Cricket Wireless - pre-paid service package - poor service coverage, call quality experiences

# 38 for July 3, 2003

Complaints.com received the following on July 2, 2003:

From:

RE: Cricket Wireless - pre-paid service package - poor service coverage, call quality experiences

About a year ago I purchased a Cricket cellphone and cellular service. It was a pre-pay service package that included long-distance minutes, caller ID, voice mail, along with other features and on top of that, unlimited local calls. This was great considering I was going to college far enough away where a call to home would be long distance, but still close enough to be a local call with my Cricket phone. Life was good.

After having the phone for a few months, I realized that the phone wasn't a necessity, not to mention that I had to be in certain parts of my house/dorm to receive any type of service. So, when I went home for Christmas, i simply stopped paying the bill to cancel my service. This simply meant that if I wanted to get service through Cricket within the following year, I would have to pay a reactivation fee. A month goes by and Cricket sends me a promotional off through the mail, offering to reinstate my service without the reactivation fee. I was going to head back to school, so I figure, it wasn't that much of a hassle, why not?

When the phone was reactivated, my old features were not added to the phone. I had a friend of mine who had a phone in the past aquire some of those features for me. Little did i know, and he pay attention to, the fact that he was entering (and ultimately me) into a 12 month contract by doing so. Months went by, during which people would call my phone and it wouldn't ring.

Sometimes they would get some automated message, explaining why the call would not go through, and other times they would hear rings on their end, but my phone wasn't ringing. so i contacted Cricket, and they had me push a few buttons and change this setting. Well that worked, for about 2 weeks. Then, when I had time between college, work, soccer, and other on campus activities, I went to the Cricket Store in North Little Rock, AR. What did they do? Tell me that yes, there was definitely interference with my line, and then change the setting back to what it was set on originally and sent me on my merry little way. That worked for less than the first tiem they changed to setting. So eventually, I got fed up with paying for a service that I couldn't really use and stopped paying the bill. I was coming home from school anyway.

A couple months later, i get this bill mandating that I pay roughly $200, and if it was not paid then they would send a collection agency after me, thus ruining my credit if i fail to pay. I tried callign billign services to talk to them about my bill, especially the $150 cancelation fee taht I did not understand. so when the automated teller person asks you to put in your area code and number I did, and then it tells me that that number is not valid. After a night of failing to get ahold of someone, I decided to go to the store again on my day off. There they tell me about the contract and that the other $41 of my bill was because it was no longer a pre-pay deal and that part of it was for services used.

That part of the bill I undrstood and felt that I was obligated to pay. BUt the cancellation fee was another story. I ultimately cancelled the phone because I could not use it. Not because of any fault of my own, but because Cricket wasn't doing anything to fix the problem, except change my settings back and forth, if you can even call that fixing. The lady behind the desk tells me that I didn't give them a chance to, So I asked her how many chances it takes.

She tells me however many it takes to get it right. So I ask her "what?, 5 times?, 6 times?" and her response was "if it takes that many." So I stand there and think to myself. I have to get a day off, from work, from school, from vacation, so you all can play guess and check with my phone over a course of months and in the process I am suppose to pay for services that I cannot use because of the problem? This is rediculous.

At this point I am a very concerned consumer of their product, and needless to say if this issue does not resolve itself, I will be asking other authorities to step in where they are able.

Cricket # (501) 744-5817