Sprint says I've used 9GB in 9 days when I've used 0!

thebfg · EVDO Newbie Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 4

So I logged into my Sprint online account to change my credit card today and noticed they claim I've used over 9 million KB (8.77GB) in the 9 days since my billing cycle. Except I haven't used my EVDO modem in over 18 days.

After spending an hour on the phone, no one could explain this and kept telling me my account is unlimited (grandfathered) and not to worry (even though I do worry they will shut me off for excessive usage that I'm not using). One guy even said they sent me a letter (which I never received). In fact, for the past few months my usage has seemed high to me, but I accepted it because I was actually using the modem.

Imagine the overage charges if I was on a 5GB plan! I can only think that they are either mis-billing my data charges (either accidentally or on purpose) or that my ESN got cloned and someone else is using all this data (they refused to accept this notion).

Any other possibilities I'm not thinking of?

Michael · Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 10:07 am Post subject:

Any chance you do your own ESN swaps on your account and you use your account for testing other data cards?

3Gstore.com had an issue 6 months ago and it was very interesting.

We have many data card lines and one of the lines is used for emergency backup, in case our warehouse internet goes down (yes we eat our own dog food). Last year, we purchased some refurbished cards and before shipping them to customers, we would do an ESN swap on the card, connect once to make sure it was working and then do the ESN swap back to our "emergency line". We must have done this on 100s of mobile broadband cards to test.

So, 6 months ago we start looking at our usage for all of our data lines and one line stands out, it is our "emergency line". We haven't used it for an emergency, just for swapping ESNs and then swapping back. Our data usage showed that we had been using 50GB per month, these were old lines, so no overage charges. We did some tests and sure enough, after doing an ESN swap, we were able to have multiple active cards on the same line at the same time - something that you are not suppose to be able to do.

We called Sprint and after many reps - they just told us this is impossible and that only one card could be active at a time. We got tired of the run arounds, so we just canceled the line of service.

Now for many of you that purchased data card upgrades and you thought we must be stupid for sending you a card with service, no we were not stupid - it was Sprint.
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thebfg · EVDO Newbie Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 4

Hmm... interesting. Sounds like a definite possibility since I first noticed this after I sold a couple of my old cards on eBay. It never occurred to me to check to make sure those cards had stopped working after I'd done the ESN swap online and my new card was working.

Since it doesn't sound like Sprint will be helpful in this regard, I guess I just hope they don't shut off my service.