SPRINT ATTAINS PERFECTION: Film at 11

[unixronin]

So, $11.61 of our long distance bill is now officially "in dispute."  The first disputed call, one billed minute to Coral Springs, Florida, is apparently to a Jay Barber.  (We don't know anyone named Jay Barber.)  The third, ten billed minutes to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is to a Lori Sedaka.  (We don't know anyone named Lori Sedaka.)

The really fun one is the second call, six billed minutes to Auburn, California, at a fraction over $1.80 per minute, which Sprint tells us is a collect call to us that we accepted, but couldn't say who it was from.  BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!  Thank you for playing, next contestant please!  We have neither accepted nor, in fact, received any collect calls from ANYONE, let alone from California towns in which we don't know anyone.

However, there can't possibly be a billing error, because as the Sprint customer service drone assured me,

"...with the new digital switches in our central offices, it's impossible for a call to be incorrectly billed."

And what value of "impossible" do they use on his planet, I wonder?  I dunno about anyone else, but any time someone tells me "[FITB] error is impossible", my bogometer starts beeping and blinking red warning lights.

Comments

[dirtynumbangel.livejournal.com]

That's possibly the best Sprint fuckup i've ever heard.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

FITB??

I've generally had good luck with MCI as a long distance carrier. Sprint has always had Customer No-Service... and as a rule I don't do business with DeathStarCo.

I can't really recommend any of the "alternate" CLEC's... but you can at least cut your local service down to a bare minimum, and make sure your LD is by Somebody Else.

Can't have a billing error. Feh. Somewhere a human hit the keys. By definition it has bugs.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

We use Sprint for long distance so we can have ISP with out having a credit card. And there aren't any other phone companies here in the boonies of NC.

FITB= fill in the blank

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

If you can reach 252-295-xxxx with a local call, you can have eskimo.com for an ISP. They're local here to Seattle; they're contracting the dialup to GlobalPop, which is available most places (even tiny Bull's Gap, Tennessee, and no doubt some place in Maryland when he gets the job (when, dammit!).... and they will take payment by check. The first two weeks are a free trial. Their shell accounts aren't the best, but that's not really what you're after.... and they take regular old checks or money orders. And I'll admit, they have the occasional outage. But it hasn't been bad. And it's worth it for the flexibility.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There is indeed that, and their local POP is indeed a local call for us. There's just one problem: eskimo's unlimited dialup is unlimited in five-hour chunks. That means that any download over five hours that we cannot resume on demand, we cannot download, period. And at 16400bps, MANY downloads are over five hours. (Some of the larger Microsoft patches, for instance.)
Unfortunately, Earthlink is the only dialup ISP we've found yet whose unlimited dialup really is unlimited.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

5 hours? Where'd you hear that? We have a 12-hour hard limit... he's got a 4-hour limit for cheaper, but the $22 rate is definitely 12 hours...

You sure you're going to be limited to 16.4? Even behind a nasty-ass filter, we were getting 21.6 in Norcross.... I get 41.6 even on lousy lines here (Lisakit's trailer)...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I saw it in the TOS. Do you perhaps know of a contact who could confirm one way or the other?
As to 16.4, "will be limited to", probably not, anywhere but here. "Are limited to", definitely looks that way until Hell freezes over or Sprint replaces the goddamn lines.... And once we get out of here, of course, dialup speed limitations should cease to be an issue.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

FITB= fill in the blank

Heh. I parsed it as "Fucked in the brain".

-Ogre

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

"...with the new digital switches in our central offices, it's impossible for a call to be incorrectly billed."

"Sorry buddy, I work in software for a living. I know exactly how fucked up computers can get. You're going to have to pick another excuse. Try the one about it being a problem with the positronic routers, I'd be much more inclined to believe that."

"Tell your dev team to stop beta testing its buggy hardware on the paying customers."

-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction too....