Complaint Review: AT & T - Crystal Clear Communications

To any potential cell phone buyer,

Please read my horror story with AT & T before you make a decision on any service they offer. I am sure that after you hear about my experience, you will not choose AT & T. Not only do I believe that I was lied to and scammed, but when I tried to get information on my cell phone plan, I was unable to contact customer service by phone (I tried for over two hours with nothing, and phone records will prove that).

When I sent an e-mail to AT & T customer service I did not receive a response, and when I tried talking live online with a AT & T representative, Sam, he told me I needed to call or visit a store.

I visited the AT & T wireless store in Medford MA on 2/18/04 (within three days of my contractual agreement with Adriano, the one whom originally tendered me the contract), and I discussed my situation with a salesman there by the name of Mike LaCahnce, whom had recently transferred from a Framingham store. He read my story and I believe he was aware that my intentions were to cancel my service (unless the original agreement as I outlined was agreed upon) since my plan did NOT include 600 minutes and did NOT include nights and weekends from 7p.m-7a.m. as Adriano had told me.

Unfortunately my plan was not canceled, and on 2/19/04 I found out that my number had been ported from Sprint to AT & T without my consent. I was then forced to cancel my personal plans for Thursday evening in order to work out this unfortunate nightmare.

I returned to see Mike LaCahnce to see if he could help me out with this situation. When I arrived I found that Mike was not working this evening. There were two people working, two customers being helped, and at least one or two customers waiting when I entered the store.

Since I was a understandably upset that I was unable to get through to customer service, that my email was not responded to in a professional manner, and that Mike was unable to do anything the night before to attend to my matter, I opted to hand out two copies of my story to other customers. I was then asked by the manager Kristen Clark to please not hand them out anymore so I complied. She informed me that we could set up a meeting, but I told her I was adamant about resolving the matter tonight.

I then proceeded to wait until she was done with her customer. I waited from approximately 7:20-7:50 p.m. In that time period three or four other customers came into the store, were helped by the other salesman. After my thirty-minute detainment, I was helped by the manager Kristen, who was very courteous. She informed me that she hadn't had a chance yet to view my problem.

After I patiently waited for her to observe my current unfortunate situation, she told me that all she could do was give me the email address of Eric Rubin, whom she said would be able to help me. I e-mailed my story to Eric on Sunday night. He tried to respond back to me on Monday, but to both our surprise my cell phone service had been turned off by AT & T in accordance with buyer remorse.

I e-mailed Eric back and told him that I would be able to call him after work between 5:30 and 6 p.m. I called Eric at precisely 6 p.m. but I was not able to get a hold of him, so I left a message. I tried him again at 6:52 but my efforts were fruitless. So we exchanged e-mails the next day (please see the email I sent to Eric on Monday night) and I told him that I would call him around the same time to discuss this now increasingly tedious matter.

I called him at 5:46 p.m. on Tuesday, but was unable to contact him yet again. I tried again at 6:13 p.m. and was able to hear his voice on the other line, so he told me to call him back in 10 minutes. I called back in 11 minutes but to no avail. About four minutes later he called me back, as I was halfway out the door prepared to run some urgent errands.

Mr. Rubin informed me that he would put an end to my AT & T nightmare. He told me that he was surprised, that this happened because crystal clear communications had a good reputation as an authorized distributor. He told me that he would speak with someone and he assured me that there would be some sort of disciplinary action. He also stressed to me that AT & T had the best cancellation policy, and that I had thirty days to cancel my policy (although the contract that their authorized distributor uses specifically states a 3 day trial period).

Unfortunately this was all he could do- he had no leeway with the plans or minutes, and he could not assure me that standardized contracts would be put in place to prevent this from happening to other customers in the future. But since AT & T has a thirty-day cancellation policy and it only took me nine days to get in touch with Eric and sort this out, I was able to cancel my account. But as far as my time, gas, nerves, and travel lost in this whole ordeal, a sorry was all I could get from AT & T. For a company that claims to help its customers make progress everyday, A T & T couldn't have been any more counter-productive.

