21st Century Slop
Written: Jul 22 '01 (Updated Jan 16 '03)
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Pros: It's a fairly inexpensive way to be mobile.
Cons: Poor connection, extremely poor customer service. Bait and switch pricing.
The Bottom Line: I advise people to use a well-established company that will stand behind their product. Cricket has improved some, but not much.
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| joy1950's Full Review: Cricket Communications Mobile Phone Service in Sal... |
I was so excited when Cricket came to Nashville area. I did not want to go into the extra expense of a mobile phone when so many services cost too much, and have roaming charges to boot. Cricket supposedly answered that problem with one flat fee within our living area.
Cricket is a mobile service that works locally only. In other words there are service areas that are covered, and those service areas do not interchange with each other. For example there is a cricket in Memphis and one in Nashville. People who buy the service in these two areas cannot talk to one another, or other mobile services in other areas. Outside of these covered areas one must buy a calling card for the service to work. If you take your Cricket phone to another state, you don't have cell service.
The first disappointment with Cricket came with the first few calls. Cricket has a hard time getting and keeping a connection. The second came when I was on-call at work and they left a message on our Cricket voicemail. About 5 days later the message appeared in my voicemail! Try telling your boss that your mobile phone carrier didn't put their message in for 5 days and see what kind of reaction you get, it sounds suspiciously like those "dog ate my homework" stories. Needless to say, I began trying to stay home when on call again. Even stranger than that fact is that many times calls are automatically sent to Cricket voicemail when the phone is on and no one talking on it. The third blow within that first 30 days was the advertised 29.95 a month became 34.00 with voicemail, and even more for other services that many like Sprint PCS offer for free. Now Cricket has raised their basic price and our service is 38.00 a month.
Now, Nashville is a hilly place. People using mobile phones need something with a signal that is strong enough to withstand the various natural and structural barriers that come with living in a city on the foothills of a mountain. Cricket just can't cut the mustard. This service may be alright for the flat plains of Illinois, but for Nashville? No, I absolutely will not recommend it to anyone.
My final and biggest reason for not recommending Cricket is their business base and customer service. Mind you, I am careful when I say "customer service" because what you actually get when you call them is a recording that leads to a recording to a recording (on and on) with no option of speaking to a real, live human being. Let me explain; we set up our account for automatic withdrawal using a debit card because I am one of those absent-minded people that forget due dates of bills until it is too late. This is all fine, well and good unless the company you are dealing with is dishonest enough to disconnect your service (like you non-paid), still take the money out of your account, try to charge you re-connection fees, and this entire time you try to get in touch with them to tell them you have no service and you cannot even reach a live person. They don't even (at this writing) have an option to electronically report service outage. My husband and I tried various phone numbers and even emailed the headquarters before he got a phone number with an option to talk to a customer service rep. Yes, it literally took us a little over a month to reach a live person!!! Wait, it gets even better.
On May 1st, Cricket took 72.00 out of our account, and disconnected our service. When my husband finally got a live person in June he was informed the problem was HIS fault because he didn't call them. By now we were both furious, we had called their numbers multiple times and emailed their headquarters. Fortunately I keep copies of business-related email. What is worse is that Cricket tried to give us only a one-month credit when we had already paid for two and they still wanted to keep their disconnect fee. Wait, my friends it gets even worse yet. My husband was finally placated with an agreement of a credit for two months, which would mean no billing until September 1st. Cricket kept all of those disconnect fees they weren't due. July 1st Cricket took another $38.00 out of our account. By now my husband was completely livid. He called Cricket using the line their headquarters gave us (with the option for customer service.) My husband was informed that they would not return the money to our account, nor could he speak to a supervisor, nor would they remove our bank numbers from their records. The woman he spoke to said he would have to reverse the charges at our bank! The woman from Cricket refused to let my husband speak to a supervisor again, and hung up on him when he insisted that he should be able to talk to a supervisor. We immediately reversed the charges.
My final words on Cricket at this point is this, I can put up with so-so performance of any product if the customer service excels. Cricket is graded "F" on all accounts. I have never heard of a company making it so difficult to reach customer service, deny people speaking to supervisors, and basically stealing money from their account. This is a growing trend especially with many on-line based businesses.
It sadly seems that the age of automation has raised up a crop of companies that are disorganized, dishonest and hateful. Voicemail has turned the business world into a black hole of non-communication, and customer service a thing of the past. The world is a far cry from the day when a man's word was his bond. Now companies such as this flaunt their disrespect in the faces of the very people who pay their paychecks.
Once (if?) our credits are used up with Cricket we will no longer be using Cricket, as you can tell. Companies like Cricket should know that they can block customers from talking to them, but we simply don't have to pay them money for terrible service.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 34.00
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Epinions.com ID:
joy1950
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Location: Tennessee
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
A single RN with two great kids and an online shopping aficionado.
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