It’s 9:11 p.m.

Right now 3000 people are being ‘helped’ by someone named Ashley pay their imaginary bill. 2900 people are being told they have extra charges that have been made by Sprint’s System (aka ‘Skynet’) that are incintives to keep them as loyal Sprint customers just one more billing cycle. Right now, 4500 people are being called by Skynet telling them that they are being sent to collections for charges that 300 customer service reps told them were non-existent. The 300 CSRs are unable to do anything like mail customers notices telling them that they don’t have a bill but skynet believes that they do anyway.

20 people are walking into Sprint stores to pay their bill and Skynet believes that they should be kept as customers so they are being charged twice for the privelege of paying their bill in store. That’s what’s happening on the now network and you too can be part of it when you join the loyal Sprint customer hordes.

Rant off.

Ok, here’s the story. We were told a while ago that switching to the iPhone and ATT was going to cost us if we didn’t get through our contract. If we canceled 30 days before our contract was over we wouldn’t get charged 250 for Sprint’s pain and suffering seeing us go (after 9 years). So, I called at T-30 and was told by a customer service representative that we would be no longer charged anything; our relationship with Sprint was, effectively, over. Apparently Skynet was a little sad with him because Skynet decided to send us one more bill for 65.04.

Ok. Cool we got the bill and after an initial phonecall to Sprint we explained our shock and surprise at getting it and doing budgeting, would pay it at the end of July (we got the bill in late June). The CSR was fine with that and, as long as Skynet agreed, would be more than willing to write a note in our file saying ‘oh, these fine people (oh great Skynet) will be more than happy to pay the bill and leave at the end of the month’. The problem, though, is that Sprint’s system (again, aka Skynet) doesn’t really like customers to leave so we angered the system and it decided to threaten to send us to collections. We called our friendly CSR back who assured us that the bill would not, in fact, be sent to collections and that it would be due at the end of the month (July). We made the silly mistake of trusting the human over Skynet. Skynet doesn’t understand, it only wants to devour customers and eat money to sustain itself. Skynet issued us a letter saying that we had, in fact, angered it and it was going to reffer us to collections because our bill was grossly past due.

We called back and talked to a CSR who waived our late fee for the bill and told us that it was due at the end of July. Skynet would have none of this. It called us and in it’s best robotic voice threatned us with a collections notice. Enter today. I had a great hour long conversation at lunch with someone named Veronica who told me, again, that it was due at the end of July. Veronica, though, regretfully told me that Skynet had seen her surfing youtube too much and she was unable to email me a written notice that the bill was due at the end of July, nor was she able to send me an email saying that as well (although another CSR had happily sent an email earlier in the month. I believe that this may have been before Skynet thought we were leaving.

So, in our crafting a plan to escape the great ‘System’ of Sprint, we decided to pay our bill today in the store (figuring Skynet would issue us a receipt and we’d be able to prove that our bill was paid and we were not going to be charged again a late fee). Melissa went into the store and ‘The System’ charged us a $5 fee for the privelege of paying the bill in store, but it tried to sneak it in twice, probably hoping for a ‘tip’ or hoping to grab one last dollar from us before we left Skynet’s evil clutches. It took 10 minutes, a few in store clerks and a sacrificed chicken (we think) to Skynet to be told that Skynet might be able to send us the 5 dollars back sometime later.

Oh, you silly sentient System. If only you understood the concept of CSR notes or stamps, or email you might be able to care for your customers before they leave your ‘Now’ network.