Compassionate Corporations
Hey, all you slackers, don’t think death with get you out of your cell phone contract: Family Stuck Paying For Deceased Father’s Cell.
The ever helpful Sprint [my local phone company] shows its steadfast insistence on the terms of contracts, even if the individual who signed the contract is no longer among the living.
This is one of the reason John Edwards is, and sounds, angry, because this type of behavior is endemic in what corporations laughingly refer to as “customer service.” I probably wouldn’t even have noticed this if the Mumbai bureau of Sprint hadn’t called me at six bloody thirty this morning to “give” me two free cell phones. The young woman couldn’t understand that I didn’t want something that was free. I then gave her a free gift – an expanded vocabulary of vernacular American English.
[Please note: I am NOT a morning person.]
8 comments
All of our phones are made with love and sealed with a kiss.
However, if you break the seal, the warranty is void.
Anyone who gets me on a telephone before I’m into my second cup of coffee is guaranteed to get their “warranty voided” and a good deal more than a seal broken.
Unless you have specific language in a contract, the contract is nullified by death almost everywhere on the planet that laws exist.
morning? wuzzat?
Morning? I think that’s when the sky gets lighter. I used to ignore the phenomenon and go back to sleep. Now that I’m old and cranky I have to get up and tell it to go away.
“He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.” – Proverbs 27:14 [KJV]
If it’s a family contract entered into by two people with the cell phone provider, however, the contract is not void if one of the parties dies. The other party is still responsible for the contract.
Sprint “customer service” is an oxymoron. The only good thing about Sprint is that they have good rates and the best data plan in the business, which is important for me because I travel a fair amount. Of course, they’re also CDMA so you can’t use it outside of the United States, but that’s why I have an unlocked GSM phone too :-}.
I don’t know what the Sprint contract is like, but my Mother has her cell on one of my brother’s family plans, and he is the only signatory on the plan. If it is a multiple person contract, of course survivors are responsible, but this sounds like something they guy had bought on his own.
I don’t understand why Sprint is being so stupid about this. This is rather straight forward and will only hurt them to continue to stonewall.