And T-Mobile wants to buy this insanity... Uh huh...

that'd be quite the shocker to get in the mail

Didnt we already see this?

I used to work at Sprint and believe me, their billing system is notorious for errors like this.

I'd go after them for mail fraud. Sending a bill for something you do not owe, through the postal service, is a felony.

@iEddie: Especially since the letter was sent out after Sprint had reviewed their records - at least that is what their letter said.

Why, sure, I'll get right on selling my car... um... NO.

@midwestkel: Not unless "Jessie" is now "Richard". Kind of hard to mistake one for the other, though.

@iEddie: Oy. Since when is a clerical mistake criminal intent?

This is incompetence, not malfeasance.

Maybe Sprint should add a kick-out mechanism for consumer bills over say- $2000 to get an actual human to review them first before they are mailed.

@highmodulus: I would agree with you - except they reviewed the info before sending the notice.

I wonder what Sprint would do if Richard actually sent in the proper amount.

@camman68: That's just the form letter I believe. The problem with Sprint is nobody is actually reviewing things- that's why they keep screwing up.

So Sprint now is going for the "all you can eat" buffet approach. Cheap and plenty of it, but low quality and no service.

Heck, it may even work.

@highmodulus: Then don't make claims that aren't true, in writing no less. That bites you when you get sued later.

@highmodulus: You aren't saying that they are deliberately misleading their customers are you? Not only would it be lying, it would be unethical.

If Sprint says that they have reviewed the info - then by golly I believe they are telling the truth!

God I am glad I left Sprint. And got out of the etf..

@blue_duck: A-men to that, I think i'd rather use a payphone and beeper over sprint

Ask for a Retention Specialist. I almost don't even bother with the regular Sprint customer service people anymore. If they think they're going to lose your business, they get to helping you with a quickness.

@blue_duck: So true. I used the hotline to get out of mine. They tried to push back my contract expiration date by a year, but I was able to get it changed.

@workingonyourinvoice: The Consumerist helped me out of mine~ there was an article that pointed out text message rate changes and by telling them that it changed my contract without my consent, my contract was eventually voided out. The BBB helped too, but it ended very well on my part.

@blue_duck: I tried that with the roaming rate change, but they fought me on it. Said I had free roaming so I wasn't affected. They were such dicks about it too. When I called the hotline about the other thing, I mentioned that, and asked that they change the expiration date and drop all the extras off my plan, so I was just paying for minutes and nothing else. I even told them I'd just got my iPhone and that I was just going to let my sprint phone ride out the remainder of the contract in a drawer. The guy was really good about it, and took care of me.

I got two of these within 2 weeks of each other. After receving the first one for > $9,000.00, I called Sprint customer service, and was told I should just ignore it. I asked for a supervisor/manager (who subsequently blamed it on the Nextel billing system), and was given $40 off my next bill, plus an extra 700 minutes for the billing period.

I was tempted to call back again when the second letter arrived but figured "i'd suffered enough".

How stupid are Richard's parents, that they would get angry at *him* about something that's obviously a typo. Just call customer service and get the shit taken care of. There's enough shit in life to deal with without getting pissed about stuff like this.

The article failed to mention the plan came with a phone.. and the phone came with a brick of black tar heroin..

@highmodulus: If, through incompetence, you forget to pay your Sprint bill, how does Sprint treat the matter? How is it unreasonable to treat Sprint with the level of respect they show to others?

Comment on Sprint: Can You Please Give Us $39,952 Today? As for the comment that Sprints billing system is notoriously inaccurate, that is in and of itself an inaccuracy. Sprints billing system is on the way out while the legacy Nextel billing system is taking over for all account management purposes. The reason this happened is because in an update about a year ago our (I work for Sprint) billing system started reading more significant digits. This was to cut down on tax errors on large amounts of separate charges. Somewhere, a few wires got crossed and these letters were sent out with the decimal places moved a bit to the right. Keep in mind, not a single account ever actually had this mistake on it in any lasting form.