Would YOU rent this phone?

The boring details...
    I rented this phone.  I needed it for making calls in China.  The phone arrived on time.  Everything was fine, except for the (dog?) hair and dirt in the  travel case; there was human hair stuck to the earpiece.  When I tried to use the phone, a recorded message said "You cannot make a call with this phone", or something to that effect.  So, I knew it would be useless in China, for calls to the US.

Would YOU rent this phone?

Webmasters:  If you have a related web page, please feel free to link to here.  Let me know, and I will reciprocate. 

Is a better deal available on the net?
    I'm no expert, but I think so.  Just search in GOOGLE or in one of the other search engines using the key words such as  INTERNATIONAL CELL TELEPHONE RENTAL  and you will find many offers -- I have no experience with any other international phone except this one from VoiceStream.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  My Letter to the company
 

VoiceStream Wireless 45 Broadway 20th Floor New York, NY 10006   Dear Sir or Madam - Enclosed you will find the rented telephone. Your friendly sales rep assured me that my rented phone would work for international calls, "especially with my good payment record with VoiceStream,  on the other cell phone that you already own".  (Curiously, he repeated this several times.) When I tried to make an International call the telephone did not work, and I had no time for get a replacement before my trip. I called your company to explain the problem.  Your representative told me that the international feature had been purposely deactivated but that it would be activated as soon as my last payment for service on my normal cell phone had been posted Unfortunately, by the time you would do this, I would be in Guangzhou, China -- so, I asked if this activation would be automatic.  His answer was no -- activation is not automatic.  The representative told me that I would need to call a VoiceStream representative to have it activated.  He said that I might have to call daily, to see if the activation were possible! When I asked how I should call VoiceStream from China, if my cell phone is unable to make international calls, he replied that I would have to use a Chinese telephone to make the call to VoiceStream's telephone menu system and ask that my phone be activated.  This is a silly answer, of course, and renders unnecessary the entire reason for renting this device in the first place!  You will find my public complaint about this event at http://nowscape.com/suck/Voicestream-Sucks.htm.  If I have made any errors or omissions, please let me know and I will correct the web page. Please let me know if you have had the opportunity to post my check for eighty-some dollars by now. I request that you refund any charges you may have made to my credit card and give me accounting. Best regards and thanking you kindly in advance for your reply,   [signature]   PS:  Your rental application process seems very old-fashioned, difficult and cumbersome to use. You should have a web page for this; after all, you try to position yourself as a modern communication company.  You  faxed (sic) to my employer a long and cumbersome application form. You asked that I fax it back to you, along with a Xeroxed copy of my drivers license and credit card!  Afterwards, another telephone call from your company to me seemed to be required.  I would fairly estimate that the time I spent ordering, waiting for your fax, Xeroxing, faxing to you and conversing with you about this seemingly simple rental process was in excess of three hours! nowscape.com/suck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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REFUND...   

    If VoiceStream will give an apology, it will be posted here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  My contract  with VoiceStream, showing ability to make overseas telephone calls will be posted here shortly.

 Victims:    Emails received will be posted here, with or without name and email address.  
 Rebuttals are accepted likewise, but you must give name and email address.                                      

-----Original Message-----
From: Grace Higgins
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002
To: INFO@nowscape.com
Subject: Voice Stream

I have been a pre-paid customer of VoiceStream for many years. I have had several problems with them all of which resulted in my unused minutes being stolen from my account. These minutes are supposed to roll from month to month as long as you keep pre-paying. I had paid from April 2001 to Feb 8th 2002. I always paid with a credit card. In October 2001 they stopped taking credit cards and no one ever let me know. It is not on their website. Ironically I tried to call a day early on Feb 7th and all their switchboards were jammed. I tried for hours sometimes getting thru but it was all in Spanish. On the 8th I found out I had to drive 50 miles to a dealer to buy a coupon. I did. When I called the coupon in it wiped out my $225 of credit. Customer service was rude and nasty and told me I should have known that my account expired at 12:01 AM when the day is only one minute old. That is an unfair, deceptive business practice used to expire the accounts early and steal your money. I asked them why was I able to make calls all day on the 8th if I was expired? It's because their own computer can't jive with their deadline deception. I will never deal with them again and I hope they go broke from all the bad publicity. Grace Higgins

To: 'Grace Higgins'
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Subject: RE: Voice Stream

I'm going to post your letter -- do you want me to withhold you name and / or email address?
 

