Saturday, December 8, 2007

An unpleasant surprise!

Just like how I got ripped off by my health club, I got ripped off by my most loved phone service providers too. In my earlier posts I mentioned me getting an iPhone for my birthday and therefore switching to ATT from T-Mobile, the service I cherished for four years.

We had taken a family plan, sharing three lines between my mom, girlfriend and self, girlfriend being the primary account holder. Last year, she was away during the summer, vacationing away in Nepal for THREE whole months (How lucky was she?)!! My mother, then, while browsing around in the mall, chatting away in her cell phone, attracted a T-Mobile agent. They lured her into getting a new phone for which she would be rebated $50 each out of the total cost of $250! Seemed like a good deal for a brand new Samsung phone! She purchased three for all of us and strode away proud of herself.

Today I got a bill from T-mobile for $600!! The cancellation charge of $200 was applied to each phone. I thought our contract was over two years ago. However, the T-Mobile customer service informed me that whenever you get a new phone and claim a rebate, your contract is automatically renewed! We were not informed about it and more over, the primary account was not even in the country! They said it did not matter! If any of the members of the account claimed for a phone, it was a binding contract resulting in the automatically renewal of the services!! A nice way to suck your consumers of their funds with an unpleasant surprise!

4 comments:

Juliana said...

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cupcakelife.com said...

Phone companies can be so irritating that way. It seems like my phone always starts messing up around contact renewal time so they force you into buying a new phone, hence signing up for another 2 years! By the way, I just got the new Consumer Reports. You should check to see what they have to say about T-Mobile and AT&T. Not very reliable service providers, unfortunately. Verizon is excellent!
www.cupcakelife.com

Praneeta said...

Ive been there...

Shane said...

Cell phone companies are the worst, at this point you almost can't live with out them and the whole phone supposed to last 2 years thing is a joke! I go through them in 6 months to a year if I'm lucky so I'm always stuck in the contracts and don't even get a discount on the new phones!