We signed up for a two year cell phone fucking plan about a year ago through goddamn Cingular.
The plan included a “free*” phone, yaaah!!!
The wife had to return the phone after one month because it couldn’t find a signal even if we were hoovering in a hot air balloon three feet from a fucking cell tower.
Fast-forward just a smidgeon past one year and we find ourselves the vicitims of the same brokendownass phone again. This time the main screen goes out. We take the phone in and present it to the teenage-pimply faced customer service agent at the nearest Cingular store. Apparently a service tech takes it apart and tries to fix it. They allegedly replace two components in the phone and then call us back to pick up said phone.
This is where it gets confusing, try to stay with me here.
The teenage pimply-faced, with the smug smile on his face, cunstomer service agent gave us a loaner phone for 15 days to use while ours was in the repair shop, free of charge! (they’re incredibly swell people, I tell you)
That wasn’t the confusing part unless you’re shocked they even gave us a courtesy phone, I digress.
The confusing part is that our repaired phone still didn’t fucking work.
They try to claim that it was damaged by water.
Huh? The phone hardly ever left my wife’s purse, and never to my knowledge saw a goddamn speck of water. I guess just being in the close proximity of a perspiring human being is enough to cause “water damage”. Fuckin’ A.
And they were going to bill us for the repairs, which would have been in-fucking-credibly ballsy on the teenage pimply-faced with huge balls customer service agent’s part. I mean, I was surprised that the guy who attemtped to bill us could even get through the front doors of the Cingular store if you know what I mean, with balls that size.
The spouse and I are fuming at this point.
I said to the customer service agent, as politely as I could, “How do you live with yourself, you enormously ball sacked prick!” Actually, I shared with him a made up analogy about car repairs that involved a broken transmission, a huge repair bill, and a car that was still undriveable. I think he got the point.
So anyway, we were out of paying for the phone “repairs”, but there was still this lingering matter of not having a working phone.
“Well, can we just keep this loaner phone?, it’s the exact same one that we had and seems to work fine”
“Only if you want to buy it off us, for, lessee, about $150.”, said the large balled pimply-faced customer fucking service agent with the smug smile.
“What, you mean that we have to buy a new phone now?”
Wife was pissed at this point, she was actually red, because we walked into the phone store think all good things. We’re clearly not from this planet.
We thought the following good things:
(The phone was free of charge with the two year plan.)
The phone would be repaired fee of charge.
The phone would be replaced free of charge.
If they didn’t make the phone anymore we’d get an upgrade free of charge.
If things didn’t go according to our plan (which basically included anything that was free of charge), we’d back out of the contract and look elsewhere.
BZZZZZT!! Four strikes, you’re out!
Not only were we unable to back out of the plan (read the fine print you small balled and contract shackled customer), but we indeed had to buy a new phone and not the same phone, no-sirree, they really don’t make that one anymore, we had to buy a new fucking phone. Actually, we couldn’t even afford a new phone, we ended up getting a RETURNED phone that someone else didn’t like because we didn’t want to end up paying an extra $100 for the same model, only brand-new iN tHe boX!! AAHHHHH!!!
So, not only do they get us on the hook for water damage when they couldn’t prove that it stopped working due to damage…from…water. All they could point to was some corrosion on two adjacent solder joints on some puny little piece of shit circuit board component that was unreplaceable due to it’s being puny in nature.
That they can get away with this sort of thing, that is, not supplying a customer with a working phone during the length of the contract, is attrocious. I’m going to write a scathing letter to the PTB and see it there is any further action they will take to recitfy this before our contract ends and we walk away.
The damage was clearly not due to carelessness or obvious negligence. If anything it’s a design fault of the phone itself, although I could not find any hard evidence on the internet regarding this phone and “water damage”.
Oh, the reason we didn’t buy the loaner phone, aside from the $150 price tag, was that it was already over two years old and we’d had some trouble with that model, obviously.
So, go Fuck yourself Cingular, and you’d better start issuing lead underwear to your employees because I think the radiation exposure from working in a cell phone store causes your CSA’s to develope elephantitis of the nuts. That ain’t a good thing when it comes to customer satisfaction nowadays.
