Billing snafus with my account

Last week I discovered I could no longer download ringtones or screen
savers from SprintPCS. I called *2 and after describing my problem was
sent to 866-818-1858 (Vision Tech Support).

First call to Vision Tech Support: technician takes me through a series
of menus on the phone and we reinitialize my web connection. Tells me to
leave the phone off for 30 minutes then try again.

I do, and the problem still exists.

Second call: I call *2 again. CS agent says my account is overdue and
would I like to pay. I reply that I'm on automatic payment and it
shouldn't be possible to be overdue on bill payment. She repeats twice
more that I owe $60 and would I like to pay. Both times I state that I
am unable to download ringtones or screen savers. She finally routes me
to Vision Tech Support.

Vision Tech Support person says that he can see nothing on his screen
that indicates anything wrong with the payment status of my account. He
can't understand why the CS agent would have said I was overdue on
payment. He says he's "going to try something" and that I should take
the battery off the back of the phone while it's still running, then put
it back on a minute later, then not turn the phone on for two hours. He
said he was reprovisioning the phone.

I do these things and still cannot download ringtones or screen savers.

I call Vision Tech Support again. Spoke to a man who said that the only
thing left to do was to "re-provision the phone." I said that the last
person at Vision Tech Support who I spoke to said he was going to
re-provision the phone and it had had no effect. He said that his screen
showed my account had been "turned off and then turned on again," but
that it had not been re-provisioned. He said that re-provisioning the
phone would delete all the pictures I had in Picture Mail. I told him I
wanted to download all the photos before they did anything that deleted
them.

After downloading all the photos in Picture Mail to my PC, I called
Vision Tech Support back. Spoke to a nice woman who said that the reason
my internet service had been interrupted was I had "exceeded the
spending limit of [my] account." Impossible, I said, there is no
spending limit on my account. She looks at her screen and says, "yes,
I'm showing you have a $0.00 account balance." Then she said that
whenever there was a problem with billing this was often the result.

I asked her if she had had many customers calling in with this problem.
"No," she said, "but it's happened to me." I asked her if she meant that
SprintPCS had messed up her billing and caused her to lose internet
service. "Yes," she said.

She offered me a month of unlimited text messaging to compensate me. I
told her no thanks since I don't exceed the 100 messages a month I have.
I asked her if she could escalate the call and she said a supervisor
would be calling me within 36 hours.

Now, I would like to ask the newsgroup: what will that supervisor tell
me, and what should I be prepared to ask him/her?

Thanks,
Anne

---

› See More: Billing snafus with my account

News Reader wrote:
<sip yet another tale of woe from SPCS CS>
>
> Now, I would like to ask the newsgroup: what will that supervisor tell
> me, and what should I be prepared to ask him/her?
>
> Thanks,
> Anne

If I was a betting man I'd bet you won't actually receive that call.

Regardless, even if you have to call back again (you will), this is what
I would do first:

Check your account online at sprintpcs.com and make sure the account is
indeed current. You can't rely on automatic payments to be 100%
reliable. Check both the SPCS side, and whatever bank the funds are
withdrawn from.

Second, get a definitive answer on whether your account does, in fact,
have a spending limit. If it does, you would have been informed about it
from the get-go. Generally this occurs when someone's credit is
less-than-stellar, and SPCS puts a cap on how much one can spend.

Third, check, again at sprintpcs.com, your account's current usage. See
anything strange? Have you gone over your minutes? Downloaded a plethora
of ring-tones and/or apps and games? All of this could place you above
your spending limit, assuming there is one.

Finally, I'm assuming you are the primary account-holder. If not, make
sure the primary-account holder has not placed any restrictions on your
sub-account.

If none of the above is true (i.e., you are not past-due, you do not
have a spending limit, etc.) I'd say you need to escalate the matter
past the typical CS/Vision tech drones. You can sit around for another
day and wait for a call that probably won't come. Or you can take action
right now and call 866-866-7496 and ask for Executive Services. They may
or may not be able to take care of whatever demons, assuming there any,
that are possessing your account.

