If you're still paying T-Mobile monthly for your Sprint flex lease plan, do this now!
Back in July, we told you that former Sprint customers are still being charged monthly for a leased phone. The payments have no end date which means they go on forever. Customers still being charged are now T-Mobile customers as the latter purchased Sprint and closed on the $26 billion acquisition in April 2020. Some former Sprint customers are still paying the monthly charges while others are complaining about it.
Some ex-Sprint subscribers are still paying their monthly flex lease charges
A T-Mobile customer with the user name TheAlienFX on Reddit was recently on the phone for an hour with T-Mobile speaking with the company about the $27.xx charge that the former Sprint customer was getting billed each month. He called the carrier to explain that he had previously paid off all financing and leasing charges for one device. T-Mobile said that it would issue him a refund in the amount of $237.57. He then asked about the additional 12 months of charges that he had paid. After all, he was paying T-Mobile financing charges on a phone that had already been paid off.
"If a company is charging a fee they know doesn’t provide any value to a customer what would that be called (meaning taking money from millions of customers at $27.XX per device per account) which T-Mobile says isn’t a charge they should be charging customers? Doesn’t this fall under fraud? Unjust Enrichment continuing to collect fees for services or programs that no longer exist… I’m baffled at the fact that the support / management / higher-ups are agreeing that customers shouldn’t be being charged this but continue to be charged it."-T-Mobile customer and Redditor TheAlienFX
The T-Mobile customer service rep he was speaking to then explained that disputes can be submitted only for 60 days (two months) of charges. After the Redditor questioned T-Mobile's ethical standards he was hung up on by the company. To make matters worse, the T-Mobile subscriber says that the carrier reversed the $237.57 refund leaving him high and dry.
While it might seem wrong, the truth is that some of the blame here belongs to the customer. After all, the customer is the one who signed the lease without an ending date. The customer also should have noticed the extra fee he was paying month after month. As we noted in July, if you see that you are still paying this charge, you can go into a T-Mobile store and ask a rep to press a button to make the charge go away, A supervisor or manager is not needed to make this happen.
If you're not sure if you are still being charged, you can visit a T-Mobile store and ask a rep to review your account. If it turns out that you're still paying a monthly leasing charge, ask the rep to have that stopped immediately.
The Sprint Flex Lease was popular between 2017 and 2020. A customer would lease a phone and pay for it over 18 months. After 12 months, the customer had the option to return the phone and upgrade to a new one under the iPhone Forever, Galaxy Forever and Sprint Flex Deals programs with no additional charge. After 18 months, the customer could own the phone by making one lump sum payment or by making six more monthly payments.
If you're still getting billed each month for the lease payments, this is what you need to do
According to the Sprint website back in 2017, "Your lease will automatically extend after your initial term and you'll continue making monthly payments until you choose to upgrade, buy your device or return your phone." Some Sprint customers didn't understand that after 18 months they had to agree to pay a lump sum or continue to make six more monthly payments to own the device. instead, they figured they would just keep making the monthly lease payments.
While again, the customers are to blame for not keeping up with their payments, Sprint and later T-Mobile never informed the customers when they were getting to the end of the lease payments. As a result, some former Sprint customers are still paying the monthly lease payments today. To reiterate, if you signed a flex lease deal with Sprint, visit a T-Mobile store now and have a rep go through your account. Make sure it is a corporate store and not a third party retailer (TPR) since they are more apt to throw some hanky panky at you.
If it turns out that you still being billed for the lease payment each month, ask the rep to stop the charges immediately and demand as much of a refund as the carrier is willing to give you.
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