Complaint Review: ALLTEL CORPORATION

I had a small seizure and my wife went to get my meds filled when the debit card would not work. We knew we had money in the account, as she checked it before she left. Upon arrival at our bank, we found that there were several charges to our card that were not authorized and the unusual activity had been flagged, freezing our card. These charges were pending, not posted, so the banks hands were tied; however, they did give us the vendor phone numbers to dispute the charges as fraudulent. The hope was that the vendor would cancel the charges before our account suffered any damage and before the vendor lost any services or products. My wife began researching the companies with the information we had. We found that there are pages and pages of complaints with Alltel charging replenishment fees to credit and debit cards without authorization.

Not only that, but they refuse to work with these people and are completely uncooperative. This let me know what to expect. The first company was SO helpful and understanding. They identified themselves as a legitimate company, explained their products, and I was assisted by a manager who gave me her full name and direct number to help us in continuing resolution of this for our account. Within a few minutes, our bank had cancellation confirmation for the $300 in charges to be released. This was handled perfectly every step of the way. The second company we had showed up on the banks end as Replenishment with a phone number. When I called the phone number, I discovered it was Alltel, just as wed been warned. My wife began the calls, which went something like this. First call- Casey answers the phone and when I advised that I would like to record the conversation, he hung up on me. No questions, no explanations, no anything, just the dial tone. Second call- James answers. I advise James that Id like to record the conversation and asked for his last name. He told me it was against the law to give me his last name and hung up on me.

At this point, I cant even tell them why Im calling or why the recording might be wanted. Call number three- I explain to Summer that Ive been hung up on twice and would like to record the conversation. I tell her about the fraudulent charges and she transfers me, without word, to an automated system that ends up giving me a recording that if you are calling to dispute a charge with them, hang up and call your bank. Fourth Call- I blurt out that we have PENDING charges with them, please dont transfer me, I need someones help. I got put on terminal hold that hangs up after 10 minutes. Call FIVE- Summer again. My wife explains the problem and mentions that shes heard this before, however Summer denies having any similar calls, which made us laugh when we told her we were the same people. We are put on hold, sent to a manager who never picks up and someone then transfers us to the machine again. Call six- We call and speak to Karen who puts us on hold for 20 minutes before Tina, a manager picks up and behaves as if she is taking our information and card numbers, etc, then tells us she needs to send us to Raleigh. We get put on hold, then hung up on. Strange that a PHONE company cant hold onto their own calls! Call 7- We ask for Tina again, she never picks up, and we are dropped again. Call 8- Our last call ends up with us back at the machine in Raleigh telling us tough luck.

We left many messages on it at this point. Our banks advice was that it would be better for us to let it post and because the bank was well aware of the problems immediately, they would work this through their fraud department. We are now in limbo with a frozen account and have no access to our own money. Im a veteran, disabled, and on a fixed income. My bank took compassion on me and let me pull $40 so I could get my medications, but I am now without funds until this is resolved and its only the 17th of the month! These guys think its not a big deal to do this to people, but it has done a LOT of damage to me. After reading pages and pages of complaints against Alltel, I just cant believe that they are still in business after treating people this way for 7 years! WHY Are they still in business and why are they not held accountable?? You can see from the complaint boards that they are quick to penalize their own customers, but collections is the only department actually DOING anything to people. This is abhorrent during our depressed economic struggle and needs to be addressed so badly.