Good luck.


--
Mike | Last words of Thomas Grasso, executed in 1995:
| "I did not get my Spaghetti-O's, I got spaghetti.
| I want the press to know this."

Tinman,

Thanks for the good advice. In short, there are no spending limits on my
account, I am the sole account holder, and so on. 18 hours later, I
still don't have the ability to download ringtones etc. I have noticed
that the Picture Mail link has disappeared from my account web page
since this snafu began. Thanks also for the Exec. Services phone number.
I will give it a try.

-Anne

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 07:50:40 -0700, "Tinman"
>News Reader wrote:
><sip yet another tale of woe from SPCS CS>
>If none of the above is true (i.e., you are not past-due, you do not
>have a spending limit, etc.) I'd say you need to escalate the matter
>past the typical CS/Vision tech drones.

Through my recent, mostly unpleasant, dealings with Sprint CS, the
biggest problem I've found is that the typical "CS/Vision tech drones"
are ill-equipped to handle anything beyond simple problems, and would
rather "ad-lib" to stumble across a solution then escalate the problem
to the next tech support level. This leads to all sorts of wasted
time and "solutions" that don't fix the problem.

I have a Verizon Wireless account for our family estate. My sister
called a couple of weeks ago to tell me that the voicemail had stopped
working. I dreaded making the call to Verizion, expecting the same
kind of inadequate assistance that I have been getting from Sprint
recently.

What a surprise! My call was answered by a well-spoken individual. I
explained my problem. This rep made a quick review of the account,
and in less than 30 seconds after I finished describing the problem,
transferred me to tier 2. Again, the call was answered by a
well-spoken individual, who idendified that VW had messed up when
updating the billing on our account. She fixed it, and then connected
me to the voicemail box, and stayed on the line to ensure that I was
able to login and that everything was working. The problem was solved
and the call was completed in less than 5 minutes.

Another interesting little tidbit...The VW tier 2 rep informed me that
our phone (Motorola StarTac) was not E911-compliant (which I knew),
and then made a comment about how she suspected I wouldn't want to
upgrade it. I asked her what she meant by that. She replied that the
StarTac and TimePort phones were very popular, and that most people
don't want to upgrade. She also mentioned that Verizon is inundated
with requests to bring back a phone similar to the StarTac and
Timeport.

Joe Huber
[email protected]

Joseph Huber wrote:

> What a surprise! My call was answered by a well-spoken individual. I
> explained my problem. This rep made a quick review of the account,
> and in less than 30 seconds after I finished describing the problem,
> transferred me to tier 2. Again, the call was answered by a
> well-spoken individual, who idendified that VW had messed up when
> updating the billing on our account. She fixed it, and then connected
> me to the voicemail box, and stayed on the line to ensure that I was
> able to login and that everything was working. The problem was solved
> and the call was completed in less than 5 minutes.

Verizon Wireless CS was great for the entire four years that I was a
customer of theirs.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: [email protected] Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

In article <B%[email protected]>, news-
[email protected] says...
> Tinman,
>
> Thanks for the good advice. In short, there are no spending limits on my
> account, I am the sole account holder, and so on. 18 hours later, I
> still don't have the ability to download ringtones etc. I have noticed
> that the Picture Mail link has disappeared from my account web page
> since this snafu began. Thanks also for the Exec. Services phone number.
> I will give it a try.
>
> -Anne
>

If you don't mind my asking, what happens when you try to download a
ringtone?

--
RØß
O/Siris
-+-
A thing moderately good
is not so good as it ought to be.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue,
but moderation in principle is always a vice.
+Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1792+

Rob,

I get this error message:

LOGIN ERROR
Application error. We regret this inconvenience. Please try again later.

