On my latest bill, I discovered what Sprint calls a "Frequent Flyer Excise Charge" in the amount of $5.04.

The customer service representative says I will get billed for miles "earned" from the Sprint service.

I don't recall Sprint or US Air informing me that I would be paying for miles.

Miles are an incentive to do business with a company - If Sprint wants me to pay for miles, it ought to be up-front about that and let me know before I sign up for the service.

Is this routine with the phone companies? Is it just Sprint that uses hidden fees to charge for miles, or do other phone companies do it too?

If it says it's a FF fee, how it is hidden? Seems like a blatant fee to me.

It isn't new, they've been doing it for a while. It is supposedly to pay some sort of government tax. I think they do tell you somewhere, but it isn't much money with respect to the miles, so I never fussed too much.

Buzz?
(It's hardly the "latest" news since this charge has been in effect for years.)

This excise started when the government decided that the "airplane ticket tax" was to also apply to award tickets. So some phone companies and others giving out miles charged the mile recipients in proportion to the miles given out.

If the phone company does not itemize it on your bill, it ends up in their total cost of doing business and spread out to all their customers.

Travel tips:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/travel.htm


[This message has been edited by AllanJ (edited Mar 02, 2004).]

I knew of something like this but still signed on with them for a 10k alaska promo they had a while back (year or so plus?)

BUT they were never able to tell me the exact amount which I WAS wondering about enough to contact CS and ask. they told me the tiny tax can fluxuate and though it was not much money I just needed to confirm what it was and then I was ok with it.

One thing I did learn on the same phone call was that you MUST make at LEAST $1 per calls in any month to keep your FF gig going with the sprint service or else you may forfiet all miles from then on! SO, at least that CSR was helpful with this info!

ALWAYS read ALL fine print. They know we dont so that's where they stick it in.

Anyone recall the old legend about how Van Halen had a small clause in their contracts stating they could trash back stage and NOT get billed anything for it if there were ever any brown M&M's found in their food cache back there? Sort of the same thing. Statiums would try to bill them or sue them for damages would get no where because it was in the fine print. NO brown M&M's allowed/

i dunno if it was true but it is a great story that relates here anyway.

MM

I recall paying this fee about 2 years ago with Sprint. I signed up for a big sign-up bonus and had to pay something like $10 of my first bill for the miles.

Of course, the sign-up bonus was something like 5000 miles which I actually needed for an award, so the ten bucks itself wasn't so bothersome. If Sprint came out and said "We will sell you 5000 WorldPerks miles for $10 (or $25, for that matter)", I would say "Sign me up!" But like any good phone company should do, they felt the need to use vague terms and jam me up on the back end. Sometimes I think phone companies enjoy dishonesty just for the sake of being sneaky.

I haven't ventured back into the miles-for-phone service since. It's simpler to negotiate the lowest wireless rate you can get (negotiate a percent-off, not miles) and use a bare-bones CLEC if you absolutely feel the need for a landline handset in your house for 911 purposes.

I remember getting a promotional mailer from sprint about their "free" miles. I read the fine print and, indeed, it did say they would charge a fee for these earned miles.

It would take a lot to get me to ever give another penny to sprint after having a PCS phone for an agonizing year. The worst coverage and hellacious customer "service".

http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.htm

Why not become a moderator? This might allow you yet another chance to show off your superiority.

In the 2 months I received 5K miles from Sprint, they charged a $5 excise tax. I felt I spent around $35 for 10K miles. I'll make that deal all day long...

Technically speaking, I don't think you are required to pay this fee in order to earn miles. You can still get the miles and refuse to the pay the fee. I refused to the pay the fee when I had Sprint about 6 months ago (currently with AT&T - I switch every 6 months or so) and Sprint didn't make me pay it & I still got my miles.

you can get out of many fees in life--and always should try--if you make an effort.

It's like fighting speeding tickets. ALWAYS do it, and always start by trying to change the court date! Trust me.

Anyway, here's a tip regarding sprint and any phone gig like it:

I was thinking the other day of whether or not to hook up one more phone and get miles. I recalled having gotten a 10k offer with alaska airlines some time ago on SPRINT. This offer may be long gone but here is something you might want to make sure you do in case you ever thought about ending or cancelling an account that earns miles, and wish to some day go back and do that same service again for more miles! You would need to have some lag time in there, say, several months, before you could earn miles again.

I was online and found out my old sprint.com LD residential account is still open! No bills, no calls, of course, but the acct, the log in and password, and all the info I had in there is still live!

Not only do I wish they had cancelled it for the sake of personal security (I dont want info like this out there if I dont use it at all--even if I do have other accounts online and they all have passwords) but also, because of the miles! If I tried to set up some new Sprint gig, I might NOT get the miles because I ALREADY have an online account!

SO, i called CS and asked to have it closed. I gave a different reason than miles--I told them i have no home phone since my wife works for a cell phone company and we use just 2 free cell phones. I told them I would come back to them in case I ever needed any phone so this prompted good, friendly service. I still had to wait and go thru a few prompts, and eventually got transferred to a sort of tech web CS department. The CSR there was happy to cancel my online nothing account and then I went back into try to log in and got this message:

33311 - The Primery User/Administrator of this account has Deleted this log in...

Good. Now I can rest easy knowing that the next time I need to do Sprint with Alaska or anyone, I could probably start all over again!

MM

MCI/Worldcom has done it for years. Back in the days of the AA/USAIR combinations (approx 6 years ago), MCI would charge $6.00 as a fee, not including the "illegal" minimum usage fee (i.e.: a fee to not use them....ridiculous).

Well at least Bernie Ebers was arrested today.

He clearly says: " On my latest bill, I discovered"

So, it was new to him, just because others DID know about it doesn't mean EVERYONE does.

I hope Ebbers goes away for a long, long time.