I received a letter from Sprint the other day saying that they were going to “streamline” their billing format which is an excellent and much needed move, but it goes on to say that I’ll get a new account number, I will have to create a new PIN and security question, and that if you make payments in the stores, you can’t make payments during the 4 days they are transitioning the system. Sounds like great news, but if you have automatic payment (not via a credit card), you have to re-setup your automatic payment with a new account number which is an inconvenience. I pay by credit card, so it doesn’t affect me. Now I’ll have to remember a different account number (instead of my phone number) and will any of this really make life easier?
I applaud Sprint for wanting to simplify billing, but is changing the account number and the account PIN really going to help or make for a large number of headaches at least in the short term. I’m also pleased that the PIN will be used when calling Customer Care instead of the last 4 digits of the account owner’s social security number. After some changes were made to my account that Sprint swore I made, I changed my passphrase and told them not to accept the last 4 digits of my social security number; only about half the reps honored this. With all the identity theft, social security numbers should only be used once for a credit check and then purged. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen.
In any case, I’m curious to see what happens with this new billing system.