On or about February 10th I contacted the Cingular wireless Exchange By Mail (XBM) department because I was having problems with my almost year old Motorola V400 camera phone.
They asked me a series of questions. I answered all the questions and they decided that based on the information I gave them, I indeed needed a replacement phone rather than have my phone repaired.
They immediately shipped out a different phone to my work address since a signature was required and I spend more time at work than at home, I thought that would be the best practice.
The phone arrived a few days later, February the 16th to be exact. I was in good shape, so I thought. All I had to do was place the old phone back into the same box, stick the prepaid shipping label on the box and send it back.
Well, apparently a coworker of mine (still undetermined which one) decided that the empty box in the office was of no importance, and the box ended up in a round file somewhere.
So, I do the next best thing and call XBM to find out where the phone needs to be shipped off to. I expected to now pay for the shipping, which was no big deal to me since that was my fault. So I was given the address to the "mysterious" other department which apparently handles repairs and replacements for Cingular. Yep, that's right, the address was 1000 Park Road, Chanhassen, MN 55317.
So the very next day I went to the post office and put the old phone in a bubble wrap envelope, and since I didn't have the sticker, I took a piece of paper and wrote down my phone number, address, account number, EVERYTHING the people needed to make sure the phone was processed and received properly.
Three weeks go by and I hear nothing until I receive my bill which has a $225.00 "non-return of property" fee. I called Customer care and explained to them what happened and they said "don't worry about it, it usually takes a while for these to process." So I took her word for it, and I forgot about it.
Another three weeks goes by and still nothing.
I call back again and this time I only want to know who I can contact to find out where the old phone was.
Customer Care told me I needed to contact XBM, and XBM told me they had NO information about it and I had to contact customer care.
So I decided that I was going to get a phone number to that building in Chanhassen, MN where I know my phone was shipped to. Surely they have a phone in the building. Or maybe even a person in charge in that building. Nope. No one out of the 15-20 different people I talked to had ANY information about this place in MN other than an address.
Now you know just as well as I do that in today's world, we do more than just place stamps on envelopes and decide that mail is the ONLY FORM OF COMMUNICATION!!!
Apparently at this "Mysterious" place in MN, a bunch of robots are running around in there, sorting phones, and licking stamps.
The reason I find the need to report this is not because I lost, because in the long, very long run, I actually DID get my $225.00 credited back to my account by a wonderful person maned Tracy that works at XBM.
The point is, that this could have happened a long time ago and saved me MANY minutes on the phone arguing with associates, and trying to find a number or a name of ANYONE that works at the 1000 Park Rd. Building. Today is the 18th of May and I just now got the credit on my bill.
I may take a feild trip to that place in MN, just to see if the place really doesn't use phones, computers, or humans.
Scott
Evansville, Indiana
Virgin Islands (U.S.)
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