Nextel - phones not working - contract troubles - Nextel billed $ 600 as a cancellation fee for 3 phones

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on November 23, 2002:

From:

RE: Nextel - phones not working - contract troubles - Nextel billed $ 600 as a cancellation fee for 3 phones

The original contract was set up with a Nextel representative by the name of Elizabeth Torres- she no longer works for Nextel.

A year ago, we subscribed to Nextel for our personal cellular phones. All business was transacted over the phone, resulting in no actual written contract ever being sent to us. We were led to believe the contract was for only one year- not just by one representative, but a second person when we went into complain about the phone style we had- large and heavy units with hard to use buttons.

In addition, we complained that after the window of cancellation (4 weeks) had expired, we were discovering poor service on our side of the city where we live. We were told that -oh, yeah- best if we travel the eight miles to be near a major expressway- service would then improve. We could not call anyone from our home, my husband who is a physician could not receive phone calls from the hospital 1 1/2 miles away, and I could not call home from a nearby store to check out needs.

We stopped giving the phones to the kids for safety, because they did not work- what was the point? Better to run than try to call on Nextel. We knew there was a penalty for early cancellation and with three phones the amount was $600. When the year was up, we were then informed that we had a TWO year contract- they faxed an unsigned copy of said contract to us.

Service representatives were unsympathetic about the fact these phones are of no use for my husband when he needs to return EMERGENCY (true emergency calls since he is an ER doctor) calls to the hospital. We have paid the final bill, excluding the $600 although I have little faith from my experience so far that Nextel will acknowledge their breach of contract (poor service, change in contract terms). Mary Rudzinski