Sprint Nextel sued over billing practices

A California consumer group has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Sprint Nextel Corp. accusing the No. 3 mobile-phone carrier of improperly assessing taxes and fees on broadband data customers.
The San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action network claims Sprint Nextel was charging taxes and fees erroneously to mobile data card customers, treating them as voice phone customers because a phone number is assigned to each card. In addition, according to UCAN, Sprint Nextel was allowing text messages to be charged to data broadband cards, though the customers could not receive or send text messages with the card.
A UCAN official said in one particular month Sprint Nextel appeared to have merged their accounting systems with Nextel Communications Inc.’s legacy system and given customers new account numbers, which resulted in a number of state and federal charges that were incorrect. “While in this one month taxes and fees are clearly erroneous, Sprint also charges taxes and fees before and after this month that we argue are erroneous,” the UCAN official stated.
Sprint Nextel was not available for comment, but one press report indicated the carrier admitted to mistakenly charging certain wireless subscribers.