Window Shopper

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Before I tell my story, I want you to know that some members of my extended family have Alltel cell phones and they are being treated just great. They have been customers for years and have very few complaints against them. In fact, they have nothing bad to say about them at all. Now, having said that, on to a different experience.

I should also mention here that the original problem came because of an arrogant employee of a company that sells for Alltel meaning a go between, middle man. My husband and I had been waiting patiently for the day we could have a cell phone like so many others in the world. It seemed like everyone and his brothers and sisters had one. Yet with our financial situation it would be hard to do. Finally, the day came that we decided to bite the bullet and get one anyway. We found that there were certain circumstances in the rural area we live in that it would be wise to have one.

After receiving a nice little card from Alltel telling us that we could have a cell phone for a ridiculously low price, we went to investigate. The young man at the store let us know that he had been doing this for years and would be glad to make sure that we could have a cell phone in our neck of the woods since there were the nasty little “dead zones” all around our house. In fact, he would be glad to come out to our house to test it out for himself before we bought. He also mentioned that even if we got a cell phone and found that it would not work satisfactorily for us, we could return it and a cheerful refund would be given. As a matter of fact, the one selling point that worked with us was that if, for whatever reason the cell phone wasn’t what we wanted, we could return it and it would cost us nothing except our usage…meaning the time on the cell phone…so stated by the person at the store.

We decided to give it a try. He happened to be out of the particular phone we were to get but they would be in on Monday. We specifically told him that we had been without one this long, a weekend was not a big deal. We left. On Monday, we returned to the store. He was busy so we looked around. They had really nice phones. Ours was a pretty basic one but that was fine with us as long as it worked inside our house. We specified that several times. He said that he understood that, again mentioning how long he had been in this business. We filled out the paperwork, signed it, paid out the $10 for the cell phone and we were in business. At that time, we were told of the return policy of Alltel. It included a 14 or 15 day allowance for returning things without penalties. We agreed to that.

On the way home, we were trying it out. I called my Texas sis to see if it would work like it should. Fine. We talked for about two minutes. Once again at home, we discovered the nasty truth. The cell phone was not receiving a signal in our house unless we turned into a pretzel off in some corner where it would be very uncomfortable. With a huge sigh, we decided to return the cell phone to the store for the promised refund. We did not use it again with the idea that it was not ours if we returned it to the store. No sense in putting more time on it that we would have to pay for.

It took us about 4 days to actually get back to the store but when we did, the guy did cheerfully return our $10 and received the cell phone back. No questions asked. My husband DID tell him why we were returning it. He mentioned, for the first time I might add, that the side of the hill we were on was notorious for not getting good reception. And that was that. Until……..the bill came. It was a brand new startup package costing over $90. We were aware that we would have to pay that in the event of keeping the cell phone. However, we did not do that. So, I called them. They were happy to fix the bill……BUT……there was a $25 activation fee that was not going to be waved nor was the insurance on the TWO MINUTES of time going to be waived. Okay, I can see not waiving the insurance and I told them I was glad to pay the amount of time we were on the cell phone which amounted to TWO MINUTES. However, we were promised that if the cell phone did not work out, we would not have to pay any of the fees other than what we used. They insisted that when it was activated, that cost money and we could not get away with not paying it.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. She informed me that she was sorry but the rules are the rules. The activation fee will not be waived. She did get the bill chopped down to the $25 for activation, $5 for insurance, another small fee for handling or something and the fee for the less than two minutes that we actually used. It came to somewhere around $35. I insisted that we did not have the cell phone long enough for that amount of money especially for people who had to watch every penny. She said how sorry she was but that if we had a problem with the promise made by the young man at the store, then our problem was with him not with Alltel. It was said sort of rudely. Sigh.

We went back to the young man who had been doing this for years. And we finally realized that he conned us, telling us what he did so that we would be another sale. When he was confronted, he told us how much of a hurry we had been in, how we knew that the money was not returnable, how we were so interested that we could not wait for another cell phone he had coming in at a later date. Oh, and he told us that he had a great memory and remembered us very well. Wrong. None of that happened the way he said it. None of it was true. Now, another member of our family who had been a customer of Alltel for some time had gone in that same week to renew a contract and get a new phone. I have no idea what type of hurry they might have been in at the time but I suspect “Mr. I have a great memory” was remembering them, not us.

Since then, Alltel started to chase us down to get the money from us. We refused to pay it based on the fact that we were lied to and that Alltel did not apparently care that someone in a store representing them had lied. After calling us sometimes every day for weeks and weeks, they went to automated calls. We got those a couple times a day, several weeks. We also got bills in the mail that started to rise higher and higher. We did not just get a bill a month. Sometimes we would get several in a month. When the bills got to over $50, they suddenly stopped. A few weeks went by. Then the calls started coming at all times of the day or evening, automated so that you could not object or hang up on someone. They wanted us to call a number concerning a “business matter”. Once again, bills started coming in the mail but this time from a collection agency.

Over the three years or so that this has been going on, we have seen this bill go from one collection agency to another. Each one getting more and more aggressive for a while. Sometimes we would actually have real live people calling us, usually at supper time. And almost always, they would be THE MOST OBNOXIOUS humans I have ever talked to on the phone. I was commanded to pay my bills since I was such a deadbeat. I was told off by several men and women, sometimes the women getting more aggressive and nasty than the men. I was told that if I did not pay the bill, dire things would start happening. I was even called names by one of the callers. No, I did not get the name. DUH!!!