From: Grace Higgins
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Feel free to use my name but please withhld my email address or use my other email address which is Mummawaldi@yahoo.com. This email address that I wrote from is just for my job related stuff. I want as many people as possible to know what thieving lying bastards they are. Every time I go to the Philipsburg NJ mall where their store is I'm going to print out all their emails to me and tape them all over my car and park as close to their store as I can. Thank you for having a website to let people know about them.

Gracie

hope someone who is considering a cell phone sees my note and emails me. I'm not religious at all and I think you have to sell your soul to work at VoiceStream. Can you just imagine how stressful it must be to work there and have to constantly jerk people around? I actually started crying on the phone when they stole my $225 and kept telling me "there is nothing I can do" I wrote to FOX TV yesterday, I'm hoping they will do an expose. How can a day end at 12:01 AM? They have no integrity at all. Keep up the good work with your website. Gracie

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Rowe
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002
Subject: Info On Voicestream


To whom it may concern:
Regarding VoiceStream, I have never dealt with a company that relies on so many lies; overall, customer service sucks. Let's start from early on, approximately 4 months ago.

I have always been a person that carries insurance for that what if. I had insurance through my entire service with VoiceStream. Then all of a sudden they cancelled it, however they never sent me anything, and I had the misfortune of having to find out when I finally lost my cell phone and needed one now. That started the whole down fall.

If you want to start at the beginning, I guess you have to go to the day I signed up. Now I don't have the best credit, so I had to put down $500 deposit which I did, after the sales representative (from a VoiceStream corporate store) said "You have to put it down for 1 year and then you get it back." No problem the day that I was happy to get my money back, I was told that that's not the case. I need 1 year good history, and I had mishaps in Feb because of work, even though I called ahead to tell them I was waiting for a reimbursement check. I had talked to different customer service (yeah right) agents before my year was up and no one ever told me about that until the day I called.

Then when I called I was first told that you get it after 6 months of good balance history, no problem. So I waited, and after this time I was really starting to wonder about this company, so I did a follow up call. They now tell me I have to wait a year, or if I cancel you can get it back in 2 weeks. This is when this shit really started flying, and a straight answer was no where to be found. After talking to my girlfriend for a couple of weeks I decided to go to Sprint and just cancel. Through the time I was talking them, deciding about switching over, I was told that no instead of 6 months of waiting it's another year before I would get my deposit back, and after you cancel it's 60 days from the time you cancel. This was it time to cancel, however I needed to wait a week in order to get some money to purchase a phone from sprint.

Finally I cancelled my services, and they told me that I would be prorated for a month on the day of cancellation. Well that didn't happen either, since I had called on a Friday asking for Monday cancellation, I tried my phone on Monday morning to find out that it was still active. Time to call in again. Now I am told entirely different things once again. First, I can't cancel on this date, I have to wait until the next billing cycle which is in 20 more days. And not it's not 60 days from the day you want to cancel, but now it's 2 billing cycles plus another 5-7 business days. I forget to mention also earlier in this process I was told that I gain interest 3%. I call and talked to a manager (which I have been dealing with mostly) and they have said 3% on the 60 days, 3% on since I put down the deposit, monthly/yearly/not at all. Customer service is horrendous!!!! I call back again and they say not only do you not get it because you don't qualify, I have never heard of such a thing. I find this out, as I call back to make sure that they switch my plan to the lowest (which they never did, after confirming that with a manager once again) but it had not been done, I was still getting the more expensive plan I had previously asked for.

To sum it up, I have had nothing but lies from this company. I have no idea who to believe and even if anyone knows anything in that office. I highly suggest anyone who even glimpses of this to stay as far away from this company that you can not trust, but also tell you friends that this company is a terrible company. They don't know the meaning of customer service. STAY AWAY FROM VOICESTREAM!!!!

Larry Rowe

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Larry Rowe
National Sales
Sunbreak Student Vacations / Studentcity.com

www.sunbreaks.com / www.studentcity.com
1-320-654-0008 (St. Cloud Metro)
1-800-446-8355 (Toll-Free)

Do these things suck? ~~ Unpleasant experiences with companies and organizations. Scams.