So I upgraded my phone via the sprint website. Gave them 211 dollars for a shiny new SIII about a week before it came out. I got the phone on release day and am very happy with it.
I have my account tied to an auto pay and i generally just leave it to do its thing, as long as the phone is working I assume that everything went as it should have. I'm about to get a new credit card, because i use it extensively on line and just like to get a replacement every 12 months or so for a little peace of mind, so i looked at my sprint bill, knowing it was coming up in the next few days and is the last thing i need to go through before i wait a week for a new card, then go and redo all my autopays.
I see a $212 dollar bill, way higher than the expected 86 or even 120 with the stupid new device activation. I then look through my statements and see that no auto pay went through in July as it generally does for sprint. I then discover the insanity of Sprints billing system.
So the 211 dollars i gave them as a pre-order on the SIII actually went to my account and paid the June bill... I was under the mistaken assumption that that money was for the phone itself. So I had a credit of 120 some dollars. So no auto pay for July that I missed because i have other things to do than worry about the cell phone bill (as long as its still on lol).
Then i get a $337 bill for July for the phone, activation and normal bill, minus the credit and totaling $212. Yeah I get that its all the same in the end, but its not how I thought I would be charged, and it caused me an hour of confusion going through everything to try and figure out what the heck happened.
TLDR - Sprint needs to charge for device upgrades independent from actual service itself. I was under the impression I paid for this phone in June, but the way they have the billing I paid for half in June and half now. I gotta say it seemed like a better idea in June than in August