Okay, for the record, I was a very happy Cricket customer up until a month and a half ago. That's when I went to upgrade my phone. Even though the phone I had purchased in Las Vegas worked very well in San Francisco, the company could not activate my new phone because I was not in Las Vegas anymore. They even went so far as to say that I needed to fly back down to Vegas just so the phone would activate. Right. My answer was to return the phone for a full refund, then enlist another carrier who could actually meet my growing needs. So I packed up the phone, sent it back to Cricket via UPS, and waited for my debit card to be credited the $120.44 the phone had cost me.
Over a month later, I'm still waiting. Cricket's return policy says that refunds can take up to 30 days from the time the return is received by them. I even gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited a few extra days. When I called the Customer Service line, it quickly became clear that they had no intention of returning my money.
First, they tried to tell me that they had not received the return. Then I gave them the UPS information, showing that the phone had been received by them on 10/27/10. Seconds later, the call was disconnected on their end. So, I tried again. This time, I was told that there was no supervisor available to speak with me, and that the best the representative could do was file an internal investigation report to see what had happened. Clearly, Cricket is well-versed in the arts of frustration and stall tactics.
When nothing happened in the promised 24 hours, I called back. Again, I was hung up on. Again, no supervisor was available to speak with me. Again, I was put on hold for over 5 minutes. Again, there were no answers and only frustration. The people to whom I was speaking could not grant the refund, nor could they connect me to the department that authorized refunds. I was left with the impression that I will never see my money again unless I go to my bank and complain about the transaction.
Bottom line? DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH CRICKET. Convenience and coverage are not worth the hassle you will face when something goes wrong—and it WILL go wrong. It's really sad that Cricket devalues its customers so much. They could have been a great company, and a viable challenge to Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, et al. But they decided, instead, to be another failure that didn't understand the fundamental necessity of effective customer service.
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