Cricket Wireless Broadband shut off without warning, bill never refunded Internet

 When I got Cricket Wireless mobile broadband service, it was a matter of convenience, as I didn't want to sign a contract and I already had a phone through their service. I got the service added on in February of 2011 and had issues with the modem from the outset, I needed it to work on both Windows XP and Windows 7 and after being told by 3 service reps in the store that this was impossible, there was a shift change and all the reps who came in after this were incredulous that I was told this and sold me the older version of the modem that worked fine on both OSs. I should have taken this as a warning of things to come, but for whatever reason, I didn't.

The internet itself was terribly slow and fraught with signal issues. I tolerated it because I figured this was par for the no-contract course, and even stuck it out when my modem had some  sort of malfunction whereupon I had to plug it into an adapter that doubled it's USB usage, taking up yet another of my ports. I paid my bill on time every month, and continued to stick it out for the convenience factor until late September of 2011.

On September 25th, I paid my bill of $90, $45 of which was for the broadband portion of my service. 3 days later on the 28th, I attempted to connect to my modem and was met with error message after error message. This was pretty typical but after about 10 failed tries I became frustrated and called 1-800-CRICKET (no small feat given the fact that I got little to no signal on my cell phone from Cricket). I was told that my service had been disconnected and would never be able to be reconnected unless I bought a new modem. Allegedly, I had violated the Terms of Service and in order to regain the privilege of paying through the nose for the shoddiest internet on earth, I would have to buy another $100 piece of equipment to replace the fully-functional one I already had. I ignored this ridiculous idea strictly to avoid killing the messenger, and asked what exactly I had done to warrant this.

Fast-forward to February 2012 and I STILL have NO IDEA what I have done to warrant this disconnect, and I lost the ability to care a long time ago. However, I am still quite livid about paying $45 for 3 days of service and now that I can afford it I am switching service providers for my phone. I do not want these swindlers to have any more of my money regardless of the service I am paying for. For anyone out there who is dirt-poor and doesn't want to sign a contract, there are other providers of mobile broadband out there who don't charge $100 for a modem that will only work for a few months. I felt I didn't have a choice but anything would have been better than this.