Verizon sucks. T-Mobile sucks worse.

I've gotten a little tired of Verizon. "The Network" suddenly doesn't like my house. Everyone -- not just us -- have been dropping calls here, so it's not just our telephones.

We looked at T-Mobile at a mall kiosk -- an "authorized reseller" or somethig like that. We liked that we could try it for 15 days. "For free," added the sales person. No activiation fee, no return fee, no restocking fee -- it was all in the contract. So we tried it. And after day No. 10, we knew we couldn't do it; it didn't work in all of the places we needed it to. My wife, who spends the summer three hours away, would essentially be cellphone-less for the season if we switched.

And then it really got bad.

I went to return the phones and they tried to charge us a $100 per phone restocking fee. But there wasn't anything on our contract, I told them. That's when they produced somebody else's contract, and said it was ours. They didn't think to at least change the name. I said some very, very bad words in the middle of a mall, for which I am not proud. Ultimately, we worked things out and I walked away without paying anything.

Then yesterday, the bill came. For a full month of service, plus an activation, plus -- well, there was no indiciation that we'd canceled our service. I called. Turns out, the people at the mall kiosk didn't cancel it. T-Mobile, which talked to them, claimed that we didn't indicate we wanted to cancel service; we just wanted return the phones. Since it's now been a month since service began, it's too late for us to get out of that 15-day "free" trial. We're on the hook for two years of service, even though we have no phones. (Just for grins, I asked what it would cost to get them back; since we wouldn't be purchasing new service, it would be like $300 each for the same phones)

Oh, nor was the 15-day trial actually free. That was the sales pitch at the kiosk, and that was in the kiosk people's contract, but it wasn't free from T-Mobile's end.

Nor was the activation fee waived. That was the kiosk's way of saying they wouldn't charge their own activation fee. T-Mobile could still charge its own.

It's going to get very, very messy.

 

Damn, MMSW, I'm sorry to hear that. Makes my past cell-phone troubles seem tame by comparison. If they want to settle out of court, I would demand a night with Catherine Zeta-Jones (and whatever Mrs. MMSW wants, of course).

 

I had AT&T...signed up when I lived in Austin...they assured me that AT&T's coverage area included Alpine, Texas, to which I was moving shortly thereafter. "It says so right there on the coverage map!" I get to Alpine and nope, no more AT&T service. Ergo, no more to writing irish checks to AT&T. I've got a black mark on my credit for bailing on that account, but it'll have to stay there til Domesday. Those cockfucks aren't getting a penny out of me.

Got fucked over in other ways by Plateau Wireless while at the glorious Roswell Daily Record. A certain telecommunications company in Oklahoma also bent me over and gave me the love train.

Alltel, my current provider, totally fucked up my account when I moved back to Texas. Theives and bandits, all of them. And the worst customer service this side of health care. If I did my job as poorly as those shit-weevils did theirs, I'd be fired.

 

Sue the shit out of the commission earning fuck at the kiosk and go after the fucker who owns it too. That's fraud.

 

Sometimes with Verizon it's the phone. I can get a clear signal in my home with my newer Motorola phone from Verizon however my wife's Motorola phone from Verizon is a year or so old and she sometimes has trouble getting a signal in the house.

Regarding the situation you're experiencing with T-Mobile, sue the kiosk salesperson and owner for fraud (hopefully you have a copy of the contract you signed showing no fees). Then send a copy of the contract to T-Mobile and tell them you're not paying for the fraudulent acts of one of their salespeople. Make sure the consumer reporters from the local TV stations hear about the story. Once T-Mobile p.r. people hear that a story will air about how they are backing a salesperson who committed fraud, they'll have the billing department change its tune.

 

Never, ever, ever, ever go with the authorized resellers. Go with the actual company.

The authorized resellers are borderline con artists.

 

Word.

 

Give them hell. And give us updates!

 

Holy crap, that's horrible. They thought maybe you wanted to keep the plan, but with no phones? I'd empty every barrel at my disposal on those scumbags.

 

I very rarely have a problem with my Verizon service dropping call, but one very irritating problem no one can seem to resolve is when I'll call my wife, or she'll call me. We know both phones are on and in the middle of the service area, but too many times the phone receiving the call never rings. A couple of minutes later she or I will see an icon telling us we've missed a call and/or there's a voicemail waiting to be retrieved. This happens way too often for my liking, but when I had Sprint it was twice as bad.

 

I hated Verizon and went to T-Mobile a couple eyars ago and love them. the times that I have had to deal with their customer services reps have been great. Sorry this happened to you. Clearly this is the problem with the reseller and not TMobile, but I am surprised that TMobile is not budging on this.

 

Friend of mine bought a Treo (I think) from one of those places. Paid $500 for it, because he really wanted it. Gets it home, charges it, and realizes it's used. How does he know? Because the fat fucker who owns the stand had used the phone, and it had all his employees' numbers, his eyeglass prescription, etc.

That same fat fucker had some of the skeeziest employees ever, including one who threatened to beat up the manager of the store where I worked (God bless the newspaper industry) and another who stole from us at least once.