Complaint Review: Voicestream - Auburn Washington

Well, lets see... I started out with Voicestream a mere 2 months ago, after spending 3 months on their prepaid plan to establish a credit record with them...

Everything started out fine at first, a fairly good signal, calls always went out and came in without fail... Then mid April came around, and I discovered, while trying to make a call, that my service was interrupted and was redirected to their billing department...

After speaking with the representative, I found that they had disconnected my phone, because they had gotten my bill back with "return to sender" stamped on it... No problem, they said they would send me another bill, and my phone was reconnected...

The bill hasn't arrived yet either, now 2 months after I started my service... They misspelled my first name, but I don't believe that would be sufficient cause for my bill to be routed back without even showing up in my mailbox...

Then things started getting weird...

After about a week, my service started getting spotty... I mean *really* spotty... I couldn't dial out at all without going through hoops, couldn't recieve calls at all, and if I was moving from place to place with the phone, at least they would have some believable excuse...

The phone (same model as the prepaid phone I used earlier) worked perfectly fine up until then...

After trying the SIM chip in the prepaid phone (with similar results), both the tech support, and the Fred Meyer dealership I purchased the full service phone from agreed that I probably had to get a SIM chip replacement, and that I should go to a mall 5 miles away... Which, without a car, meant I had to spend over an hour on the bus going to and from the mall (this town has a major rail line between me and the mall, with no walkways or overpasses for me to use, means I would have had to walk 14 miles round trip on foot just to get this taken care of otherwise)...

And so, my foray into absurditude began...

Upon arriving at the mall, and hiking through to get to the Voicestream office, I explained to the employee what my problem was... She was accomodating, and set the process of making a fresh SIM card available to me, entering the information that would essentially make my existing SIM card unusable, and able to use the other, which of course rendered my phone unusable until the new SIM card was installed...

After doing this, she suddenly looked up to me from the computer and asked "By the way, did I tell you this SIM card would cost $21.99 after tax?"...

I believe this applies under laws regarding bait and switch tactics... ANY business who gives you a consumable service is supposed to disclose facts such as this...

Since I was expecting this to be covered under standard equipment warrantee or maintenancee, not a complete handset replacement or service change, I didn't bring much cash, just enough for lunch at the food court (being a self employed cartoonist with neither a credit card or a bank account, since I have to watch every penny I spend to keep semi solvent, there was no way to hand them a check of card to pay with)...

So I had to send my roomy back to raid my cash stash, which, since it took over an hour to do, means I (and my phone) were held hostage by Voicestream... For what? The crime of having perfectly good service up until the 30 day warrantee period ran out...

When I finally paid them and went home, I discovered that it was in fact signal strength that was the issue, not the SIM card... So on top of getting ripped off for my money, I got ripped off for my time (total wasted, 8 hours including customer support)...

And what did customer service do? They decided to credit me a whopping 150 bonus minutes... Whoop de frigging doo...

I hardly use my phone more than the minutes they give me with my plan, and as my existing bill was just $16 over due to business calls, I can attest to that... Oh, and another hassle regarding billing...

My phone is about to be cut off... Why? Because I haven't a credit card to pay bills with, and wasted $22 on a SIM card I didn't need, so I can't scrape up the cash either, until I get paid again...

Because when I had money earlier, they didn't bother to send me a bill or even keep me updated as to the bill's amount (until I went to their website to get it), and I prefer to get bills ON paper (if you don't, you're a fool, get *everything* on paper so you have records)...

To anyone running a wireless telecom with both competancy and guts: If you want new customers and have to fight the preexisting telecoms, try this: Offer to pay the contract early termination fee of $200 for any new customers (you can always reclaim this if they drop out early), and the world will beat a path to your door...

Brian

Auburn, Washington

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