Billing Cluster-****’s and lots of wind

I’ve had my fill of idiots. Especially if they have anything at all to do with phones. For 4 months I fought with Qwest to straighten out my phone bill and service. No bills, wrong bills, wrong service, you name it, they screwed it up. Today I went to check and see if any of the credits I was told I would have had come through. Nope, and on top of that, nothing I asked to be canceled had been canceled. Keep in mind that I haven’t had DSL service since the end of October and no phone with Qwest since mid November. Shut off because I didn’t pay although I didn’t get any bills, or the billings I got were wrong. They even admitted that they were wrong!

So, I called. After the third person and 40 minutes on the phone, I discovered a few things:

  • I couldn’t cancel my phone while it was in suspended service.
  • I needed to pay $19.63 to have my phone turned back on so that 24 hours after I had service reinstated, I COULD CANCEL my phone.
  • I still owed $78 in phone charges
  • I have $122 in CREDIT coming to me.
  • I could not get the credit until I have the phone on, and they cycle it through billing.

So, I paid the $19.63. My phone service will be turned on and on Saturday or maybe Friday afternoon, I can cancel my service. I will pay off the $78 by January and at some point, I will get a check or multiple checks adding up to $122. I told the guy at one point that at least Qwest wasn’t as messed up as Sprint. Truth!

For the last month, I have also been arguing with Sprint via email, phone and finally in person at one point. In July, I called and told them that due to the fact that I was broke, I wanted to turn off my phone, cancel my service and pay off my contract. No problem I was told. (you can start laughing, I really won’t mind) Fast forward to August. I go to make a payment and find that my account has been sealed. No access. Hmm…. No access to my account, paperless billing…. hard to pay. I email tech support. No answer. Try again. Got told to go to my nearest Sprint store and pay.

When I cooled off, I explained that I live 60 miles one way from my nearest Sprint store. They did a “sorry, but not our problem, would you like to make a payment over the phone?” When I asked for an accounting and a paper receipt, I got told that wasn’t possible, I’d have to check that online. (What???) I said no thank you, I don’t like to make payments on the phone unless I have a paper bill to back it or an online bill I can check. Back to Customer Service.

Now I’m getting calls from a collection agent. One of them got Very Nasty. Called me a liar and a deadbeat and told me that I “just didn’t want to own up to the fact that I’d screwed up my account and didn’t want to pay”. I explained my views on payments online, especially to third partycollection agents. Reason is, I just got everything straightened out because of a small bit of identity theft. One of the things that they tell you is Don’t make payments over phones if you don’t have a bill in your hand, etc. It might not be the real collection agent, etc. So,… no bill, no payment. This collection agent told me again that I was lying! grrrrrrrrrr!

I did get to Pueblo and made a payment in person. I asked to be switched to paper billing so that I could pay my bill and keep track of my payments. This is after a 15 minute explanation of what had gone on. The guy tried. Guess what! Sprint can’t take you back from online billing back to paperless billing. He apologized.

Fast forward to this week. I finally got someone to listen to what I was saying and then got told that they had lost my payment I’d made in Pueblo. I about thumped my head on the computer. However, I talked to a real person on the phone and got the collection agency off my back until  they find my payment! gads!

In town, the weather has been either bitterly cold or just around 45 degrees. Not bad unless you add in the fact that the average wind lately has been around 20mph. BRRRR! Even the dogs didn’t want to go out the one day. Maybe it was because their water bowl froze!

This week at the chamber has been busy. Meetings no one came to, City Ordinances that look like they were written by Chinese Fire Drill and people running in at the last minute to sign up for the lighting contest.

I think I am really glad to be going to Pueblo tomorrow to finish my Yule shopping! Aieeeeeeeee!!!

2 thoughts on “Billing Cluster-****’s and lots of wind

  1. Wolf had the same problem with Qwest and his billings and with Excel.

    We are still trying to move that way. I sure hope so. I am so tired of trying to figure out my boss but we cannot afford for me to quit and I am not sure if I did I could find a job to replace the money during these weird times. I may really look after the first of the year for something else to hold us over until we move and tell her what she can do with her mood swings. She is a Scorpio and me being Taurus with Scorpio rising makes for lots of fun, not.

    I am really sad and depressed this year. Just to many let downs it feels like. There are days, well we wont say what I think about on those days.

    Thank you for listening to me and talking back when you have time and a computer connection.

  2. Rozewolf, I’m sorry to hear about the overinflated Sprint bill. I wanted to write a follow-up post about a service that might be able to help. Thousands of wireless subscribers are locating and eliminating unnecessary charges by having their cell bills analyzed through the website http://www.fixmycellbill.com by a company that I work for called Validas. By uploading your bill, you can find out for free if you’re one of the eight in ten wireless customers paying more than you need to. If you choose, Validas provides a highly detailed and personalized adjustment report that, for five bucks, is emailed to your wireless provider in industry specific format in order to implement Validas’s cash saving changes to your plan. If Validas can save you more than $5 on your bill (the average customer currently saves $482 annually through Validas), then this obviously provides a cost effective remedy for reducing cellular expenses.

    Validas is rapidly gaining a reputation as the preeminent advocate for the wireless customer. Check out a feature about Validas on The Big Idea with CNBC’s Donny Deutsch at http://www.cnbc.com/id/22782456/. Validas has also been profiled in the New York Times and Business Week.

    Happy holidays, and good luck on lowering the Sprint bill.

    Dylan

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