to pay for long distance calls to the Sprint center
in Rosemont IL which had my records.

So I finally reached someone in Rosemont IL who denied that I had paid the
bill.  I explained that the check had cleared, and he demanded a copy of
the cancelled check, both sides.

I didn't have cancelled checks, but I happened to be back in East Lansing
soon after that, and went to the bank to get a copy of my check to Sprint. 
They gave me two copies, which turned out to be fortuitous.  I mailed one
of them to the address in Rosemont IL which I had been given. 

The dunning calls and letters continued.  The Sprint center in Rosemont IL
denied receiving the copy of the cancelled check.

After a few more weeks of this, I sent the other copy of the cancelled
check, but this time I sent it by registered mail, so I would have proof
of delivery.

The dunning calls and letters continued (the calls greatly annoyed my
housemates).  A couple of weeks later Rosemont admitted that they had
received the copy of the cancelled check, but that it had been sent to the
research department. 

Those automated calls had to stop.  So I became the squeaky wheel.  Every
day, I called up Rosemont, got mealy mouthed non-answers from the
operator, demanded to talk to a supervisor, and blew up at him.  I did
this every day for about two weeks, until finally one guy (probably
against company policy) gave me "provisional credit" for the payment I had
made.  I would continue to be dunned by mail (for $0.00, no kidding), but
the robot phone calls would stop. 

About a month later, I finally recived a bill which credited me with my
payment and cancelled the provisional credit.

I never dealt with Sprint again.

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I use my at&t cell for almost all my calls.  At home I have
seperately billed long-distance from my old employer (voyager.net)
that resells IXC/Broadwing long distance service and have
a great rate with no monthly fees.  .08 per min billed to nearest
6 seconds (1/10th min) with no 1 min minimum.

this includes in-state as well as state-to-state calls.  When
they call me asking me to switch I ask them for a better rate on
in-state and they say "the best we can do is .12 or such" and I say
"thanks anyways, please place me on your do-not-call list and share this
choice with anyone else you do contract cold-calling with".

I'm thinking about cancelling my long distance, since I make very few 
long distance calls, and get free long distance on my cell phone.  Last 
time someone I know did that, though, they got an additional charge 
tacked onto their local bill for having a line with no long distance 
service.  Plus I keep thinking someday I might have to send a fax or 
something.

Shop around.  There are companies that will give you a no-monthly-fee 
(except fcc +federal mandated taxes) long-distance service and decent
rates.

Re #10: www.BigZoo.com say there is a $ 0.75 monthly fee. 

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resp:20  I'll have to look again.  But 75 cents is *very* reasonable.

I think the charge for not having long distance service either has been
dropped, or is less than the charge for having a service (universal service
fee etc.).  Thanks for the infor on BigZoo - it is cheaper for me to stay with
Qwest at no monthly fee and 5 cents/min.

the problem Im having with Sprint is that apparently the fine print on the
contract I accepted to switch to them, on their web page, apparently said
that I agreed to be billed directly and pay Sprint directly.   They prefer
that and since I was getting the 10,000 frequent flier miles, it was a
string attached to that deal that I overlooked.  So Sprint says I should
have called Verizon and told them not to include my Sprint calls on their
bill.  Since I didnt do that, I was effectively billed twice, and I guess
Sprint has separate billing departments for direct billing and third-party
billing (bills paid through local phone providers like verizon)  The money
I sent Verizon for my Sprint calls went to one department, while the other
department was billing me on their own.  Sprint insists they have to show
that I paid them directly for those calls, and they cant just have one
department send the money to the other.  I told them its a little
ridiculous for me to send them money, when I'm only going to end up
getting that money back (in theory anyway).

Anyway I spoke to a supervisor at Sprint, and this looks like it will be
worked out.  It also turns out that there was an issue of a couple of
weeks after I switched to Sprint, where I had made calls before Verizon 
picked up the billing.  I didnt even know that, I just assumed the
Verizon bill had all my calls on it, but evidently there was this block 
of time where Sprint was my long distance carrier and Verizon wasnt
aware of it.   So I do owe Sprint money, though not that much, and when I
pay that they will turn my long distance back on.  

Sterling Commerce, my employer, a developer of EDI and communications 
software, was purchased by SBC a couple of years ago; shortly after I 
started there.  In the last few weeks I've gotten two solicitations for 
some PAC for SBC.  I got one of them at work, with the envelope loudly 
proclaiming that I could be saving my job (presumably, if I contribute 
to the PAC).  We regularly get e-mails from the president of SBC, 
asking us to pressure our legislators to be "fair" to SBC.

Sorry, don't think so.  SBC has agreed to share access to it's phone 
lines in exchange for the right to offer long distance service, and it 
hasn't done what it agreed to do.  I'd like to see our stock price go 
up, which will happen when SBC bullies the Michigan legislature into 
allowing it to start offering long distance service.  I have stock 
options.  But I'd really have to hold my nose while writing a check to 
an SBC PAC.

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The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Wow.  My cell phone service is through Sprint and I've never had any
trouble with them.

Ditto. (so far)

My understanding of the local phone companies doing the long distance company
billing is that they send the bill the long distance company asks them to
send, rather than just monitoring your calls and automatically generating the
bill.  It's the long distance company that has to tell them what rates to
charge you for the various calls, and so forth.  If Verizon was billing you,
it's most likely because some computer at Sprint was telling some computer
at Verizon to do so every month.

I had this problem with Sprint once too.  At least, I think I did.  The bills
were confusing enough that I was never quite sure they were billing me for
the same calls twice.  I forget what the final resolution was, but it involved
switching long distance companies.

oh man am i pissed. i purposely don't have long distance,so you'd think i
can't make long distance calls, right? when my grandfather died i picked up
the phone to call my brother and dialed his number without pressing 1+area
code first. i just wasn't thinking. now i have a $20 charge on my bill for
a 2 minute call to "540/970" numbers. fuck you very much, verizon.

My experience with my Sprint Fonecard is that it takes three attempts
for any change-of-address to 'take'.

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