However for several hours today I got a different error saying the
Vision service was down for upgrades. At the same time my account web
page also had a message saying they were temporarily down for upgrades.

Got any ideas?

-Anne

O/Siris wrote:
> In article <B%[email protected]>, news-
> [email protected] says...
>
>>Tinman,
>>
>>Thanks for the good advice. In short, there are no spending limits on my
>>account, I am the sole account holder, and so on. 18 hours later, I
>>still don't have the ability to download ringtones etc. I have noticed
>>that the Picture Mail link has disappeared from my account web page
>>since this snafu began. Thanks also for the Exec. Services phone number.
>>I will give it a try.
>>
>>-Anne
>>
>
>
> If you don't mind my asking, what happens when you try to download a
> ringtone?
>

Enjoyed reading your story! How does any of that information answer any
of my questions?

-Anne

Joseph Huber wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 07:50:40 -0700, "Tinman"
>
>>News Reader wrote:
>><sip yet another tale of woe from SPCS CS>
>>If none of the above is true (i.e., you are not past-due, you do not
>>have a spending limit, etc.) I'd say you need to escalate the matter
>>past the typical CS/Vision tech drones.
>
>
> Through my recent, mostly unpleasant, dealings with Sprint CS, the
> biggest problem I've found is that the typical "CS/Vision tech drones"
> are ill-equipped to handle anything beyond simple problems, and would
> rather "ad-lib" to stumble across a solution then escalate the problem
> to the next tech support level. This leads to all sorts of wasted
> time and "solutions" that don't fix the problem.
>
> I have a Verizon Wireless account for our family estate. My sister
> called a couple of weeks ago to tell me that the voicemail had stopped
> working. I dreaded making the call to Verizion, expecting the same
> kind of inadequate assistance that I have been getting from Sprint
> recently.
>
> What a surprise! My call was answered by a well-spoken individual. I
> explained my problem. This rep made a quick review of the account,
> and in less than 30 seconds after I finished describing the problem,
> transferred me to tier 2. Again, the call was answered by a
> well-spoken individual, who idendified that VW had messed up when
> updating the billing on our account. She fixed it, and then connected
> me to the voicemail box, and stayed on the line to ensure that I was
> able to login and that everything was working. The problem was solved
> and the call was completed in less than 5 minutes.
>
> Another interesting little tidbit...The VW tier 2 rep informed me that
> our phone (Motorola StarTac) was not E911-compliant (which I knew),
> and then made a comment about how she suspected I wouldn't want to
> upgrade it. I asked her what she meant by that. She replied that the
> StarTac and TimePort phones were very popular, and that most people
> don't want to upgrade. She also mentioned that Verizon is inundated
> with requests to bring back a phone similar to the StarTac and
> Timeport.
>
> Joe Huber
> [email protected]

If you ever get a rep that is located in India, hang up immediately in order
to avoid a total waste of your time.

"Steve Sobol" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Joseph Huber wrote:
>
>> What a surprise! My call was answered by a well-spoken individual. I
>> explained my problem. This rep made a quick review of the account,
>> and in less than 30 seconds after I finished describing the problem,
>> transferred me to tier 2. Again, the call was answered by a
>> well-spoken individual, who idendified that VW had messed up when
>> updating the billing on our account. She fixed it, and then connected
>> me to the voicemail box, and stayed on the line to ensure that I was
>> able to login and that everything was working. The problem was solved
>> and the call was completed in less than 5 minutes.
>
> Verizon Wireless CS was great for the entire four years that I was a
> customer of theirs.
>
> --
> Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
> Company website: http://JustThe.net/
> Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
> E: [email protected] Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 04:04:14 GMT, News Reader wrote:

>Enjoyed reading your story! How does any of that information answer any
>of my questions?

I wasn't responding to your questions, I was responding to a comment
made by Tinman.

