Cricket Communications - Jump Mobile Refused to cancel my service, suspended my service after I had paid on time San Diego California

I've always had serious trouble with Cricket. I've never been late on a payment yet I still had to keep a close eye on my account to make sure I wasn't being charged for things I didn't use.

First and foremost, I just tried to cancel my service and although the lady over the phone said that it was done successfully, she gave me no confirmation number and when I checked the status of my account online they it still said my account was active and I was going to owe money on the tenth of next month.

Not only that but when I called them and told them to cancel my service, which last time I had done that they told me it took effect at the end of the month, they suspended my calls and texts for the rest of the month leaving me unknowingly without communication once I got to work.
So they suspended my service for a month I had already paid for (thus the whole pre-paid idea) and now they didn't even close my account.
Also, they hung up on me the first time I tried to cancel my service. The second time I had go through a series of "no"s in order to get the lady to stop trying to get me to stay. When I say know, I mean no. I already have a new phone with Tracfone and will never return to Cricket. I don't need time to 'think about it' or 'test out my new service'. If I wanted to go back to Cricket I would just create a new account and get the first month free again.

Another thing that really has me frustrated is that they have no option on the online account to stop automatic bill pay. I've been using automatic bill pay the entire time so that I didn't have to worry about forgetting to pay my bill and now they don't have any option to stop it. They have access to my debit card and I had to contact my bank to have them block any incurring charges from Cricket. I will not deal with the charges after they happen because the way the economy is going these days they could just declare bankruptcy and not give me my money back.

I tried contacting them via email in order to avoid the horrible customer service but again that was to no avail. They constantly told me that they couldn't make any changes to my account although they had an option to email them about it in the first place and obviously knew I was the owner of the account since I was logged on. They have all the tools online to make you spend, spend, spend but nothing to cancel services that profit them.

For example, I tried numerous times for the past six months to downgrade my plan to a cheaper one realizing I was not using most of the features I was paying for and that the internet kept giving me a gateway error and low and behold it kept telling me I wasn't logged in. I repeatedly logged in and attempted to change my plan and it still kept giving me the same message preventing me from changing my plan with the features provided online. Since I didn't want to change the plan over the phone (I've had several problems trying to do that as well) I just decided to cancel my service and switched to Tracfone.

One last issue I have with them is theri impossible mail-in reate system. I purchased their Kyocera Lingo for 200 dollars knowing that I had a 100 dollar rebate coming. I always mail in my rebates and even thought they've taken a long time to process, Linksys, Sony, and other companies have always given me no trouble and sent it to me. I had no such luck with Cricket. I sent in the rebate form, along with receipt and pretty much a copy of everything I had that came with the phone I could immagine. I did everything they said and sent it in the day I got my phone. I don't procrastinate because I know that if I wait to do anything something can always come up. So, as a responsible adult, I get everything done as soon as possible. About four months later I got a letter from Cricket saying I didn't send in the necessary paperwork. So I dig out my files and pull out all my online and offline receipts and send it back in again, which seems to have upset them because they never even bothered sending me a letter saying anything about it again after six months. I have given up on that because I read horrible stories about customer's experience with not getting their mail-in rebates.

So I've filed a claim with my bank to challenge any future charges and will be reporting Cricket to the FCC. I am going to once again attempt to contact Cricket about canceling my service but this time I will be writing down everything they tell me or see if I can record the conversation. I will update my complaint with that information.

To sum it all up...

1) I had trouble getting customer service to cancel my account and even when they told me they did, they in fact had not, posting a bill for next month for a service I didn't want. (I suspect they were hoping I wouldn't check my account thinking I had safely canceled the service).
2) They suspended my account on the month I had already paid for.
3) There is no way to cancel automatic bill pay or any way to downgrade plans (don't even tell me that it was user error. I have experience in customer service and computers and know when a webpage isn't working properly. Even the customer service representative said it wasn't working correctly).
4) Contacting them via e-mail is pointless unless you plan on emailing them about something unrelated to your account which make the whole system pointless.
5) The internet hasn't been working for a month now and I have to constantly re-submit URLs in order to reach something as simple as Google or my Gmail.
6) Their rebate system is a rip-off. Regardless of any third parties involved, they make it impossible to conveniently have that rebate sent.
7) Although we all know it, I will never tire of saying it. Everyone I know who has Cricket has had serious trouble with them and their customer service is deplorable.

I am in the customer service business. I understand that in order to be employed in this field you must serve the customer. In our business we do our best to help our customers by saving them money when possible, by dealing with any problems immediately, and by making sure they feel like we actually care. We don't slickly try to avoid giving out information in order to get them to sign up for an extra four years of our service. We don't push any services on them that they don't want. And lastly, we give them all the information for them to make an educated decision. If they don't need the service we tell them they would not benefit in signing up. Cricket doesn't do that. They outsource their customer support just like everyone else but it seems they do the worst job of training their employees (reading off a script without even trying to sound natural completely unable to earn someone's trust. I would know, I was one of the best cold callers in Reno).
I am a very patient person but no amount of patience can help you deal with Cricket. I don't want any empty apologies or excuses. There are none. If the only way I will get what I want from them is threatening to file multiple complaints with every consumer complaint site including the FCC then so be it. Regardless, I have had a horrible experience with their customer service.
Just because the service itself is good and affordable, doesn't mean their customer service and online billing systems should be so horrible.

Emilia
Reno, Nevada
U.S.A.

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