Taken from my blog, and edited to remove profane language:
So, I ordered a Cricket Broadband modem from these guys about a month back. It gets here a about a week later, and I'm happy, because now I have a wireless modem to use when we get the stupid freak power outages around here. So I toss it into one of my USB drives to give it a go, install the software and connect.
Well, the wireless modem itself is nice, I suppose. Black and green, and it's got the neon blue bars to indicate wifi strength. So mine stays in the one bar (if that), which obviously means I have a crumby connection (Now remember, I live in the heart of the city - about a 10 minute walk from downtown). So I open FireFox to see how fast it loads. Oh man. I sat there for about 10 minutes waiting for Google to load. Now, if anyone reg's Google, they'll know that all it is is a blank white page with a couple of images and a text box, so wtf?! Yeah, so I disconnect and take it out.
A few days go by and the power goes out on our block again and I load it up on my laptop because I had work to do. Again, one to no bar. What a piece of * All in all I used the thing 3 times, racking up around 45MB of use (I wrote a little program to convert bytes into megabytes and so on, as the log only shows you in bytes, and who the * would want to convert that themselves?!).
Now, I hate their software with a passion. They activate the internet gateway option in your network panel (for those of you who have this, and may have been like how the * do I get back on the net I already have?!), which now restricts you from using any other connection method other than Cricket. Yeah, crumby software to go with their crumby service and crumby hardware - who'd of thunk it So I unistall their software, and then have to go in and deactivate the internet gateway, reset the wireless connection I had prior to purchasing their piece of * hardware. It's just a *ing hassle.
So, the month goes on, and now it's today. I do my daily bank account check and find that $46 has been deducted to pay Cricket for a service I haven't used. So, I call them. Now, I pressed 3 in the Cricket Broadband menu, signifying that I required help, but of course - an automated service asking me for the number I no longer have because I removed the crumby software from my pc. So after the third time of the service asking me for my number, you'd think MAYBE they'd send you to a help desk? WRONG! Sorry, maybe you should try again later when you're ready. *click* You get disconnected. Oh grand, so now I'm not only pissed that I got charged for something I didn't use, I got hungup on by a *ing robot
So I call them back, and this time I press 2, signifying that I want to activate a new modem (of course their call service would be as *ty as the rest of it, right?) and I get a customer rep (about *ing time). So I give them my info and start asking them about a refund and cancellation. Blah blah blah. She says you get billed $1.36 per day no matter what, and that the deduction was a prepay? Where in the fine print was all this?! And when did I sign up for automatic payments? So now I'm going back to my pissed off German roots, and I start going off on her about the legalities of the ordering system and what-not. I continually ask to be refunded and cancelled, she continues to dodge it all. Finally I get pissed off and just start going off on her, and she says I'm trying to keep this professional, but if you continue I'll have to *click* I hang up on her. Yeah, because that's what I want to *ing hear, right? Just give me the *ing refund and cancellation like I originally asked and there wouldn't be a *ing problem. Honestly, how *ing hard is that to comprehend? I didn't click the spanish button, right? We're both speaking English? Refund and cancel, not hard to understand.
Bah, anyways. I wouldn't recommend this company to anyone I know. It's complete bull from start to end. I think the only thing they have that actually works decent, is the payment process, although I don't remember ever signing up for those automatic payments, nor was there any contract stating that I would be charged that fee per day.in fact, their main selling point is that there's no contract, and you pay as you go.
*I end up calling them back to make sure they canceled my account*
I called them back, but it seems my number got blacklisted (Can get customer rep on my girlfriends phone though), and goes straight to automated services no matter which selection I choose. So I google cricket communications and get another number to call, which I do. Guy tells me that Cricket doesn't refund period, and in order to cancel your account, you just don't pay? Yeah, because that's not a credit conflict or anything...
So I end up calling my bank, having to cancel my current card so that I can't be billed anymore (I don't have access to the cricket account on the website unless I reinstall their software and get the phone number *igned to me by connecting, which would then say I used the account in this billing month - nice right...). Anyways, I transfer to the payment dispute dept. Of my bank, and we go through all the legalities of this and what-not. So I have to wait until the payment is completed to dispute it. Another three days at the most to file the claim, and hopefully I can get the money back.
This company's a waste of money and time. How on earth can a multi-billion dollar corporation not do refunds? Maybe it's due to the fact that they receive thousands of complaints a year about their services and the hardware that they supply.
William
Rochester, New York
U.S.A.
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