
Mark of Sullivan, MO on Oct. 18, 2010
We had four main problems: The equipment was faulty; the service was very substandard; the Cricket personnel were impossible to deal with; and when asked to stop our service they agreed, yet three months later, we found that they are still taking money out of our account. The cancellation of service is the most egregious and frustrating on these four issues.
Faulty Equipment: From the first one (Jan 2009) of our two wireless phones did not work at all and the other one had problems. We had to send the worse one back right away. The new replacement phone did not work well either. The second one continued to cause us problems. All three of these phones were supposed to be new, yet we found that they still had information on them from the previous owner. Within less than a year, the display screen on one phone completely failed. The screen had no picture and only showed a distorted blob of color. After about a year, one phone was so bad that we could no longer recharge the battery. We had to use the other phone to recharge it. Eventually, both these phones got so bad that we could hardly hear each other no matter how much they were charged.
Substandard Service: Initially, we bought this service so we could communicate with each other when we were far away, on the road on vacation, and in the city of St. Louis, and here in Sullivan. At first, this seemed to present some difficulties. We often found that we could not communicate with each other, when the other was in St. Louis, either because of the poor signal or the phone indicating we were out of the service area. After a while, the service got worse. In little over a year, the same areas we visited before had continuously worse signals or reception problems, including the areas where we used to have an acceptable reception here in Sullivan. We went vacation and found that the phones did no work at all. We had hoped we could use these phones to talk with each other while we were on the road, in two different vehicles but the phones were so unreliable that, as soon as we got back, we cancelled the service.
Cricket Personnel: All along, we tried to communicate with Cricket Wireless personnel via their toll-free number, the Internet, through our Cricket Wireless phones--texting, or by calling the local corporate owned store. The most frustrating one was the toll-free number. When calling this number, we tried to communicate with the people who manned the phone lines. These people are in foreign countries and do not have a good command of English. When I asked to talk with a supervisor, and the supervisor got stumped on an answer to a question, they would ask me to wait then a few seconds later, they hung up on me. This happened on multiple occasions. I, more often than not, had to use our home telephone to call the toll-free number.
We tried to chat online and e-mail Cricket Wireless. At first, the online chat seemed to be the more useful way to communicate. Still, we were sent in vicious circles, and when our issues seemed to be resolved, we later discovered that they were not. Then, because of the poor quality of our phones, we could not access information which was on our phones, and which the chat line operator asked for. We could no longer use the online chat service, because our phones didn't work--the very issue we were trying to resolve. Our e-mails were replied to with a notice indicating that "this e-mail address is no longer in use," and we needed to call the toll-free number. Also, Cricket's website still refers customers to this e-mail address; an address which has been no good for a long while.
Trying to communicate using the cell phone itself through text messaging was problematic because the phone often did not work; they didn't answer our questions, and they referred us back to the toll-free number or the internet, which do not work. When both phones did not work, texting was out of the question.
The Cricket Wireless Stores are far away from us. The closest one, which is in Washington, MO, referred us to the corporate owned store in Fenton, MO, both over 50 minutes away. When we did talk with someone, we were told to call the toll-free number, access the internet, or use our text service. None of which work. One person, who seemed to sympathize with us, told us that he would find the answer then call us back. He never returned our call. We were also referred to the corporate store in Fenton, but they never answer their phone, and the answering machine refers us back to the toll-free number, which is the least effective way to communicate with them.
Cancellation of Service: The most egregious problem. I called Cricket, as soon as we got back from our vacation. We both resolved to cancel the service, because our phones did not work at all on the road; it was completely useless. When I called the toll-free number, they refused to cancel the service. Instead, we were subjected to a series of sales pitches. They suggested the way to resolve our difficulties was to get new phones and sign up with Cricket for another service period. We called and talked with four personnel in one day. This was especially frustrating because we had a sick child to get to the hospital, and we informed the last person, who insisted we extend our service, that our child was sick.
Finally, or so we thought, after a long time battering back and forth about cancelling the service, this person agreed and told us she would cancel our service. A couple of days later (July this year), we went on an extended vacation for nearly two months. We got back and never even thought of this issue, until last week when we noticed that they were still withdrawing money from our account.
I called them on the phone. Both the worker and the supervisor informed me that there was no record of my service having been cancelled. The supervisor said that she was going to help me then she hung up the phone on me - again. We threw our phones away, months ago and we haven't used this service since June. When I cancelled the wireless service, my wife was standing right next to me. She witnessed them trying to sell us the new service, their continuous refusal to cancel the phone service, and the eventual agreement to cancel.
Now, they are still taking money out of our account and refused to stop. For the last three months, they withdrew over $120. I have a combat stress disorder and this extreme aggravation has caused me even greater stress. They have stolen over $120 from us so far. Their refusal to cancel the service will continue to cost us over $40 per month for service which we do not use. Even if they cancelled it, the service agreement indicates they won't refund our money.