Complaint Review: Cricket Subsidiary Of Leap Wireless International

In March my coworker purchased the Cricket Broadband modem from the nearest Cricket store. The promotion at the time was first month free, 45 a month and a rebate on the modem... He took the modem home and discovered over the first three weeks that he did not like the service he was receiving.

He never had a strong signal, nor was his service fast. I told him I had thought about using the service, so he let me borrow the modem to use at my house, where dial-up was the standard. I took it home and where I live, being on the other side of town, had great service.

I spoke with him about the service and buying the modem off of him. He told me that he had to check with Cricket. I went to the store where he bought the modem and spoke to their representative, Jim. He told me that Cricket Broadband was contract-less and that for me to use the modem all I would need is to put the automatic bill pay with my debit card.

I thought it to be okay, so with my friend's permission, I switched over and began to use the account. A day later, I receive an email bill from Cricket stating that I was required to pay for the modem plus the "next" month's bill, coming to roughly 91 dollars. I told my friend and we both agreed to end the service, as there should have not been so high a fee.

My friend went to the Cricket store and returned the modem and had the account deactivated. We thought things were over.

Months pass, and since then I had gone paperless on my bank statements. I had received an "account low" email from my bank, so I went to them to check out why. I knew how much I was supposed to have, and it shouldn't have been below my threshold.

I discovered that the day after the modem was returned, I was charged $91. Then for the two months after I was also charged, once 55 and the other 45. I went to find the Cricket store that I had gone to and it was no longer there. My friend went to the next Cricket store he found and they said there was no account remaining in his name and that my bank account had NOT been charged. He told them that yes, in fact, it had. They asserted to him that NO, they did not charge.

My bank printed statements from where I was charged by CRICKET WIRELESS with their 800 number on it. I called them and their customer service lady, outsourced in India, told me that there was no account with his name. I gave her the account number and she told me that since it was not my name I could not do anything.

I contacted the BBB and have been going back and forth with them, each time with them giving me the run-around. The latest response from them to the BBB states that my friend is the only authorized user of the account and that I cannot file a claim against them because the account is not in my name.

I know it was not smart to believe them. I did not think a company like them would go out of their way to lie and steal. I guess I should have checked the BBB or Ripoff report first, huh...