My husband and I bought a pair of Motorolla wireless phones from Radio Shack for our daughter and myself to use. They had us to sign a contract with Alltel Wireless. Suppossedly, the phones were to cost us only $29.99 monthly, with nights and weekends free. We weren't supposed to be in a roaming area, and our area was supposed to be in their service area.
Radio Shack offered us a $50.00 rebate (from Alltel) for each phone, which was to be used to pay on one of our monthly bills. We filled out all the papers, and Radio Shack activated our phones.
Right away, we noticed that we were in a "ROAMING" area. We called Radio Shack and Alltel about this. Radio Shack had us to bring the phones back so they could adjust them. The people at RS were friendly and helpful. Although, they couldn't tell us why we still weren't getting any service.
The only time we could get service was at night when my daughter was in Vidalia, where she went to school. We could never use the phones in any of the other places we needed to be for our home-based business.
When the rebate checks finally came in the mail we took them to the Dublin office to pay on the bill. We had already made several monthly payments (in which they had charged us long distance for several calls that were supposed to be local). Well, they wouldn't take our rebate checks there - said that we had to mail them into their home office (in another state).
Well, this caused us to get behind in our payments. My husband decided that since we weren't getting the service that we desired he wasn't going to pay the monthly payments and called them to have our phones disconnected.in the long run, they sent bills telling us that we owed several hundred dollars for service, plus a disconnect fee of over $300 (since we were breaking the one year contract), plus some long distant charges that were supposed to be local equaling a bill of over $700 (which is now on our credit report against us). My husband refused to pay them, then after thinking it over, decided to go ahead and pay just to keep our credit record clean (is no longer because of this company).
Well, since then he payed a few payments, then got hurt on his job. He was out of work for over a year, and has just got his disability started. Would Alltel help us out by giving an extension when we contacted them about this? No. They just demanded payment NOW! They called our home at all hours of the day, and rudely demaded payment. Even after explaining that the service wasn't doing us any good and that we were just paying for worthless airtime they (we never spoke to the same person & they only have first names unfortunately) still demanded payment, saying that wasn't their problem. They said that it was the local office's problem to fix whatever was wrong with the phone.
The local office said that they couldn't fix what was wrong since we were in an area that didn't get good reception, although before buying the phones we specifically asked about the reception and was assured that it wouldn't be a problem.
Amy
Soperton, Georgia
0 comments