A Pin Drop…. In the Court Room?

Another duopoloy follies special ladies and gentlemen. This time on State charges on a customer who does not reside in the State. But I will let the lawyer-customer tell the tale. –

Every now and again, I get a reminder of why I want to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. This morning, my mother called to let me know she’s canceling our Sprint cell phone plan. We’re on a family plan with 4 lines. We’ve been customers for a little over seven years, and have never had any disputes or late payments. But last month, my parents happened to look through their Sprint bill and discovered something interesting. For the last 3 and a half years, Sprint has been charging us about $6 bucks a month in Texas state and local taxes. The problem is that none of us have lived in Texas for 3 and a half years… and Sprint has also been charging Nevada state and and local taxes. Obviously, that’s about $250.00 that we shouldn’t have paid Sprint.

Needless to say, we disputed that with Sprint and asked for a credit. It’s taken about a week of telephone tag, but we finally heard back from Sprint. They’re only willing to refund the past three month’s worth of illegal taxes because it took so long for my parents to discover their error. That’s just “their policy.”

Why is it that it’s OK for a big corporation to have a policy of ripping off consumers, but it’s horrible for consumers to rip off big corporations? What do you think would happen if we underpaid Sprint $6 bucks a month for three years, and when caught told Sprint that we’d only refund them three month’s worth because it took them so long to catch our error? I imagine they’d use the oppressive credit reporting system to blackmail us into paying.

Now, to be honest the customer should have caught this sooner. But the fact is they are due the refund on the charges. Breaking the law and proper restitution overcomes ‘policy’ every time. Fact Sprint ought to do a data mining exercise very quickly. I did mention this guy is a LAWYER? Class action would be a delicious recourse for this family.

Linky.