Beware of Sprint: No longer fair nor flexible

Bastards…I hadn’t liked their new PowerPack plan because overage minutes are 45 cents, so I had them switch me back to my old Fair and Flexible plan, where overage minutes were just 10 cents. This was two weeks ago. I looked at my plan-switch confirmation and found my overage minutes were going to be 50 cents a minute.

I called Customer Service for the eighth time in the past month (it’s a longer story than I shall present here). Tara explained how Sprint has gotten rid of Fair /&/amp; Flexible and is trying to get its customers on to the new PowerPack plans. I was aware of this, but I replied that I was also aware that Sprint has allowed customers to remain on quite outdated plans where customers wish to benefit from some feature beneficial to them. Could she not just switch me back to exactly the plan I had a month ago? My last bill cited me for 584 peak-time minutes. Under my old plan the 84 minutes over 500 were just 10 cents each, or $8.40. Had I not discovered the change to my plan, 84 minutes over 500 in the future were going to cost me $42!

After much back-and-forth, during which I insisted that I should be able to keep my old plan and Tara kept trying to sell me on the new PowerPack plan, I gave up. Score one for Sprint. “I’ll take the new plan,” I said in a defeated tone. No, I don’t want my evenings to start at 6:00pm instead of 7:00pm for another $10. At least, not yet. I can get a bucket of 50 minutes for $5 by calling them anytime, Tara told me. I made need that.

Why didn’t I just dump Sprint? Believe me, I’ve looked into it a lot over the last couple of months. But despite the occasional glowing testimonial about Verizon or Cingular or another, I’ve seen no solid evidence that’s it’s really worth it to switch. So I’ve got Sprint for another two years. They’re neither fair nor flexible, and they still have that bitch Claire answering the customer service line. (Claire is a computer-generated voice who thinks she can help you. I also just spout nonsense to her until she says, “OK, I’ll transfer you…”)

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