I am a finance dept employee at Nextel. And I can honestly say from what I've seen this company do from the inside that any one even considering using this business for cell service, strongly reconsider their decision. STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY! I have witnessed repeated over billings, in the amounts of $800-1000 dollars. First case in point, if you must use this company, never buy a phone from them. Either go to an indirect dealer or cary a phone from a previous carrier. This is part of Nextel's bread and butter rip off scam. A common theme I've seen within the sales dept is quoting discounted prices to customers then billing them for the full price of the phone (or for multiple phones if they really feel like it). For example, a cust was told that they were only to pay $150 for an i850? Model phone (it was even backed up by the notes on the account and that they qualified for an upgrade discount, on the bill under retail purcharses, the cust was charged $349.99, over twice what they were promised! I spoke with the corresponding dept to resolve the issue for the customer and I was hung up on 4 different times by the reps, and these were calls made by someone within the company! The remaining reps either lied and said they could not pull up the account I had mentioned, flirted with me! Or placed me on hold and xfered me to completely diff department! Another classic thing Nextel likes to do when people buy phones, though this is usually when purchasing them through the store locations, the cust will pay for the phone up front and the company will still bill them for the phone! I can understand some delays between real time payments and printed billing, but even after pointing these errors out to the Care dept, and even being able to point out a payment for the exact amount on the same day the phone was purchased they were still unwilling to credit the individual's account, or would lie and say "we are currently experiencing a freeze on all credits", or would put in what they like to call a "billing research ticket" for the cust's complaints to shut them up then never contact the consumer like they promise within 3-5 biz days nor even give the deserved adjustment. One more case in point, is with the company offering free phones in exchange for service contracts. JUST SAY NO! Not only will you not get these phones free in most cases, you will get slammed with a $200 break of contract fee when you cancel after having such a frustating exp. Trying to get the company doing what it promises. One fellow in question called in tears after a bill he had received. He was offered 3 free phones for his family, once again in exchange for that oh so infamous 2 yr agreement. And lo and behold he was charged 6 different times for the phones in the amount of $1200 (which they acknowledged, but would only give him a partial credit and refused to refund any sales tax on the erroneous charges which in most areas would be around $80-100). Another tangent I would like to reveal to the public is what I would like to call PLAN MADNESS! Agents within the so called "Customer Care" dept regularly sign people up on these pidly rate plans. A customer used an average of 3000 min a month (as shown on previous bills), and asked a Care rep if he could be referred to a better plan because he was getting massive overages. His previous plan had 300 min and they put him on an 800 min plan knowing this was well below what the cust used, when plans with 1000 up to 4000 were available for around the same price (with 20-40 dollars), this cust had an overage charge of $300 dollars. Even when customers see this coming and ask for 1000,4000, or an unlimited rate plan (which they DO offer) the Care reps would lie and say the plans didn't exsist or put them on a completely different plan than what they needed. A customer had a usage of 5000 min on average and an unlimited plan was really their best option, but when I sold the cust on this, the Care dept called me a liar, said I was poorly trained and insisted to the person that they never offered such a thing. Another observed phenomenon from this "plan madness" ordeal, is what I would like to call "suggestive billing". The unlimited plan is a classic example, as many cell phone companies use overages to inflate profits. A cust was signed up for unlimited min and it mysteriously disappeared off his bill for a month! He had made no changes, and all previous bills showed the rate. But on his new invoice he was charged for each min he used even though the bill still showed "Nextel Natl Unlimited"! Cust incurred $500 overage charge, Care acknowledged the mistake and only credited him for half! If you are a consumer of this company, always carefully review each bill you receive! Another random scenario witnessed, a cust was on a $39.99 plan, but each month even though the cust made no changes to his plan he was billed a different rate for the plan every month along with varying overages! The new bill showed it as 54.99, last bill showed it as 60, bill before that showed it as 45.99 and so on. Another trick along these lines is the "Service Discounts and Adjustments" section of the bill. I've noticed random, unjustified charges in this section of the bill ranging from. 50- $200! (note: to clear up any confusion unlike the name of the bill section implies these amounts are only adjustments if they have a "-" before them) If these are valid charges they always have a description, say equipment charges, overages, credits, etc but they have been know to just appear out of the blue. Yet another crooked sceheme on the behalf of this company is signing consumers up for a new contract without their permission. A cust will have a month left, and in the notes you will find a new 2 yr commitment being made with no records of a client speaking or discussing this with the customer then the cust will often cancel 2-3 months later with a $200 surprise. And finally. I could write a book about this stuff but I will privvy you with only the most pertainent wrongdoings that I have witnessed. If you have a Nextel account, only pay with cash or money order! Like many of the previous reports on this site mention, Nextel has a tendency to use this information to use this information for unauthorized, sometimes multiple withdraws on past due (and sometimes current) accounts. I've received numerious complaints from customers stating that Nextel took 2 $100 withdraws from their bank account, etc and these pymnts are suspiciously never posted to the accounts. Granted, some of these people may be not nessecerily telling the truth, but after you receive 5-10 calls a day of ppl stating this it starts to make you wonder. I thought about the possibility for a while, then one day I stumbled upon a section of a customer's account that I had not seen before. I forget the exact name of the section, but it was something to the effect of "Payment Backup/Security", and it was pretty clear this included pymnt information from the cust (checking account info, credit card, etc) that Nextel would use in case the customer became delinquent on the account. This was a very private tab on the account, something we would never disclose to the customer. The cust had made a chk paymnt in a store location for their deposit and the retailer took the info, without the cust's knowledge or consent and put in on the computer incase Nextel needed to make some unauthorized withdraws. Nextel does offer the cust the option of enrolling a checking account on their billing account for when they call in to pay a bill, but this customer had never done so! After seeing this function in the software I have no doubt that a lot of the complaints on this site are valid! Well, I could give you another steaming pile of whathaveyou that I have witnessed including how they harrass customers with poor credit scores, but I'm sure you're tired of reading this. And remember, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM SPRINT/NEXTEL!
Tiffany
Somewhere, North Carolina
U.S.A.
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