|
..:.·.:''::·:::'':: nextelsucks.org | ||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
My girlfriend and I bought Nextel's in 1999. We bought two of them and signed up for a plan that cost us $150 a month. We paid full retail price for the phones so that we wouldn't have to have a contract, not sure if they still let you do that now, but they did then. No contract. We tracked our minutes carefully. Each month the bill would come and it would be way more than our phones said it should be. I started finding weird charges so I called them and asked them about these charges. Each month they would credit my account but wouldn't go into detail about why these charges were there. Finally I was sick of this and sick of the big bills and decided we should get rid of these damn phones. My girlfriend had received a phone from her work and I went out and bought a phone from Sprint. I called Nextel and asked that they shut off the Nextel phones. We basically threw them on a shelf for a couple months. When we finally received our final bill (as it seems they were constantly not sending them, either that or our mailman loved to steal them. J) it was huge. It was $766.46. At the time I was in the process of listing the old Nextel's on Ebay so I turned one on to make sure it wasn't still hooked up. Dialed the Nextel phone number and it rang. Then I hung up and called the other phone, it rang. They never turned them off. I immediately called Nextel from one of the phones. Of course, they had absolutely no record of me requesting it to be turned off. Mind you, each time you call you must wait on hold for sometimes up to an hour. I told them I'd asked the phones be turned off almost 8 weeks ago. She apologized and said she'd place an order to get them shut off again. A week later I checked again, they were still not turned off. I called them again. Again they said they were sorry and again they had no record of me requesting they be shut off. They said they would turn them off. Finally the following week they were turned off. After all this I started calling the billing department to take care of the billing problems. They had been charging me my monthly fees while the phone had remained on. In fact, they added a couple weeks' charges to the final, final bill. I called Nextel (another hour on hold) and spoke with someone in billing that was completely unwilling to help me and was totally rude. I hung up angry. I called back again a few days later (on hold again, I think for almost 40 minutes this time) and the person on the phone agreed to give me a one-month credit. How incredibly generous of him, being that I hadn't used the phone for almost 10 weeks I was charged. I was still determined to get the other money credited that I felt I was owed before paying this damn bill. I felt that if I were to pay it and then ask for it back it would probably be much more difficult. I started receiving collections letters from a company called RMA, Risk Management Associates. I called them immediately and explained what was happening. They could have cared less. In fact, they said I was no longer to deal with Nextel and that they weren't authorized to give us a credit. So they were basically saying, "fuck you, we don't care if you don't owe, pay it or we'll fuck your credit up" I decided I had to do this through Nextel. There was no way I wanted to pay something I didn't feel I owed. A couple weeks later I called back and spoke with a woman. I explained my situation. I asked that she please check her logs, as she would clearly see that I had not made calls on these phones for 10 weeks that I was charged. She agreed that yes I was telling the truth and that I hadn't used the phones. She credited me the other money that they'd charged me. This was in March of 2001. I gave her my Visa debit card number and asked that she charge the remainder of the bill, which was $466.46. She charged it, and gave me a reference number. I asked if she could please fax me a copy of my completed account. She said yes. I never got the damn fax. I called back (on hold again) and asked could they please fax me a copy of my statement. Again, nothing. Third times a charm I guess because I finally got them to fax me this. I looked at it and it said I owed negative -$766.46. I called them back. The woman explained this was how their statements looked to them and that it meant I owed zero. I asked if she could fax me something that said zero on it. She said they had nothing like this. Great. I faxed this statement to RMA with a letter stating I didn't owe anything to Nextel. I received more bills. I called RMA and explained what had happened. The guy yelled at me and told me I wasn't allowed to pay Nextel, I had to pay them! He said I owed them $298.47. I'm assuming this was the credit I was issued via Nextel. I told him about the credits and all the calls and problems. He said he thought that the $298.47 was a charge for me canceling a contract. I explained that I'd never signed a contract. I bought the phones outright so there was no contract, other than a month to month. He didn't believe me but wouldn't call Nextel to find out if I were telling the truth. I called RMA several times, each time getting a new person and trying to get them to resolve it. I faxed them copies of the statement saying I'd paid it, even copies of bank statements. Finally one guy said he'd resolve it and he believed me. He said he'd take care of it. I called back a month later and that guy had quit, of course, without resolving my problem. I spoke to another man who promised to fix this. A couple weeks later, he had quit too. I decided to try Nextel again. This time I called the financial department instead of billing. I spoke with them and they wouldn't help. Each time I felt I'd hit a roadblock I would let them go and try back again, hoping to get a sympathetic ear that could help me. Every once in a while I would get someone that would believe me and promise to e-mail the collections agency and notify them of my account being paid, each time I called RMA later that week and they had received no such notice. At one point I spoke with the "head of finance", as he called himself. He told me that this wasn't his problem and he didn't have to do "shit to help me" He screamed at me on the phone and said I'd have to deal with the collections agency. I told him I had been dealing with them but they just wouldn't do anything. That his people had promised to contact them numerous times via e-mail I asked him if his records showed that I'd owed nothing, he said yes. I must have caught him on a bad day because he basically told me to "shove off" and then hung up on me. I tried calling back a few more times but eventually they said they couldn't even pull up my account because it was transferred to collections. Finally I convinced someone at RMA that I didn't owe this money. He said he'd take care of it. I called back a couple months later, he said he erased the debt and noted the account. Ugh! Finally. No