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Greetings and salutations from the Sprint Customer Finance Department; my name is Dan, how might one be of service today? If you are a subscriber to the Sprint/Nextel Network chances are good that you have heard this and chances are even better that you have called to find out why your cell phone isn't working.
It happens time and time again. You speak to a customer finance agent about why your service is interrupted and your always given different answers from each representative you speak with. Never is a solid answer ever given at any time. Its the best game of cat and mouse ever and best of all its with your money. Isn't Sprint/Nextel wonderful? Before diving to the nitty gritty, lets define a few items.
Account Spending Limit
An account spending limit is the maximum amount of money that an account can reach at any given time. Its is ofter referred to as an ASL. Like a credit limit once an account exceeds the amount of the ASL then the account is cut off from all use until a payment is made to get below the ASL. Not all accounts are ASL and ASL subscribers are sent a letter to the billing address explaining that the account is ASL, what the amount of the spending limit is and how charges effect ASL at all times. The spending limit pertains to all lines on the account and the total balance, which includes recent activity, such as downloads, Directory Assistance, and overage, as well as any past due balances. Basically an ASL is an interim charge cap. Its places a cap on how much outstanding debt your account can carry.
Certified Funds
Certified funds the method to make payments on to a sprint account in such a way that the money that is paid is guaranteed to reach asn account. Credit/debit card, Money Gram, Western Union Quick Collect or a cash payment from a sprint location. Payment postings time may vary per method of payment.
Partial Service Interruption/Full Service Interruption
A partial service interruption is a restriction that is placed on a phone that only enables the user receive calls but its unable to use any other feature the device supports. This restriction can happen for three reasons. If an account has a past due balance, if an account is over its spending limit or if the account has recently had a returned check/charge back. An account can have just one or all of these reasons placing the service at risk for being restricted. Be aware that by satisfying one of these may not satisfy all of these. For example if your account has a spending limit of $125.00 and your past due balance of $116.18 and had a returned payment for $50.00 due to not having the funds available and lastly due to having the current months invoice being $142.01 including the $25.00 return check fee your account has been interrupted for all three reasons. Now if you were to only pay the required returned amount with certified funds than you would still be interrupted for having a past due balance on the account as well as being over the spending limit. To continue to have service on the phone would be to pay enough to get below the spending limit plus $30.00 to be safe from going over once again. So the overall amount to satisfy all reasons would be to pay $163.19. Lets explore a bit deeper.
As mentioned above there are three reasons why an account could receive any sort of service interruption. Each interruption can be stacked on top of another, at no time does one reason negate any other reason for interruption and just by satisfying one reason an account may still have service interruption for each of the other two. To begin, accounts that do not have any returned payments and are not over the ASL are subject to a partial service interruption date and full service interruption date; being within 3 to 5 days of each other. Sprint/Nextel DO NOT NOR AT ANYTIME have grace periods. Accounts are system controlled and go unmonitored until you call in and have a rep take a look at your account. Your service interruption dates will vary on a month to month basis. This is largely due to a couple of figures. The system calculates how many times an account has paid on time, late or not at all and factors that with how many times the account has been interrupted whether it be for a partial or full service interruption and the issues a date that the account will be interrupted. Due to this changing every month you time will either increase with great payment history or decrease with terrible payment history. Some accounts can be interrupted with a partial service interruption on the next day after their bill is due or have 30 days before partial service interruption date is scheduled it just depends on the account.
Secondly an account can be hot lined for going over the ASL less for than $25.00 and be suspended for going over more than $25.00. As noted above an ASL can be reached by carrying a past due balance but this is not always the case. If during your current billing cycle the account goes over on minutes its a $0.45/minute rate and can easily acquire a load of charges in a short amount of time. Directory assistance is $1.79 per call and can very easily rack up charges just as quickly. The other way to gain more charges is downloading any kind of games, application and ring tones. Some applications are monthly charges that like your price plan will be charged to an account every month until you want to cancel the downloaded feature. Be advised that there is no way for a rep over the phone to verify whether or not you were the one who actually downloaded it. Now if your price plan does not have an internet package included then your are then charged to download it to your phone at $0.03 per kilobyte. So basically the account paid for the game, application or ring tone itself and then was charged for the file size to download to the phone. All of these charges can quickly place your account above its ASL. Anything that is not included with your price plan will also be charged as an overage, such as text messaging is $0.20 per text and international calls vary per country. There are a lot more hidden charges associated with other services such as roaming and overages on a connection card but are so lengthy that it hideous to outline them here and will vary per situation. Just make sure that you understand all of the charges that can occur on your price plan before setting up an account. All charges on account are considered valid unless otherwise proved invalid. Ignorance for "not knowing" is not admissible, even in court so get the correct use for your phone, stop any all all services you don't want to be charged for and do not assume that you do not use as minutes as you think you do. During the week there are 12 hours where overages can occur. Nights and weekends are free and start at 7:00 PM so that means for 5 days there are 3600 minutes and within a months worth of use could be at maximum 14,400 minutes that can be used just on one phone alone. DO NOT AT ANY TIME CALL IN TO DISPUTE MINUTE USE IF LOWER THAN MAXIMUM AMOUNT IN THE GIVEN MONTH. Even if you work 9-5 and blah...blah...blah. You will lose this argument due to the math being worked out and the theoretical maximum use. Best advise here is to get on the correct price plan from get go. If you cannot afford the overage rate cut back on minute use, but do not think that by lowering your price plan to a cheaper plan will save you money. It will make you spend more in overages. Just pay the extra amount for the plan that suits your use and it will save you money over the coarse of your two year contract.
Lastly an account that has any returned payments whether it be for a returned check or credit card will be hot lined. This hot line will effect all the lines on the account though and any phone that makes a call be be taken to the finance dept. If your account has been interrupted for this reason you will be required to pay the returned amount with certified funds and will only be given a 24 extension to replace those funds and after the 24 hours account will have service interruption. Having a returned check will mean that no checks can be processed though the automated system or IVR (integrated voice response system) nor be taken from a rep over the phone for 6 months and will need to make payments with certified funds for the duration of the 6 months. If account has a returned credit/debit card then no checks or credit/debit cards can be placed with either the automated system or a rep over the phone for 6 months and will only be given the Money Gram, Western Union or cash payment options with no exceptions being made at all. Its is very bad practice to hang up and call back to find a rep that will take your payment. This will make sure that any payment that was made on your account on that day be returned to you and no payments will be accepted over the phone. It will be a cash only account. Please do not make any call hard for the rep you speak with, it will in turn be the worst you could ever do. Trust me. |