Allen Harkleroad of GMP Services writes, “A warning to all Sprint corporate customers that have dedicated access (T1’s, etc.) if you are out of contract Sprint may be gouging you and claiming outrageously high local loop charges as the cause.”

Harkleroad was told four times by Sprint reps that they had to pay over $950 per line in local loop costs—but it turns out local company Frontier Communications says they only get around $250 per connection from Sprint. So where does that other $700 go? Probably to help pay for that dead weight called Nextel. If you’re a Sprint business customer you should know that you’re possibly being gouged—and, if you were told the same thing as Harkleroad, lied to about the reason.

Harkleroad claims the amount he was overcharged comes up to $38,000 over two years, but we can’t come up with that amount using our advanced math skills: 2 lines per month with overcharges of $700 for each one is $1400 per month, times 24 months is $33,600. It’s still a huge amount, especially for a small company.

After he posted his story online, Harkleroad was contacted by Sprint over the weekend:

Update March 16, 2008 12:42pm. I got a call yesterday (Saturday 3/15) from Linda Moreno of Sprint’s Executive and Regulatory Services. We had a pleasant and informative chat and was advised that she/they would get to the bottom of the issue. I agreed to give her and Sprint till Wednesday (March 19th) to resolve the issue to my satisfaction.

Sprint responded to this post with the following statement, “We are continuing discussions with Mr. Harkleroad and will work to address his concerns. But, because of Federal privacy laws and our company’s privacy policies, Sprint will not publicly comment on specific customer’s complaints, this includes those made by Mr. Harkleroad.

It’s important to note that unlike our wireless offerings, which have national price plans in place, the prices for our wireline telecommunications and IP services vary depending on the bandwidth requirements between Sprint and the individual customer as well as the customer’s physical location and proximity to Sprint’s network facilities. The prices in our contracts for IP connections are negotiated, mutually agreed to and reflect an extremely competitive telecommunications market.”

“Screwed by Sprint to the tune of $38,000.00 “ [DesignerToday]
(Photo: Getty)

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