Update: Lloyd, a Sprint “Customer Experience” Manager, wrote in to let us know that the bill below is indeed legitimate:

The bill in question is not fake and is in fact from a third-party vendor that Sprint has hired to help us with billing wireline charges to a customer who does not have an account with Sprint or to a customer whose local exchange carrier does not have a billing agreement with Sprint.

Although this explains the off-brand look of the invoice, we think Sprint—or perhaps their third-party vendor—should take greater pains to make the billing more seamless. This invoice is sort of like the American Express verification call that sounded remarkably like a social engineering scam—in both cases there were several things that we (and our OPs) interpreted as red flags, and they could have probably been explained away with better communication on the company’s side.

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From the original post:

Roderick writes,

My mother received a fake phone bill today. A few interesting notes:

• The number listed was not hers
• The collect call received was never made
• The P.O. box and 800 number are not in Sprint’s database
• The bill stated that the charges would not show up on any other bill.

I suppose that last bit is supposed to snare people who realize that their “Sprint” bill went from vibrant yellow and black to white with a blue table. I was going to wait until the bill was scanned to send this email, but I wanted to make sure that the info went out A.S.A.P.

The guy’s address is listed as:

Sprint
PO Box 600670
Jacksonville FL 32260-0670

From the letter:

THE FOLLOWING CALLS WERE COMPLETED USING SPRINT’S NETWORK.
THE CHARGES FOR THESE CALLS WILL NOT BE ON ANY OTHER TELEPHONE
COMPANY BILL. AMOUNTS DUE MAY BE REFERRED TO A COLLECTION
AGENCY IF NOT PAID. PLEASE PAY UPON RECEIPT. THANK YOU.

(Photo: RBerteig)

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