Anybody here work for Sprint?

[Rizon]

So Thursday I tried to get a cell phone from Sprint. Problem was my social security number was "banned" from purchasing a plan from them because of it being turned over to collections. I've never had a phone or account with Sprint, so I was a little concerned about identity theft. They were going to call their fraud department, but I haven't heard back from them yet. I pulled my credit report, and it's clean ... as well as the ones I pulled back in March. So I'm wondering what I can do next? I suppose I could just call them again, but if someone here could give me some advice on that or knows a way I can speed that up and cut through the red tape, that would be great.

[MikeVic]

I don't like your signature.

[stevew]

Were you ever in a relationship with someone named Julie?

[Sun Tzu]

Onion bagel with regular cream cheese, definitely.

[Rizon]

Originally Posted by stevew

Were you ever in a relationship with someone named Julie?

Nope!
(is this an olliegirl joke??)

[stevew]

With all the mergers, etc, is it possible you may have some outstanding bill from like 15 years ago with one of the companies that merged into sprint? Bad former roommates or a bill you thought was switched to someone elses name and never was? That may be something that never showed on a credit report and may be really old.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Rizon

So Thursday I tried to get a cell phone from Sprint. Problem was my social security number was "banned" from purchasing a plan from them because of it being turned over to collections. I've never had a phone or account with Sprint, so I was a little concerned about identity theft. They were going to call their fraud department, but I haven't heard back from them yet. I pulled my credit report, and it's clean ... as well as the ones I pulled back in March. So I'm wondering what I can do next? I suppose I could just call them again, but if someone here could give me some advice on that or knows a way I can speed that up and cut through the red tape, that would be great.

Utility bill type accounts can take FOREVER to show up on a credit report, they all claim to run your credit before giving you an account(meaning that it should show up on the inquiry section) but I don't think they always do that, perhaps Sprint doesn't always and just checks some internal list they have instead, who knows.

I would call back and get as much detail on the account as they'll give out and get the fraud department involved yourself instead of waiting on them. Tell them that you were told that your SSN is banned because of a previous account, but that you've never opened one there yourself, so you're concerned about ID Theft(just like you mentioned in your post), and that you want to get to the bottom of it to make sure you keep your credit score clean, etc. I have called up a few cell phone companies at random after finding two different phone accounts in my name and just asked them to check my SSN just in case and never had a problem getting help from anyone.


It is, to me at least, a *lot* less stressful dealing with making sure a fraudulent account never hits your credit report because you caught it in time, compared to dealing with one that dings your credit score and now you're worried about both potential ID theft AND getting your credit cleaned up at the same time, so if you're the least bit suspicious, keep digging until you get confirmation that something happened and you need to file fraud alerts, etc, or that it was just a mixup at sprint and nothing has happened at all.