Looping the Hen

Sprint PCS me off too...

I must have a big sign on my back that says 'that's Tobias, he'll pay for anything.' After my conversation with Capital One, I looked online and saw my cell bill had been charged to my bank account at $95 and change. Hmm, that's odd, considering my cell plan runs about $72.

So I call Sprint and they tell me 'We only charged you $72, the other must be for 'premium services' that you would have ordered through text messaging.' About a month back I started to recieve horoscopes by email on my phone every day; I didn't think anything of it and thought it was spam, especially since they were sending me Pisces horoscopes, and I am a Capricorn. (And the fact that I would never spend good money on something idiotic like 20 words words of wisdom sent to my phone every day)

Apparently they had been charging me a buck a day for something I knew nothing about. The first call to Sprint, they said, 'Oh, you just have to text message them back and they will stop.' Me: 'It's not the cancelling I am worried about, its getting my $23 back. Well, yes, and the fact that I have no idea how to text message them back, and have never text messaged anyone on this phone, so they need to not be charging people who don't sign up for their crappy spam' I spent another 10 minutes on the phone with Joe Clueless before I got fed up. 10 minutes later I called back and found someone avec clue who said he would get my money refunded and walked me through getting the 'premium service' cancelled. I find it hard to believe, but there is no person I could actually call to get the horoscopes cancelled, and I had to do it through a text message (actually, 2 text messages). Talk about making 'opting out' of something cumbersome.

Oh, one note to everyone: if you have a montly plan for anything, like premium websites, phone service, annual fees, whatever...just tell them you will cancel and they will lower your rate, nearly guaranteed. While I was on the phone with the first Sprint guy I told them I wanted to cancel my $15/month PCS vision plan, and he immediately offered to cut the rate by 50%. I'm so glad they offered that to me before I wanted to cancel it! The same has happened with anything I've had a monthly or annual fee for.

Caveat emptor redux.