Primeco Digital phone service ... a year and a half of lies and poor service

I recently gave up my Primeco Service after a year and a half of lies.

When I purchased my phone (which is proprietary) I had very specific questions which I asked. The Sales Person seemed to be very helpful,answered all my questions (obviously with what I wanted to hear) and I purchased my phone.

Well, a few weeks into the service I realized that things were not quite what I had been told. Having just put out a large sum of money I could'nt not afford to switch service. I stuck with them. Things just got worse.

They took forever (3-4 weeks) to process my payment. This caused me to have a late fee all the time. I even pre-payed one month, and the next bill showed the late fee!! They would make minor changes to my contract, I never received any notice of the changes. When I would call customer service and question the change, I would be told "we just decided to make the change since your last bill," and that's as far as I could ever get!

I then found out this past summer that I could not in fact use my phone in the one area I specifically asked about. That was in my home state of New York. In order to use the phone in the state of NY, I would have to "manually roam" which eant "typing" in certain words. If I had an emergency, It may have been too late for help after all the required steps. The final straw was when they decided I had to pay for one the services, which in my contract is free!!!

I again made a call to customer service, and got the same lame excuse. When I asked for a supervisor, I was told it would be a 25 minute wait because they were all handling customers! What does that say about their business/service?!

On DEC. 12,'99, I bought a new phone & service elsewhere. I returned home to cancel my service. After waiting on hold for 20-25 minutes, I was given a hard time, false promises etc. They finally agreed to cancel my phone. I asked what my final charges were and was told I had to wait 24 hours for the final calculations. I called the next day, and was told that my final bill was $84.79. I had mailed in a check for $70.00 (2 weeks earlier) and it had not yet posted. I was thinking the check was
for $65.00. I went into one of the local stores to make final payment in cash, and again they verified that the final payment was $84.79. I made a $19.79 cash payment (again thinking my check had been for $65.00).

This meant that I should have received a $5.00 refund. Instead of a refund I received a bill stating that I now owe $2.48, this is over and above the "overpayment" of $5.00.

I feel that PrimeCo should make a write off. A customer should not have to deal with this kind of bad and totally unhelpful service. Once a customer is told this is your final bill....THAT'S IT!! There is no more, it is inappropriate and unprofessional to add charges at this point, especially a month later!!

I fully recommend staying clear of PrimeCo....who is merging with GTE

(I'd better not go any further!)

hahmail@juno.com
Heidi A Hayward