Great Moments in Sprint Customer Service
You might remember my Sprint debacle from last February (detailed here, here and here). That was nothing. When it comes to terminating your wireless contract, death is not a valid excuse.
It was a tough holiday season for Tracey Stewart of Framingham. Her 66-year-old father died on Dec. 21 after a brief illness. This week, her husband, Bill, called Sprint to cancel his father-in-law from the cell phone family plan.
“They said his contract wasn’t up and to pay the fee or keep it activated,” he said.
“He came in and said my father had upgraded his phone, so we can’t cancel unless we pay the early termination fee or give the phone to somebody else,” Stewart said.
They didn’t have someone else, and they said that the suggestion offended them.
Bill Stewart said Sprint did agree to reduce the monthly fee for his deceased father-in-law’s phone from $20 to $10 until the contract ends in September 2008.
A Sprint spokesman said that company policy is to request a death certificate.
[From WCVB in Boston]
Johanna Said,
January 7, 2008 @ 2:54 pm
This sounds familiar… Either Consumerist has written about this crazy part of Sprint before, or they’re not the only company who doesn’t recognize death as a valid reason for termination. Which is scarier, I’m not sure…
jasonenglish1 Said,
January 7, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
After posting this, I got an email from someone I went to high school with about his Sprint ordeal. He took it to a whole other level, though — he reported them to the FCC. He got a call from Sprint customer service and was asked directly: “Did you report us to the FCC?”
They went and fixed what they’d broken.