These are all tactics to get someone to pay them so that they can collect their fees. The caller is on commission. I have not yet bowed to such tactics and I never will. Things have died down for the moment though I have no doubt that it will happen again sometime soon. Who knows what that bill is up to now. The biggest problem I see is that no one since that first supervisor is willing to listen or help in any way. Even she did not help the way we needed it to be.

Yes, I am aware that with the usage of the phone that we did activate it and use it for the vast two minutes and kept it for four days. That is true. I cannot change that. HOWEVER, and this one is huge, we were promised by the young man at the store that we would not have to pay for something we did not have. We believed him. Alltel did not care that he lied to us. Did not care that we had a problem and want to help other than deduct the original fees that were not applicable to us anyway. They made no effort whatsoever to help us resolve this in any way. We would have worked out something and had a cell phone from them all this time if only they would have worked with us. They did not. And now, we do have a cell phone but it’s a prepaid one. And it works IN OUR HOUSE. Isn’t that strange?

Since then, we have had visitors to our home who had Alltel cell phones. They still do not work in our house. Ours does. MORAL of the story. If you are unsure if the cell phone works in your home, have someone go out and try it. And by the way, the young man promised us that he would be out before we bought our phone but was too busy to get there to test it out. Yep, that’s the deal. It all comes down to that young man who was pretty arrogant by the time we were done talking to him. He knew that no one would ever do anything about it at Alltel. And it was never his fault. If you want to know, just ask him. Of course, a tornado came and blew the store away one night. The company relocated the store but I have no idea where the guy is. Perhaps we were not the only ones with complaints. And yes, we did try to talk to the owners of the store. Nope. We had to got through the young man. That was not going to happen. Ah well.

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I have used calling cards for years. We get them at a well known large discount store and pay out, because we have an ongoing card, about $5 to reload it each time. We get 100 minutes for that, I believe. Now, you cannot tell the cashier that you want to pay out five bucks for minutes. You have to translate that into minutes for them to be able to charge you for it. That was a side issue but it bugs me. They should know the charge and the minutes. Onward. Calling cards are sometimes not giving you the actual minutes that you bought. Who am I kidding here. They never really give you ALL your minutes.

My calling card is from an extremely well known phone company, not one of those fly by night scheme cards. Still, if we call from a pay phone, at least the last time, it cost us 30 minutes worth of time just to connect to the other phone. But that is nothing compared to what some other companies are doing. Some were charging whether you got an answer on the other end or not. How about extra fees just for calling a cell phone? Cards were being given out that included a large number of minutes but they would deduct minutes if the minutes were not used up during a single call. Cards sometimes expired only a short time after purchase and some that never worked at all. Post call fees, 99 cent hangup fees on cards that had little money on it at all, fees that happened if the card was used more than once, activation fees, maintenance fees, cards that are billed in three and four minute time periods even if the card holder only used it for a minute or less.

It is estimated that cards like that were only giving about 60 percent of the actual worth of the card. That is called fraud at least by some people. The problem is that there are companies out there, like the one that I have a card for, that are up front. That does not mean I like the idea of charging me a half hour of my time on the card just to use a pay phone. That is not right either. However, there is a probable case against the other companies, not so with the one that covers my card. Those fees will be considered fair…by them if no one else. I feel ripped off. I paid for the card and for the minutes long ago. I add to those minutes from time to time. I expect to receive minutes because that’s what I paid for but it ain’t so. And for heaven’s sake, do not let the thing expire or you lose it all!!! Sigh.

Some day, this will all go away. I just know it. In the meanwhile, we bought a cell phone. They charge us for every use except when we call a company cell or they call us. Then it’s no charge except for that pesky little first time of the day call fee. Do you see a pattern here? You cannot get away from it, can you?

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This is probably not going to go over well with the younger set if they read my blog at any time. But it will go over a whole lot better with the parents of said teens. The fact is that teen cell phone usage is through the moon in expenses. I read a news report about a 12 year old, that’s pre-teen, who had gotten her cell phone taken away for several months because she ran the bill up over $220 more than the parents expected to see. She just happened to use 1,022 extra calling minutes and more than 200 text messages. WOW!

Now, I have a cell phone, a pre-paid one. We do not allow a teen to use it at all. We pay for the minutes we want. I cannot imagine using that many minutes a month. But teens are using more and more minutes and texting much more than ever before. At this point, it’s a whole new world. According to the stats I saw, 15.6 million people between 13 and 17 have cellphones as of two months ago.

The thing is, text messaging costs a lot of money. On our phone, it costs us 15 cents to text and that much to receive. When you have a pre-paid phone, you notice each time you do anything just how much it costs. If we were to text a bunch of people, it would cost most of what we put on the phone. Teens text as a matter of course. It is not surprising that they go way over the limit during a month. In fact, parents are beginning to panic about it. I know I would.

For instance, a father gave his pre-teen a cell phone. In her infinite wisdom racked up over $1000 bill texting, downloading ringtones and talking. The father, thinking that he could control the situation, turned off various services. Much to his surprise, they were re-activated by the kid. That’s when the cell phone comes back to Papa!! Sorry kid.

Another parent found that her 15 year old daughter had sent over 10,000 text messages during the month costing her over $800 extra on the bill. Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg. But hope is still available. Remember when I mentioned the pre-paid cell phone? That would be what I recommend to give to the teens and pre-teens who must text message and talk, talk, talk. Many of the companies now have good plans to help distressed parents in their fight to reduce cell phone bills. We happen to have an AT&T Go phone. It works beautifully. The teens and pre-teens might not like it too much. It means that if they want to have more time, they must buy it themselves or wait until the next reload of the minutes. Why not. Stops all the big bills. I’m all for that.

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