P.S. I am not even going to get into the time and trouble it took me to get back my cell phone number from AT & T, I will just put it this way, I had to spend hours holding and talking to people who were sending me to other people who were telling me that everything was all set when in fact it wasn't. It took me over forty-eight hours, two calls (on separate days) to AT & T, and a three-way call (from 6:17 p.m. to 8:27 p.m. on 3/1/2004 waiting for AT & T) with someone who could helpa representative from another cell phone service, Sprint. My cell phone service was finally restored back to Sprint on March 2, 2004 after over one week without service.


Email I sent to AT & T:

As of today, 2/17, I need to cancel my service with you unless I have some things verified. On 2/16/04 I made an agreement with an Adriano, (617) 926-6060 a sales representative of AT & T Wireless at the Arsenal Mall in Watertown Massachusetts. He told me all the right things and sold me on a great plan. It included 600 min, unlimited nights and weekends (from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.), free long distance and roaming, a $40 rebate on the model M56 Siemnes phone, in addition to all the bells and whistles that come with all your plans outlined in the brochure under a one-year agreement (for $39.99).
After reviewing the contract for the trial period, I began to feel unsure of the plan details when:
There was no writing anywhere of the promotional 7-7 nights and weekends
I noticed the salesman Adriano wrote the wrong date on the contract (he wrote 2/15 and it was 2/16)
He told me that I could still get the $40 rebate for the phone, but the rebate form said 2 year agreements only
There was no cash or credit card numbers asked for or exchanged.

I tried to contact AT & T by phone earlier, but was unsuccessful. I have a scanned a jpeg of the contract if you need to see it. Please email me back with verification of plan details or cancellation.
Thanks,
Ken

Email I sent to Eric:

Hi Eric,

I'm still interested in seeing how AT & T would like to handle this situation, please let me know when your or someone who can help me will be available to talk. All I can do is suggest what I may do if I was president of AT & T. First before the problem can be solved it needs to be identified. The problem here is that someone associated with
AT & T was able to 'scam' a potential customer. This is a serious problem and needs to be solved so that it can never happen again. One suggestion would be to have standard contracts for all your 'distributors', or make sure that someone from AT & T scans potential contracts. If someone would have looked at this contract from crystal clear communications I am sure they would have seen that it is clearly a voidable contract. As
a result of this problem, there emerged another problem. The problem is that a potential customer had to invest much of his time, travel, and stress. This potential customer now is also left without any cell phone service, and also needs to change his social security number because a 'scam artist' now has that information. I am sure that any other potential cell phone buyer would be happy to give AT & T a chance, if at the end of my story AT & T proved that they identified this as a serious problem, put something in place to prevent it from happening in the future, and reimbursed their potential customer for all of the damages' (time, stress, inconvenience) he sustained due to this.

Thanks,
Ken

Amendment: I thought my nightmare was over, I had received a bill in the mail from AT & T for $51.20, I figured I would be able to call explain my situation and get my balance to $0. When I called on Saturday March 27th at 2:56pm EST.(While I was waiting for a representative an automatic message told me that my wait time may be greater than 20mins., confident that this was true I left the phone in my room proceeded to take a 10 minute shower, and when I got out the recorded music was still playing) I finally spoke with a representative who still said my account was active and that I owed that amount. I explained the situation and she said she would have to check with billing and she promised me that she would call me back that evening.(I was off the phone at 3:46p.m.)

There was no call back on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. After work on Monday I called AT & T again to check the status, at this point the billing system was telling me that I owed $136.92!!! When I finally spoke with a representative by the name of Patrick ID #B6362 he looked at the notes on my account and told me that all he could do is reduce my charge for the days that I had used my cell phone service to a charge of $9.33 + tax.

This is still outrageous as far as I am concerned they owe me money. When I asked Patrick to give me the name of someone who can take care of this situation to bring my balance to $0 he told me that no one could. He said that's company policy. So my understanding is that company policy is AT & T allows their authorized distributors to use contracts that do not fully outline the plan details, this allows a sales representative the ability to misinform a customer about these plan details, in the event that a customer is misinformed (LIED TO, SCAMMED) that customer will still be responsible to pay AT & T. I have asked Eric Rubin, Kristen Clark, AT & T customer service to verify this or tell me why the statement is wrong, and no one has responded.

Ken
Winchester, Massachusetts
U.S.A.

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