Sprint hit with lawsuit over roaming charges
Posted by Joe P on February 15, 2008
What would you do if you were being charged roaming rates when calling from your own home? You’d probably get angry and call customer service, right? But what if that you had Sprint and their reputed abysmal customer service? Well, you’d have a completely different case on your hands. One woman in Charlotte, South Carolina decided to take a forceful route. She’s suing Sprint Nextel Corp. in U.S. District Court.
“We have a plaintiff who made calls when she was inside her home, and she was continuously charged roaming fees for those calls,” said Jeff Harris, a class-action lawyer based in Cincinnati and from one of the three listed firms that filed the suit. “We believe Sprint’s technology is not able to locate the calls.”
…
“We’re claiming that when they bill people, they’ve not determined if they are really inside or outside the home area,” Harris said. “We believe this is a practice that occurs on a regular basis.”
Now, this isn’t just some attorney throwing blind — and harsh — allegations at Sprint. Apparently, Mr. Harris’s lawfirm researched the technology Sprint uses to track calls “under those specified rate plans.” This refers to their Fair & Flexible plan, which helps subscribers avoid overage costs by adding rate-plan minutes when they’re nearing their limits. This plan is no longer available to new Sprint subscribers, but people who had the plan can continue to use it.
Sprint’s only statement so far: “We take great care to ensure that our customers understand the scope of service offered through their plans with Sprint.” Yet I’m sure this woman wasn’t made to understand that she’d be roaming in her own home.
There is no specific amount of money sought in the case, though it does include actual and punitive damages. What’s great about this is that cell phone contracts exclude both this type of lawsuit and judgments for punitive damages. So hopefully we’ll see some new precedents set here.
Mr. Harris’s firm, Statman, Harris & Eyrich, won a similar roaming case against Tracfone last year.
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Filed under : Consumer Issues
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1 Comment ↓
I am a customer of Sprint and everything in this article is the same with me except a few more items to add up, First I added up all my minutes and they came to 1897 and the bill showed 1939 I have a family plan of 1500 and out of those minutes used 500 of them were mobile to mobile so my question is HOW AM I OVER MY MINUTES oh they say after months of calling that there are different kinds of roaming and if you call mobile to mobile and your signal needs to jump from another carriers tower that its not a mobile to mobile call its a roaming thats not included in your plan charge…. WHAT IS THAT ALL ABOUT…. so having mobile to mobile does nothing? and on top of this my bill dates are example sept 6th to oct 7th, and on my detailed billing it showes minutes that are from sept 5th? is that legal? are they double billing my minutes and the total of minutes they come up with dont even add up right? is that right? I want a class action law suit started and dont know where to start.
sincerely aggrevated with sprint
christine
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