I
was in downtown Seattle and needed to place a call to Bellevue
to my friend who was going to come pick me up and give her directions.
My cell phone was dead and I did not have change to make the
call and if you've been to downtown Seattle its not easy getting
change, especially after 6:00pm, so I decided to call 1-800-COLLECT
and just pay her back when she got the bill. No big deal right,
WRONG. What I thought was going to be a little more than a regular
local call ended up to be highway robbery, and my friend wasn't
happy either. You see when I dialed the number to 1-800-COLLECT
I miss-dialed 1-800-COLLOCT on accident because the 6 is right
under the 3 and I pushed it instead. But I didn't notice because
the call went through to an electronic operator. When she got
the bill it was 26.46 for just over 6 minutes, that's over $4.00
per minute. That's when I found out that Sprint has the purchased
all the possible combinations of numbers that are close to 1-800-COLLECT
and charge overwhelming fees to everyone that accidentally dials
one. They deliberately try to make you think that it is the
right number when its not. because it was on my friends phone
bill I did pay the amount and she has tried to get it reversed
and refunded but can't. I think that it is very miss-leading
but more important it is even worse to charge as much as they
have without telling the caller. I made some calls to the state
and found out that my charges were not as bad as other unsuspecting
people got, they have charged way over $10.00 per minute to
a lot of people. Unfortunately they make so much money off this
there is no way they will stop unless the government makes them.
So for anyone who is yet to know about it, be careful when you
dial 1-800-COLLECT because you wont know you've been had until
the person your calling gets the bill.
- Anonymous |
|
