Alltel, Alltel Communications ripoff Danville Virginia

I had an account with Alltel back in 1998-2000. I was making decent money and did not really stress over my cell bill being high. I knew I was using my phone quite a bit, but one day I got to looking over the bill, because I was looking for a number I had called. I noticed I was being charged $.36/minute. All of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks that when I signed my contract, it was for $.10/minute. I began to look over previous bills, and noticed it had been like this for over 10 months, and as I said, I used it quite a bit, so my usual bill was upwards of $200. Now, when I began to add these calls up one by one, the total Alltel had overcharged me was over $600! I spent hours trying to get someone on the phone to help me with this. I was told over and over that each person I spoke with "could not authorize a credit for such a large amount". I wrote letters, with a copy of the contract and copies of the bills, faxed copies of the same to different ones, who were supposedly going to help me, all to no avail. The local office was absolutely no help. I waited for over two hours one day and was never seen. The girls working in the office seemed to have way too many social issues to help the customers who were waiting. I finally left. Another time, I waited for 45 minutes and was never helped. Both times, there were personal phone calls being answered by the reps, and the reps would walk to the back room to finish their conversations.

Of course, they would say, "I'll be right back" and smile sweetly. One rep had visitors come in the front door, and they were barefoot and looked AND acted as if they were drunk or on drugs and were very loud and obnoxious, so she walked toward the back room and when she was out of sight of most of the customers, she waved them to come back (I was still in full view of her & vice-versa), and she was gone for a good 10 minutes. I waited for about 15 minutes after she reappeared and the personal phone calls kept-a-comin' so I finally just left. I eventually got the name and address of what was supposed to be the BIG GUY/CEO-OWNER or whatever. I don't remember his full name now, but I think his last name was Ford. I mailed him copies of my original letters and info along with a new letter addressed to him explaining the entire situation from beginning to end. I never received a response.

Finally, I got a lady who claimed they would let me just apply the credit to my service, but would not refund my money. I was completely satisfied with that. The next month, I received another bill saying my payment was due or my service would be disconnected. I called and got someone different. When I asked for the lady I had talked to previously, this rep said I don't know of anyone by that name working here (OF COURSE!), and proceeded to tell me that there was no way they could ever authorize a credit of that amount. She said she could work on crediting me $200. I told her this was money I had OVERPAID in cash and that I wanted some type of credit for that. She said I could do whatever I needed to do, but all I would get was a $200 credit, IF she could get it authorized and I would have to pay the current account until she got an answer. I told her I had already over paid more than $600, and until I got credit for it they would never receive another dime from me, and she could do whatever SHE needed to do. She hung up on me. My service was disconnected and the following month I began receiving collection letters. To this day this is screwing up my credit, and when I tried to dispute it, they came up with all kinds of miscellaneous charges that supposedly added up to more than what they owed me to explain the amount DUE. In addition, there were several times they mistakenly disconnected my service for delinquent payment, and when I called, they had disconnected the wrong account. It usually took anywhere from 24-72 hours for them to reconnect my service, and although frustrating, I kept my contract up and spent ALOT of money with them ($200-500 per month) until this happened. They are a kind of monopoly in this area, so we don't have much of a choice of carriers with decent coverage(the other companies here do not have many towers, so reception is terrible with anyone but Alltel here), but I would never recommend Alltel to ANYONE. Our coverage was awesome, but the other problems were not close to being worth it!!!

C d
any town, South Carolina
U.S.A.

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