Since, I at the moment have no other recourse, I’m doing all that I can do, spreading my tale of woe to you. In hopes that my experiences will help you make a better educated decision in the high seas of cell phone purchases.
So my story begins last Sunday, the day we got back from Hawaii. I had a little extra money, and had been giving some thought to adding an extra line to my phone plan so that the lovely Jezebel Pussycat could have her own phone number and line, and perhaps save the two of us a little money. In addition, I had been seduced by the sexiness of the Moto Razr v3. Now, I had a cell phone, from Nokia, which works grand. Which I love. Love love love. I don’t NEED a new phone. I’m not under contract to Cingular. I had options baby. But, I’d been with ATT Wireless for years; they had always been pretty ok. I’d been with Cingular for about a year after the merger, things had gone well, my service was pretty good, I didn’t really have a compelling reason to leave the company. Our relationship thus far had gone on longer then most of my actually relationships, and hey, why break up a could pair? Look what happened to Sunny and Cher. So, down to my local Cingular store I go, thinking that I’m about to raise the bar! Whoo hoo! Well, after having lovely conversation with a extremely helpful and courteous sales women, I was the proud owner of two new phones, one new line, and the sexy Moto Razr was in my greedy little hands. Can you say “HELLO MOTO!”
All should have been done with no? Everything was all well and good. Well, a couple of day into owning my new phone, I noticed that it was a bit slow in doing some pretty normal function, slower in fact then the brand new FREE phone that Jez had, and I began to wonder if maybe.. my Razr had some brain damage. This was more or less confirmed on Thursday when I got a “Unable to charge” error. Heck… it’s new phone…. What’s up with that? So, I being a good doobie, check it out. I Goggled it, since as all we internet dwellers know, Google has all the answers. Well. On the Motorola website they indicated that this error was caused by two things, perhaps one of the terminals on the battery had become dirty or covered with something, and that cleaning it would help, or the phone itself had a fault. Bummer says I. So at last nights fabulous after party, I asked Industrial Steve, who has the same phone as I, on the same carrier (Cingular lest you’ve forgotten) and asked him about the performance of his battery indicator and if he’d ever had problems. Well, it turns out he has a minor problem, walked into his Cingular outlet and immediately been given a replacement phone. “Dandy!” Think I “That’s how a company that sells you a faulty product should behave!”
Well. Here’s how it went down.
Jezebel Pussycat and I walk into the Store (Kiosk really) in the South Shore mall, the one near the CVS, and speak with Charlie, who indicated he’s ready to speak with me with a wave of his hand. I walk up to the counter, and begin to explain that the phone hasn’t been holding it’s charge, the battery indicatory isn’t working, i.e. it’s not indicating that the batter is depleting and that I got this error message, and the possible solutions that Motorola had indicated would fix it. I explain that I didn’t want to return the phone, just swap my sim card into the exact same phone. Now. He says that this should not be a problem, do I have my receipt, box, charger and manual on hand? I explain that No, I have the charger and manual at home, but I think that the box and receipt have been thrown away with the coffee grounds (we live in a pretty small apartment and extra boxes and paper build up pretty quick. I am however willing to go home for the things I do have if that’s needed, and ask if he is able to bring up the record of my purchase in the computer, since it’s the same store, same register and was only a week ago. He indicates that he can look it up, but can’t do anything without the other items, and that I’ll also be charged a $25.00 additional fee since I can’t produce the box. Its at this point that I begin to question him. I politely, as why I’m being charged a 25.00 fee for not being able to produce the packaging. He explains they are going to fix the phone and resell it. I again, politely explain that that’s not really my problem, as I don’t want to return the phone, as exchange it for the same unit they have in stock anyway, and mentioned that it seemed a bit unreasonable to me that they were charging me EXTRA money to make right a faulty unit that his company sold me. At this point he pointedly points out that if I’m going to argue with him there is nothing he can do for me.
Blink
Waa?
To which I say “Listen, I’m not trying to be a jerk or argue with you, but do you see my point that charging me EXTRA money to fix a problem that is in no way my fault is a little outrageous? “
“NO”, says Charlie, ”I don’t see your point”
“Well, is there someone else I could talk with about this” I inquire?
“Yeah, you can talk to me”, retorts Charlie.
“Uh, actually I meant someone that might be able to help me with my problem…. “ I begin to say.
“Oh, you mean a manager, yeah you can argue with my manager. He’s in on Tuesday. Come back then” explains Charlie.
Now, understand that not having the receipt is pretty lame of me, and after getting home, I’ve since found it. But it still seems unreasonable to me that I’m being charged an extra fee at all, in fact, why do I need to bring in the box, charger, manual? I mean, I want to swap for the same product for God sake?! Open a new box, put my SIM card into the new phone, put broken phone in new box which contains charger and manual and send the entire box to the repair facility.
It’s not so much that Charlie was rude to me, though he was defiantly dissmisive, it’s that he was indifrent to what I thought was a really simple problem. He accused me of being argumentative, and having worked in both sales and customer service, I was trying very hard NOT to be, and he accused me of being unreasonable. He game me a completely poor experience with a company that I STILL have the option of opting out of! I have 30 days to return both phones, cancel my service and go pay someone else almost a 100 dollars a month, in addition to the extra money I paid to have the sexy phone in the first place!!! On the drive home, I was absolutely livid. Had the manager (whose name was never offered, nor TIMES when they were going to be available) been there today, I would have canceled my service right then and there. Is this what I can expect from Cingular for the next two years? Indifferent treatment and disdain? I think not my friends. I’ll pay good money out the nose to break a contract with a company that treats it’s customers this poorly before I pay them another cent. I will however give the unnamed and unseen manager the chance to make things right with me on Tuesday, and see how that goes, however, if I’m treated remotely the same way, me and my money are going somewhere else.
As of right now, if you want a new phone and cell service, I’d be inclined to send you to T-mobile or Verizon as Cingular is leaving a lot to be desired.
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annoyed
