Worthy of Dante's Seventh Level Of Hell
Written: Apr 30 '03 (Updated May 01 '03)
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Pros: absolutely positively nothing
Cons: idiotic customer service policies, lack of help, accepts no responsibility
The Bottom Line: Reps hamstrung by policy. More expensive than competitors for the service. Very Very deceitful business practices. They try to profit from treating customers as dumb sheep.
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| bbdix's Full Review: General Reviews of Cellular One Customer Service |
The only businesses I know that are comparable to Cellular One are deservedly out of business and hopefully Cell One will follow suit.
For many months now I have had a day highlighted on my calendar. Above all else I did not want to miss this glorious day. It wasn't the birthday of a dear friend, child, spouse, pet, or rich relative. Although it was an anniversary of sorts, it wasn't the kind where you spend a night or two on the couch for forgetting. It was the long awaited day when I could get out of my contract with Cellular One. Through their own impatience, greed, and in my humble opinion, idiotic management, I was actually given an opportunity to break out of this contract early but that is only part of the story. First I will tell all of you my story. The story that led me to set multiple alarms on every calendar, pda, and computer at both home and work so I would not spend an extra moment contractually bound to Cellular One.
All was fine initially. In fact, I actually had the service for quite a while but I just didn't use it much. I even thought it was nice and convenient when Cell One called me and offered to send me a new phone and sign me up for a new better plan. Pleased that I didn't have to look around or change my cell number (what a double meaning in that statement as I would eventually feel trapped as if in a cell) I committed to the new offer. Shortly after that, I wanted to add my fiance to the plan and get her a new phone. Once again, Cell One was happy to help, sending me a second phone and renewing my commitment to a year from that particular date.
Okay, time out. Let's recap. All was well, I renewed and added services twice, right? Exactly! I had few problems when I wasn't utilizing the service much and Cell One was very helpful and appeared to really care about me whenever I lengthened my commitment and/or agreed to send them more money each month. Here is where we encounter a plot twist worthy of Stephen King, vintage Wes Craven, or even Alfred Hitchcock himself. My fiance gets her phone and uses it for a total of about two to five minutes. Then, nothing. Well not exactly nothing. She could hear the person on the other end of the line, but the microphone on her brand new phone wasn't working so nobody could hear her. In my deluded world I figured this was certainly unfortunate but, well, you know, things like this can happen. The nice people at Cell One will help me. However, the people who seemed nice were the ones making sales and everyone on the other side of that transaction was either rude, incompetent, or rendered powerless to assist me by nonsensical customer service policies guaranteed to demonstrate that Cell One really really cares... about Cell One. First, the broken phone had been used for the two to five minutes I mentioned earlier. This meant there was no way on heaven or on earth that Cell One was going to do anything but send the new phone in for service. I was somewhat in disbelief that there appeared to be no way that Cell One would just exchange for a new phone of the same model. After all, I can accept that the occasional phone won't work and I really have no problem with the phone itself despite the initial problem. Seems amazing that Cell One can set up your brand new account in minutes while you wait but they are powerless to make an exchange once a single second of time has been put onto a new phone. I have since found out that it is not only possible but other cell phone companies actually exchange phones for weeks after starting service or within 60 minutes of service time whichever comes first, but I digress. So back to my story. The local Cell One store graciously sends the broken phone in for me and points out how wonderful they are for even doing that for me. They then inform me that they have no loaner phones but they'll call me if they get one back, which they aren't sure will happen at least not until just a day or so before I should get my phone back. Well, the phone was gone a month and I never got a loaner. Turns out, despite having two separate Cell One phone lines and giving them my home and office numbers too, the one call they made to offer a loaner phone was to the phone line accessed using the broken phone, the one they had sent for repairs. Silly me for not checking messages on the phone line with the number I didn't even have a chance to give to anyone. An added bonus was that they were fairly rude in the message and stated that I had better come in to get the loaner in 24 hours or they would give it to someone else.
Guess what! Even at this point, I am thinking the service was not good and I might switch when I got the chance, but I hadn't decided yet. However, I wanted something. See, they enticed me with an offer highlighting this wonderful phone they were giving me and in addition, I got two months of some free extra services (yes, extra services although you might recognize them as included services if you don't use Cell One). I'm sure the repair guys were thrilled to see the caller id or text messages on that phone with the number I hadn't given to anyone. However, I somehow felt I wasn't getting much of a chance to enjoy my free services for signing on with Cell One. So what did I want? I wanted a month of those free services to make up for the month I couldn't use because the phone they used to entice me was somewhere being fixed instead of being where I could actually use it. I really didn't want to pay for that month of the regular services either but Cell One made it perfectly clear that the phone was none of their business despite the fact that they used it to sell their service. Cell One wasn't giving me anything. Nothing.
So I starting setting dates on my calendars. All of them.
So what good fortune allowed me to get out of the contract before the magical anniversary??? If you like Salvador Dali, the melting clock guy, you will love the surreal qualities of what happened. I guess I can honestly say I got some benefit from the greed and idiocy of Cell One management. Seems with about two months left on the contract, they wanted to add a non-mandated non-tax related surcharge each month of 97 cents. They were good enough to send me a notice and inform me that this was a change to the contract and that I could therefore refuse the change and cancel the contract without penalty. Of course, they have a different version of without penalty than I do. Cell One graciously gave me 14 days to get out of the contract, but sent the message just after my billing cycle closed. They then insisted that I pay for the entirety of the current billing cycle. At this point, I again felt rage and anger but decided to make the most of the situation and use my final days with Cell One for good. As in, public good. As in informing the public about my Cell One experience. Of course, writing here is somewhat satisfying but not nearly as much as the new voice mail message incoming callers get to hear when they call my Cell One phone number. For the final two weeks of Cell One service, in fact the two weeks Cell One insisted I have at my disposal, I am using Cell One to refer callers to this very story about the horrors of Cell One. An email campaign is also in the planning stages to possibly spread my cell number to more people and I am contemplating the best ways to get Cell One management to call my old phone so they can hear the message Cell One is transmitting for me. I'm just slightly concerned about running over on my minutes but it might just be worth it. Please enjoy the delicious irony of this now (as I certainly do) but allow me to summarize some of the policies displayed by Cell One...
Yes, there was a line of about four or five other dissatisfied Cell One customers at the local store when I returned my phone initially and, no I didn't believe it when the guy said that was unusual. None of the Cell One reps there seemed particularly upset about it.
Yes, the Cell One service rep acted surprised and concerned when I wanted to cancel.
Yes, they offered me a free month of service to stay with them. I pointed out that I would have been happy with them months ago if they had simply given me about $5 worth of the free extra services as I had asked for after not having my phone for a month.
Yes, after I refused one month of service free they offered me a free month of service for each of both lines. I again declined.
Yes, the customer service rep at least had the intelligence to guess that I wanted both lines canceled as I had several times informed him that I didn't care what he offered, I wanted out. I maintain that the customer service representatives are not necessarily unintelligent but simply not empowered to remedy the ills perpetrated on Cell One customers by corporate policies of Cell One management. Or mismanagement, you decide. I have.
Yes, the email sent announcing the new charge tried to make me believe all the other cellular service companies were adding the same extra charge so I wouldn't think of canceling my service.
YES, they lost out on the final two months of service for around $80-100 per month over less than two dollars (the two months of the new 97 cent charge).
AND YES, they really are broadcasting a message that directs anyone who calls my Cellular One line before they cancel my service in mid May to this very review.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): $75 /month
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Epinions.com ID:
bbdix
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Reviews written: 2
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