A Sprint PCS customer in Connecticut wrote UCAN the following question and explained her personal story: How does joining an international calling plan for about a one-month trip to Israel end up costing double the entire cost of the trip?  The customer stated she couldn't find out how this amount was derived because her bill had no itemized call breakdowns to show how the billing total was determined. The customer called to dispute the bill and requested itemization of her bill.  The response was a demand for payment or service termination within ten days of the date of the notice.  The notice was recieved on or about August 18, 2008 and was dated August 10, 2008.

Background:  In preparing for the trip to Israel, the customer shopped for phone service that had the best international plan for incoming and outgoing calls in Israel. The customer's first choice was to remain with Sprint and therefore, was given Sprint's international plan costing $4 to initiate the plan based on the same conditions as the current calling plan and nothing extra beyond the $4 per month.  The customer's current plan was for 300 minutes per month for outgoing calls & unlimited incoming calls. Sprint had also added bonus minutes due to complaints about constant dropped calls in the middle of business conversations. On or about July 14, 2007, the customer's husband phoned Sprint for reassurance of the costs of calling home andthe costs of incoming calls from the family.  He was told outgoing calls were $1.49 per minute and incoming calls were $.07 cents per minute with $.69 cents per minute roaming charges. It couldn't get much better than this and so they had no worries about limiting the number of calls.

Boom:  Here comes the bill on or about August 14, 2008 after being put on hold repeatedly for 15-20 minutes each time. Sprint informed the customer a mistake was made on the rates quoted, but would honor the roaming charge of $.69 cents instead of the $2.49 per minute charged on the bill. This adjustment would have subtracted about $904 from the existing giant bill.

Lesson Learned:  If you don't see it in writing, don't count on it. If a company's web site didn't back the low rates quoted, you know there's a problem.  

Any international roaming nightmare stories to match this one?  Share them with the community below.