D. M. Hendricks wrote:
> Being a good citizen, I'd like to report the fraud incident with the
> phone number. Unfortunately, the caller ID was blocked on my Sprint
> phone. I called Sprint to get the number, but they said my billing
> cycle ended yesterday (a day after I received the call) and that they
> could not pull up calling history from that period (!!). She said I
> could either wait for my invoice in the mail or look it up online.
Jeez ... I really enjoy Sprint's service and they have good coverage
in my area, but some of their CSRs are dumber than a box of rocks. The
ones in the USA seem to do a great job for the most part, but the ones
working from overseas seem ill-trained and ill-informed. I'm getting
to the point where I'm going to start insisting to talk to a level-2
CSR or manager. Their service and coverage (and hold-time on calls to
customer service!) have gotten steadily better in the 4 1/2 years
since I started as a customer with them, but the quality of their CSRs
has declined.
Sprint doesn't *print* incoming phone numbers on the bill. For a
Sprint CSR not to know that is unacceptable.
No one prints incoming phone numbers on customer bills except
Cingular.
My argument has always been "I'm paying for the call, so I expect to
see who's calling me" -- but that didn't work with Verizon (I was both
an SPCS and Verizon Wireless customer from 12/00 to 6/04) nor did it
work with Sprint.
> Not wanting to wait for snail mail to report a phone number that will
> likely disappear in days, I tried to go online to check where the call
> originated from.
> Their MyPCS is an UNHOLY PILE OF HORSE MANURE. It's quite possibly
> the slowest interface I've ever used, taking ~10 minutes to load each
> page.
That might have been a problem between your ISP and Sprint. My
experience is that yes, sometimes the website is sluggish, but ten
minutes? I may have to occasionally wait 15-30 seconds, but that's it.
This IS the Internet we're talking about, and the information goes
through several ISP's/network backbones between Sprint and your ISP,
so it could be an issue at Sprint, at your ISP, or somewhere in
between. If you have continual problems, talk to your ISP and they may
be able to help you pinpoint where the bottleneck is. I've never had
that kind of delay in getting to the SPCS website.
> It's good to know that Sprint cares so much about fraud prevention.
> Why is it so terribly difficult to find out who called me?
All US carriers except Cingular have the wrongheaded idea that when
someone calls their customer, the caller has a right to privacy. Screw
that -- you have no such right when I'm paying per minute for you to
call me. If on a landline with a flat monthly fee, that's
different. Not on a cell phone where I have to count airtime
minutes. But again, Cingular is the only carrier in the industry with
a clue regarding incoming call details.
My argument is: I get call details on calls to 888-480-4638 because I
pay per minute for people to call my at that number. Why don't I get
the same courtesy from my cell carrier(s)? Come on. I don't even get
the phone number on my bill when my wife calls, and I know damned well
she doesn't block caller ID on her cell phone, so there *is* no
privacy issue for her ... the number shows up on my caller ID but not
on my bill!
(Sorry, you've just pressed one of my hot buttons :>)
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
--New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"
Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)