finally, about nine to ten months (April 2, 2002) later I get a letter from First Revenue Assurance (http://www.firstrevenue.com) in Seattle, Washington. They say I owe $298.47. I called them immediately and spoke to a representative. He was very friendly and understanding. He told me to go to their website and click on the button that said dispute and file a dispute form and that they would resolve it within 30 days. Easy enough, I went right to the site and filled it out in full… spending an hour writing about everything that had happened. A month later I called, left a message on their voicemail that I wanted to know what the status was. Then a few weeks later I emailed them via their website. I've gotten no response. Fed up, I decided to try Nextel. This time I started calling the Corporate Offices number. They transferred me to a customer complaints/resolution department. I spoke to a very nice woman named Regina. She was friendly and understanding. She said she pulled up my account and I owed nothing and seemed stunned this was happening. She gave me a reference number and said they resolve these issues within 48 hours. I was feeling relieved and convinced something was going to get resolved. I received no phone call. At first I figured it was because it was close to the weekend or because it was complicated. A week later I called and left a message on her voicemail, no phone call was returned. I've now called three times. Today (June 4, 2002) I called six times. I kept being put on hold, and then the system would hang up on me. They transferred me a couple times; it would hang up on me. Finally someone answered and I politely explained that it kept hanging up on me, of course only after being on hold for fifteen minutes each time. She said she'd get someone in Regina's department. Someone finally answered and I tried to explain, she interrupted with "who did you speak with", I said "Regina", she transferred me immediately…. To her fucking voice mail! I've left numerous messages and I get nothing. I hate this company. Hate them. Don't ever ever get a Nextel cell phone! They will rip you and never fix it. They don't care about their customers in the least bit. This last department is supposed to be the executive escalation department, the last line of defense. Why, when Nextel reps claim I owe nothing does this company refuse to fix this? I've disputed it with them, with the creditors, with the collections agencies. I get no help. This simply cannot be a customer service based company. They have treated me badly from the day I tried to cancel my account with them. They have reported this to the credit agencies. I would pay the fucking measly $298.47 even though I don't owe it but if I do that then it stays on our credit for seven years. This is ridiculous that anyone would have to go through this. This issue has stressed me out consistently for well over a year now. I've probably put in 40 hours of phone time between calling them and calling the collections agents, faxing shit and speaking with people. The way I figure it, they owe me a weeks' salary by now. How is it that the laws don't protect people from this shit? That a company can report you to a collections agency when their own records say you owe nothing? Yet there is nothing you can do. You can't really hire a lawyer; it would cost way more than $300 for just a beginning fee. So here is my answer… this website. I hope to add message boards so others can post their experiences with Nextel so that people can avoid dealing with this company. UPDATE: After calling the executive escalation department every day for two weeks and leaving messages for my "representative" about my reference number and my situation, and calling her superior I received a phone call. She said she'd just spoken with the collections agency and recalled my supposed debt and is clearing our credit. After hanging up I immediately called the collections agency to verify. She had indeed called them. Now I'm waiting a month and running a credit check to make sure it was COMPLETELY removed and not just updated as paid, being that I never owed the damn money. I think that will end up being a battle too. But only time will tell. I can't believe it, it's too good to be true that it could be resolved. What kind of place is America when a company can take a year and a half to listen to a customer and fix a problem? Where they can put incorrect information on your credit report and send you to collections when you don't owe them money? There are not enough laws governing what a company can and cannot do with your credit report. I disputed this through every collections agency that contacted me and they did nothing. Should they have to by law, respond within a certain time? UPDATE: I did finally get this off my credit. This situation was particularly frustrating for me because at the time it was happening I was beginning to save for a home and I was concerned about my credit score. I have had Sprint and Cingular and Verizon since this incident and have had pretty good experiences with Sprint and Verizon. The only reason I really switched was that I moved from Michigan to California. Cingular sucked, but mostly because it dropped calls more than it held on to them. Rather useless so I ended up canceling. Due to the dropped calls they refunded me my disconnect fee. I'm not a fan but I have yet to have the magnatude of problems I experienced as a Nextel customer. I have hopes that merging with Sprint will fix Nextel. I do not hold a great hatred for Nextel still, though other people apparently do because my site traffic is steady. I have thought about letting the site go rather than continue paying to host it and having to manage it but I have kept it up only because of it's popularity. If someone wanted to take this domain over I will consider it. HELP SUPPORT NEXTELSUCKS.ORG BY DONATING HOSTING I have paid to host this site for the last nine years. It's not expensive, only $20 a month. If you feel this site has been useful to you, please donate to support the hosting costs. My host, http://www.dreamhost.com has setup a new feature that allows me to receive donations to pay for my dreamhost account. I have been running this site for about five years now and have supported it's hosting on my own. I pay $20 a month for my hosting plan and have probably spent close to a $1000 on hosting out of my pocket as well as put in hundreds of hours of my time keeping it going. If you hate nextel, please help out by assisting me with a small donation, even a $1 donation helps! I don't expect to make money off of this, which is why all donations go right into my dreamhost.com account, to pay for hosting. I will never receive any cash from this donation, only discounted hosting! Anything you donate helps to keep the site up and running. Honestly it would be nice if I just got enough donations to pay for half of the cost of hosting this site each month. I appreciate your assistance, should you choose to donate.
|
|