However, if you would like my advice on the matter, I suggest taking
your phone and going to a Sprint store with technicians on staff (not
one of those "stores" in Radio Shack, or Costco, or a mall kiosk).
Hopefully, there is one within a reasonable distance. It seems that
the techs at the Sprint stores can directly contact higher tier
technical support at Sprint when they get stumped. O/Siris can
probably tell you about the capabilities of the technicians at the
Sprint stores.

This has worked for me and also for colleagues of mine when we ended
up in a similar situation to yours, where we could make no headway on
the problem via phone tech support.

Joe Huber
[email protected]

Mij Adyaw wrote:
> If you ever get a rep that is located in India, hang up immediately in order
> to avoid a total waste of your time.

You won't with Verizon. My CSRs, when I lived in Cleveland, operated out of
the VZW regional corporate office just outside Columbus, Ohio.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: [email protected] Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

Anne,

I have four Sanyo PM-8200's. In June, two of the four phones developed the
problem you described. Although I have called Sprint a number of times,
even the Vision representatives were unable to solve the problem.

I have the Sprint Vision package. Internet access is still available. 100
included SMS messages are still there. But on two of the four phones I can
no longer download games, ringers, screen savers, and applications. The
option to select these four has also disappeared from the phones' associated
web page Sprint provides.

Unfortunately, I have no solution to offer since my calls to the Sprint
customer service have been dead-ends. I am hoping you will have better
luck!

Rick

The technicians at the Sprint store and any other cell phone provider store
were probably flipping burgers the previous week. :-(

"Joseph Huber" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 04:04:14 GMT, News Reader wrote:
>
>>Enjoyed reading your story! How does any of that information answer any
>>of my questions?
>
> I wasn't responding to your questions, I was responding to a comment
> made by Tinman.
>
> However, if you would like my advice on the matter, I suggest taking
> your phone and going to a Sprint store with technicians on staff (not
> one of those "stores" in Radio Shack, or Costco, or a mall kiosk).
> Hopefully, there is one within a reasonable distance. It seems that
> the techs at the Sprint stores can directly contact higher tier
> technical support at Sprint when they get stumped. O/Siris can
> probably tell you about the capabilities of the technicians at the
> Sprint stores.
>
> This has worked for me and also for colleagues of mine when we ended
> up in a similar situation to yours, where we could make no headway on
> the problem via phone tech support.
>
> Joe Huber
> [email protected]

News Reader wrote:
> Last week I discovered I could no longer download ringtones
> or screen savers from SprintPCS.

Anne:

Do you have the Vision option on this phone?

Could this be a _Vision_ password problem?
(As opposed to an _account_ password.)

In article <[email protected]>, news-
[email protected] says...
> Rob,
>
> I get this error message:
>
> LOGIN ERROR
> Application error. We regret this inconvenience. Please try again later.
>
> However for several hours today I got a different error saying the
> Vision service was down for upgrades. At the same time my account web
> page also had a message saying they were temporarily down for upgrades.
>
> Got any ideas?
>
> -Anne
>

Well... depending on what I would have seen in the Vision support tools
I used to be able to access, it sounds like the reps were, at least, on
the right first step.

Actually, I take that back. Step one would have been to see if you
could purchase a download using the Sprint PCS web site on a PC. I'm
seeing on some web sites that the web site is problematic right now.

Are you able to log in to your Sprint PCs account on the web site? I'm
betting not. But that may be unrelated. Let me know what the results
are.

And yeah, I have... let's see... two ideas. #3 is the provisioning
thing I know you've (theoretically) been through already.

OH! One more thing. I think you mentioned it already, but go into your
Settings menu, to "Vision", and Update Profile. Let me know how that
goes. Including how long it took to do what it did (not to the second,
just ballpark). CAUTION: if this fails, it can render Vision completely
down for you until it gets fixed, so you decide if that's worth the
risk. We can work around this if not.

--
RØß
O/Siris
-+-
A thing moderately good
is not so good as it ought to be.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue,
but moderation in principle is always a vice.
+Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1792+