Sprint and the military

My daughter ran into what I think is kind of taking advantage of people in the military. My daughter is in the Navy assigned to a ship so for quite a bit of the time they are out to sea and cannot use their cell phones. Sprint allows them to put their service on hold and does not bill them for the time they are on deployment. They do bill them about $2.51 per month for the time they are not using their phone.

Here is the problem.

When she returned from the Persian Gulf about 2 weeks ago she called Sprint to reactivate the phone which they did. They did not say anything about signing up for another year of service. She has already been a customer of theirs for 2 continous years while she was stateside attending training in Charleston SC and Balston Spa NY. A letter arrived yesterday from Sprint showing that her phone was reactivated and that her new contract would run for 1 year. So I called Sprint and asked why she had to commit to another year of service. It seems to me with people who are deployed on ships would never be able to finish off their year contract.

Sprint customer service told me that they would either have to leave the phone activated for an entire year or pay the early termination penalty in order to complete an entire year.

Some how this does not seem right and I was wondering if anyone else ran into this problem or had any solutions to this problem.

Thanks

 

She kept the same plan and did not change anything at all. No new services or features or equipment.

 

I'll give it a try. Doesn't cost anything to ask. Thanks