Okay so you have decided to go with Sprint and their extremely low priced advertised plans. You are slowly going to discover that there are plenty of hidden, non-advertised fees. Sprint is going to get you one way or the other. Sprint has a lot of “Just Because” fees. These are fees that Sprint charges just because they feel that they can get away with it. Us consumers have been trained to pay these “just because fee” by the likes of Airlines, Banks, Hotels, Healthcare providers and now telecom. One of the hidden fees is the $36/line activation fee. Another well thought of fee is a low monthly charge fee of $7.99/line, it is called an Account Spending limit fee (ASL) . If your bill is low, Sprint charges you a $7.99/line fee just so you give Sprint the privilege of being your carrier. I leave it up to you to tell Sprint where they can stick that privilege 🙂
Here is the reason you should never pay and how you can argue against this $36/line activation fee. Keep in mind AT&T and Verizon do charge you when you set up a new line of Service and you should be able to argue that piece away because T-Mobile does not have those hidden charges. Competition Rocks!!
Sprint is a CDMA carrier unlike AT&T and T-Mobile that are GSM carriers. With GSM carriers, to move to a new phone all you need is the SIM card from the old device and move it to the new device and it works. If the SIM card is a different size you can cut the SIM card yourself using a SIm cutter that you get on ebay for $5. If the SIM card needs to be larger you can get a SIM adapter on ebay for $1. You do not have to call your GSM carrier just because you got a new phone. If you purchased that phone for full price on ebay, amazon or swappa.com – you do not even have to tell the GSM carrier, the IMEI number of your new phone. The IMEI number of the phone should really not be shared with anyone for security concerns.
CDMA carriers are different. CDMA requires you to call in to the carrier and they will match the phone IMEI number in their database to the phone number that they assign you.
When you call Sprint to activate the phone – they marry the IMEI number of the handset to the phone number. This is inherently a CDMA limitation. Sprint uses this limitation to their advantage and they charge you a $36 activation fee/line to marry the IMEI with the phone number – something they need to do anyway to give you Sprint’s CDMA service.
My question is why would you pay Sprint for an inherent limitation with their CDMA technology?
Truly Something to think about and Argue against.
Shortlink to this page http://bit.ly/1nqIFit
jackmehra 