Complaint Review: T-Mobile Parago - Texas

I signed up for a one-year family plan with Voicestream (later acquired by T-Mobil) in August 2002. I applied for a 50-buck rebate for each Motorola P-280 phone I purchased with the plan. I sent my paperwork to Parago Inc., a Texas-based company (www.parago.com), that has been handling rebates for Voicestream. I was supposed to get the checks within 6 to 8 weeks.

After a number of phonecalls to Parago's Promotion Center based in Coppell, TX, and with a several-week delay, I received one of the two checks. The second one never arrived. Parago employees simply lied to me every time I called them in the past 10 months.

First, they told me that the company has one-application-per-envelope policy. I checked the promotion on the Voicestream web site where the rebate application form stated: "maximum five rebates per name or address." It said nothing about one application per one envelope.

When I brought up this fact, a Parago employee told me that the paperwork for my second phone disappeared. I asked to talk to a supervisor. He said his name was Jose Marte and he asked me to refax my application. Since I was stupid enough to not keep copies of the two original forms (I only kept my receipts - ALWYS KEEP EVERYTHING!!!), he advised me to go online and get the form there. The online form I had to use to refax my receipts was old. It had an expired deadline on it. Marte assured me that it will be fine.

I refaxed everything. Then I kept calling. In winter, I was told that my rebate was revalidated and the check is being processed. Every time I called I was told it will take another two weeks before I will receive the check.

But today another supervisor who said his name was Mark Jones told me that my rebate was denied. He said that the promotion is closed and that I won't receive anything. When I confronted him, he said he cannot tell me anything else. I asked for a number for a company leadership. Jones put me on hold nad then hung up on me.

Parago supervisor, Marte, lied to me. The company simply used the old date on the form as a pretext to deny the rebate. Since I do not have an original form I cannot prove it.

Jones also told me that my record says that the second rebate has been denied since January. That implies that Parago employees lied to me the whole time.

Also, I think that Parago's supervisors either give out false names or cover for each other. Each time when I would try to ask for a supervisor I have talked to before -- Jose Marte, Alen Gonzales, and Anthony Smith -- I would be told that they do not work that day or cannot be reached at that very moment.

I am convinced that Parago goes far beyond looking for mistakes in the rebate forms so they can be denied. What they do is simply a fraud. They threw my application away. They count on the fact that a lot of people do not keep copies of original forms, so they cannot prove that they sent their complete forms on time.

A costumer care representative for T-Mobil, a successor to Voicestream, said that T-Mobil is not responsible for this. She told me that I have to deal with Parago's Promotion Center directly.

On top of this, both of our phones and their batteries were broken and had to be sent in for a repair twice. The phones were sold to us with a software flaw and our phone books suddenly disappeared. Each repair took more than a month. We had to pay a full monthly fee, although we could not use both phones.

I am a foreigner who never had to watch out for this kind of business fraud in her home country. I would never expect a scam from a major cell phone operator.

I am deeply dissaponted by the business practices I have seen in the US. I had really bad experience almost every time I purchased goods or services here. I just cannot believe how common fraud is in the US and I will advise all my friends who come here to not trust American companies and retailers.

When rebates are a common marketing scam why nobody does anything about it? How come they can be still used by retailers and service providers? Why is there no efficient regulation in place? Why aren't these companies like T-Mobil and Parago punished? Somebody should look into how these rebate centers train their employees, professional liers.

Katerina

Brooklyn, New York
U.S.A.

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