The Incredible Incompetence of Discover and Sprint

[billroper]

So it's like this. Back in April, I got a letter from Discover announcing that they were changing my card number, closing the existing card, and that they would contact all of the people who were autobilling items to the card so that I was not inconvenienced by this. daisy_knotwise, who was a banker up until recently, looked at this and said, "Sounds like they had a security breach somewhere."

All of my autobillings continued to show up on the statement under my new card number, so I assumed that everything had been done correctly. There are only two words to describe that assumption:

Completely wrong.

A week ago Friday, Gretchen got a call from someone at Brookstone who wanted to verify that I wanted a digital camera shipped to an address not on the credit card. They wouldn't tell me who had ordered it, but they would give me the last four digits of the card that had been used for the order. Those would be the last four digits of the closed account.

I called Discover. "Why," I asked, "are you continuing to allow charges to an account that you closed?"

"Oh, we didn't close that account."

"You sent me new cards with a new account number, told me that you were closing the old account, and that you would contact all of the people autobilling to the old account and give them the new correct information."

"Oops."

Three fraudulent charges that day. Two from a week earlier, one of which that the Discover rep couldn't actually find while looking at the list of charges on the old number and being told which were the valid charges. I found that when my statement came that evening.

I called them and was told I'd have to call back on Saturday. On Saturday, when I called back, I was told I would have to call back on Monday. I was also told the biggest pack of lies (we normally hold the card open for 45 days, so that must have been the problem -- until I pointed out that 45 days from April 4th would bring us to May 19th, nearly a month earlier than the fraudulent charges) that I have ever heard from a customer service rep. That seems to include her promise that they would mail me a statement of all of the charges posted to the old account number since the time it was supposed to be closed, as I still haven't received that.

I called back on Monday and added the other known fraudulent charge.

The autobilling changes? Not a one has actually occurred. And I've managed to fix all of them, save for I-Pass (which I'll call in a few minutes) and Sprint.

Which proceeded to distinguish itself by keeping me on the line for over half-an-hour to discover that they couldn't figure out how to make the change with their incompetently programmed systems. Apparently, I could do it on line if I could create a sign on, which I apparently can't, since I have turned off text messaging to this phone, which seems to be required in order to create a signon.

The last of the three incompetent people at Sprint who I spoke to said that she had set up my on-line account and that I'd receive an e-mail within 15 minutes.

That was two hours ago. Needless to say, I have received no e-mail.

I have sent an e-mail to Sprint Customer Service and received the usual "we will reply to you within 24 to 48 hours" message. I'm still waiting for a reply to the one that I sent them on Christmas Eve, so I'm not holding my breath.

Normally, I would cut tag something this long, but I'm just that annoyed with them.

Comments

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

Ran into the same problem with Sprint, lost my card, got a new one, wanted to change billing. Rep said could only be done online. I said I don't have internet. I was being difficult for the sake of being difficult. I asked if there was another way and pointed out that not everyone has internet and it would be stupid to insist that you do for basic billing transactions. She said she could mail me a form (7-10dys), I could fill it out and mail it back, and they could have it taken care of in a few weeks. I said that was crazy and asked if I could just go to a Sprint store to take care of it. She said no, it could only be done online. I asked for a manager, relayed the story, he said she was incorrect, they could handle it at a Sprint store, but he couldn't do anything for me over the phone.

I have great signal just about everywhere and every time I go into a Sprint store they bend over backwards to help. But their phone based customer service is awful.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

*huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuug*

Discover declared my Mom dead at one point. Did you know it's really hard to prove yourself alive?

[billroper]

Thanks.

I conclude that your mom wins the stupid credit card issuer derby. :) Gack!

[carolf.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I've never had anything but perfect service from Discover, either as a card holder or as a merchant. They certainly treat the latter better than any other credit card. Discover has always been great about notifying me when anything the least strange happened to my account. And I've been a card holder since Discover first came on the market as a Sears product.

Spring, on the other hand, is only slightly better than MCI.

[madfilkentist]

You've told them to close both accounts and never open another one for you, haven't you?

[billroper]

No, because until now they've actually been competent and there are certain costs involved with finding a competent credit card issuer.

We'll see how this gets straightened out.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

1) Boo! on Discover for having a security breach in the first place

2) Double Boo! on Discover for not following through on closing out the account

3) Triple Boo! and a rasberry on Discover for giving you the runaround

4) Yay! On Brookstone for calling.

5) And Boo! on Sprint.

Whew!

[billroper]

In fairness, there may not have been a security breach -- Discover has made various claims about the account number change, the most frequent being that they reorganized the account numbers so they could tell what features the account had by looking at the number. It's also possible that if there was a breach, it wasn't at Discover, but was reported to them by a merchant.

Other than that though, yeah, lots of "Boo!"

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

And a little bit of Yay on Brookstone because if they hadn't called you might not know you had a problem yet. The problem is bad, but being alerted to the problem is better than the alternative.

[(Anonymous)]

I had 2 similar frustrations with Sprint recently. Solved the no-text problem by setting up a password and PIN via their online chat. Had to try twice - the first time they put me on hold and cut me off.

Other problem - got a notice they were cancelling my satellite dish internet service, so I replaced that & when I called to close the account they told me I would need to give them a password which never existed, and to go to the Sprint store. The Sprint store told me they couldn't do it & I'd have to call on the phone. I wound up disputing the charge on my Amex bill - and I disputed all the other charges for the service on my Amex bill going back 3 months, because I figure they owe me for the unnecessary trip and the hours on the phone.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Oh ugh. Hope this is all straightened out by now. I think it was Discover who told us about a breach and shipped us out new cards -- moments after Spouse left for an extended time in the Katrina Clean-up area. (I don't recall if this was when Spouse was trying to use it, so they'd not told us in _advance_ or not.) A bit of a hassle (especially since I had the old number memorized, and that is the Magic Password for some of the books I've bought for my palm), but I never found any charges that didn't belong to us on either card, so I can only hope that your current batch of bad service is an anomaly.