Cricket has bitten off more than they can chew this time...
On Tuesday, April 10th I decided to try out Cricket service in the Portland, OR market. I visited an affiliate store and bought a Motorola SLVR L7c for $200 and a car charger/phone holster for $25. Cricket was running their first month free with no activation fee promotion. I chose the $45 a month plan.
So I am out the door with the hardware and my first months service for $225. I get a text message from Cricket shortly after activation telling me my next payment due date is May 10th. My payment history with Cricket is as follows:
April 21st $47.55
June 4th $47.22
July 9th $47.22
On August 9th I made the decision to cancel service and called the 800-CRICKET telephone number, chose the 'make changes to your account' option and advised the CSR that I wished to cancel service. She said that she would need to transfer me to the department that handles cancellations. I spoke to the person in that department, communicating to him that I no longer wished to be a Cricket subscriber. He went through the motions and advised me the account was closed and the service disconnected.
On Wednesday, August 15th I received a bill from Cricket for the amount of $47.31 due by the 9th of September. On the front of this bill, the following statement is printed:
' Per your request, your Cricket service has been disconnected. You now owe the amount shown on this invoice. Call 1-800-783-1042 to make this payment. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.'
On the back of the bill, in the section called Account Summary it has a line item reading:
'You paid through 8/10... 0.00'
I had this service for 4 months. The first month was free, and I paid for the other three months as outlined above. Now my story follows the unfortunate path that so many others have written about on this site. I have presented the facts, and they stand on their merits.
My complaint is that Cricket is trying to collect a debt which doesn't exist.
Now if I might rant for a moment:
First off, what is it with these bubbly little Cricket Cheerleaders that hang out on this site for the sole purpose of putting a positive Cricket spin on these complaints? I mean 'Ex-employee' come on now, lets get real.in reality and not the Internet fantasy land, you become an 'Ex-employee' for one of two reasons:
1. A voluntary seperation takes place (You quit)
2. An involuntary seperation takes place (You get fired)
And again, I am not living in the fantasy land of the Internet. I live in the real world.in my real world, people don't quit their jobs or get fired from their jobs and then come to usacomplaints.com to help disgruntled customers from that former employer and say nice things about the former employer. That just doesn't happen in my world. I would venture to say that a jury of my peers would take this same opinion.
So if Cricket bills 10,000 former subscribers for an extra month of service that they do not owe for and only 10 percent of these ex-subscribers roll over and just pay the money thinking 'Oh what the heck, it's just 50 bucks and trying to talk to anyone at Cricket about this billing error is impossible', that is a nice $50 thousand dollars, less the cost of sending out those 10,000 statements at probably. 30 per mailing. For those of you that don't want to do the math, that's a net profit of $47 thousand dollars. You've gotta love the carpet bombing extortion tactic... It pays well.
Look in Crickets terms and conditions and it says that in the event of a billing dispute, the person disputing still has to PAY the amount in dispute while the investigation takes place. Once again, so many people will just say 'F-It' due to the small amount of money involved. Who wants to get their credit screwed up over a $50 cell phone bill... Right?
Don't think just because you didn't give Cricket your Social Security number that they can't find it out. Give me a few select bits of personally identifiable information about you, and I'll tell you your Social Security number. We live in an age of information.
David faced Goliath with five stones, a small sling, and fierce determination. I face todays Goliaths every day. They may be big, but I am not afraid. I am a person of ordinary means and I fight for justice. Please watch this complaint thread for updates.
Rob
Tigard, Oregon
U.S.A.
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