Nextel has a great rip-off program going now that I found out about the hard way. I am a Nextel customer and purchased a new phone in a retail store after breaking my old phone. I paid $75.00 for the phone, I put my SIM card in the new phone and left the store. Well when a Nextel customer purchases a new phone Nextel charges them a $35.00 fee on their bill for upgrading the phone. I did not activate new service, they did not perform any action with this I simply put my SIM card in a phone that I paid for and Nextel decided to charge an additional fee.
It seems to me that Nextel has decided to penalize their customers for spending more money with them. When I contacted customer care about this I received a bunch of policy this and policy that chatter from the representatives. Not one person was willing to recognize that this was a problem for me. I am familiar with GSM service and am aware that if I put an active SIM card in a new phone, then the first time I make a call it sends a signal to the companies HLR (or whatever it is that they use to store the numbers in) which immediately sends an equation to the phone. As long as the SIM is a Nextel SIM, placed into a Nextel phone then the equation will be completed and viola the phone works. This means that Nextel did not do anything to earn this money they are only applying this to my and everyone else's bills "just because."
For example if a phone is purchased from EBay and a customer has an existing SIM card they can simply put the SIM card in the new phone and the phone will work. All of this can be done without ever notifying Nextel that there has been a change and therefore eliminates the $35.00 charge. That is not the case however if you actually purchase this from Nextel. They call this an upgrade fee and when I asked a customer service supervisor for Nextel name Mathew, what exactly did you upgrade for this fee he immediately hung up on me. I have never seen a bigger scam than the "just because charge" but Nextel has perfected it. They have apparently trained their customer care to Stonewall anyone who questions the charge and refuse to adjust or remove the fee.
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