All Services Are Negotiable

Saturday, October 07, 2006

The Hypocrite Speaks

Believe it or not, my new cell phone bill arrived with an even higher balance of $390. I was expecting this one to be about $60 + tax and random fees. In my last post about this travesty, I was very direct in saying that I would not waste my own time adjusting my bill again. Well, call me part of the problem.

I had the best of intentions when I set out to settle this issue this morning. Without a desire to disrupt my wife's cell phone usage (or cause her the inconvenience of having to change numbers), I decided to track down a new provider and go buy new phones today. When I called, Sprint however, I happened to land one reasonable, competent rep (of perhaps two) who explained to me the issues with my account practically before I even mentioned them. As the words started their departure from my mouth, I heard from the other end of the phone, "Oh yes, I see it. Your whole account is messed up."

Turns out there was a ton of stuff (promotions, charges, etc.) from my original plan on the account that had never been removed when we switched to the new plan. Also, Sprint recently changed their plan codes, and as noted in previous posts, none of the three reps I spoke with in my previous calls applied the new code to both phones in my plan.

Autumn did, though.

Then she backdated the whole thing to the beginning of this fiasco and removed the late fees accrued from my underpayment of last month's bill--which she should have, but the fact that I didn't have to bring it up further cemented my confidence in her ability to straighten out my plan. Autumn also volunteered a precise, reasonable explanation for certain other idiosyncrasies with my statement, which I asked about on all of my previous calls, but never received a satisfactory explanation for.

All told, I ended up with a credit of $317.07 for this month's bill, which is right smack in the range of what I expected, so I went with it. We'll see how things pan out next month. Don't let me down, Autumn...