Complaint Review: Cricket Wireless Auth. Retailer - Morganton North Carolina

 I purchased a 'new' cellphone from an authorized Cricket dealer located at 206 W. Fleming Dr., Morganton, NC 28655 on Sept. 10, 2016. It was a ZTE Grand Max II Z988 for $186.80. When I would go to the Google page, the text would come up in a foreign language. Also, it showed the phone's GPS location in Venezuela. I tried multiple times to change the language setting in Google to English, but I could not get it to change. Additionally, the phone came with some games and apps on it that were not pre-installed, so it was obvious to me that the phone was not a new phone. After 2 weeks, I took the phone back and ask them to put a new sim card in it. They changed out the sim card, and that fixed the Google problem. I kept the phone until May 2017. At that time, the battery charge was running down quickly, and I was having recharge it several times a day. On May 15, 2017 I went back to the same store and reported what was happening with the phone. I also reported the earlier problems I had encountered. So the store manager, Mari Velasquez gave me a ZTE Blade Max phone that she also said was a new phone. I had her sign a statement as a receipt that day for a documentation of the transaction. I used the phone until July, (two months) when I started having trouble with the battery running down fast and I had to recharge it multiple times a day.

I called Ms. Velasquez on July 19, 2017, and told her how the phone was acting, and I told her I intended at that time to make multiple complaints about her store to Cricket Wireless, the FCC, the online site Ripoffreport.com, and the local BBB. So she offered to swap out the phone again. She mentioned a LG phone, but I told her I didn’t like LG brand. So then she informed me she had a Samsung phone she could swap for. I asked her what the price of that phone was, and she answered $179.00. Since that was comparable to the original phone I had purchased, I told her I would come in and see it. When I got to the store, she showed me the display of new phones, and pointed out the Samsung. I told her that looked ok. So she told me to wait while they got the phone ready. While I was waiting, I noticed the price tag on this Samsung phone was missing from the display, but all the other phones had their prices displayed. When she brought the phone out, it was not in a box, and when I looked at the phone carefully, I saw scratches on the back of it, so I told her no, I did not want it, but I was going to make my complaints. I subsequently made a complaint to Cricket Wireless, and them found out the original phone was under warranty. So after much run around from them, they finally sent me a return authorization. I sent the phone back and received a replacement phone from them, but it was a used phone. When I called Cricket to activate this phone, I was unable to do so, due to the fact that the small tray that holds the sim card was missing. There was no way to put the sim card in. I have made a complaint to the FCC about this whole situation.