Sprint Smartphone Flex Lease Program Unfair Terms Class Action

Smartphones are expensive, and some customers opt to have a lease plan with their carrier. But does the lease eventually turn into ownership? The complaint for this class action alleges that Sprint Corporation’s Flex Lease Agreement program continues to charge customers monthly fees long after they have paid the full price of their phones, does not inform them of limited opportunities to pay off their phones, and/or does not allow them to cancel the program at the end of the lease period.

The Nationwide Class for this action is all persons or entities in the US who bought or leased a device under the Sprint Flex Lease Program. A California Subclass has also been proposed.

Plaintiff Terresa Gutierrez leased two iPhone 8 smartphones through Sprint’s Flex Lease Agreement program in December 2017. She understood that if she made eighteen monthly payments of $37.76 per phone per month, she would own the phones.

In May 2019, she received an e-mail from Sprint saying, “It’s time to choose your next move!” Sprint told her she could pay an additional $199.87 for each phone or make another six monthly payments of $33.31 per month per phone.

The complaint also tells the story of a woman who chose an $800 phone in 2017, for which she was told she had to make monthly payments of $42 for twenty months. She was told Sprint would contact her a month before the end to give her the chance to own the phone. According to the complaint, Sprint did not contact her.

In November 2018, when Sprint coverage in her area became unreliable, she called to cancel. Sprint switched her to T-Mobile, but she found she’d been billed a cancellation fee of $1,200. She asked Sprint to reinstate her, but the company charged her a $45 fee to do so.

In 2020, she asked Sprint when the phone would be paid off. The complaint alleges Sprint told her she’d missed her opportunity, so that she would now have to continue to make the lease payments indefinitely.

According to the complaint, many customers were told they would be notified at the end of their lease period and given the opportunity to own their phones, but Sprint did not notify them and then required them to keep paying indefinitely. Other customers, the complaint alleges, have had difficulty canceling their agreements and returning their phones or qualifying for promised upgrade options. It claims that customers are given a runaround or otherwise find Sprint has made it difficult to cancel.

The complaint alleges, “Without a realistically available option to own their Devices or cancel their leases, customers are left paying to lease their Devices indefinitely.

The complaint alleges fraud, conversion, and violations of state consumer protection laws, among other things.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Fraud, Smartphone, Unfair Business Practices, Unfair Charges, Unfair Lease Payments