Alltel ripoff LittleRock Arkansas

ALLTEL Corporation
ATTN: Board of Directors
One Allied Drive
Little Rock, AR 72202

Dear Directors,

From the lack of feedback, or concern, which I have received regarding my original letter, I doubt very greatly that this one will be considered anymore than a nuisance.

I had received several e-mails from a Danishia regarding my concern, of which she had promised to call me at several different times, of which I had missed the two she had placed. She e-mailed back and told me I will be in the office on Thursday 11/06/03 at 7:00 am. I will be happy to contact you during my lunch hour. Again, at HER convenience, not mine. I attempted to return her calls to the number, which she left and identified as her direct line, but found that the number was not part of the voice mail system. After several more exchanged e-mails, I received a call from a Mr. Washington, who identified himself as Danishia's supervisor.

During my conversation with him, I let him know exactly what had transpired, up until the time of my original letter, as well as the nine (9) customer service representatives in three (3) different call centers trying to return a call to the customer service supervisor Valerie. When I did speak with her later that evening, I was informed by her to send the phones back to her at my own expense and she would handle to it from there. The phones were indeed shipped, at my expense, and received in the Tampa location on Friday, November 7, 2003.

Mr. Washington went on about how this is not representative of the normal customer service at ALLTEL and that I should reconsider staying an ALLTEL customer. I explained that I doubted if I would ever use, or, recommended ALLTEL to anyone. He then gave me his direct number and asked me to call him if I reconsidered and wanted to stay an ALLTEL customer.

Having the weekend to consider his statements I attempted to call him at his direct number. After two days of leaving my name and number on his voice mail, I have yet to have heard from him. The assumption is that my staying an ALLTEL customer must be more lip service and not real!

Once again I thank you for providing me with a classic customer relation's study on how not to provide customer service to my clientele. Your integrity as a corporation ranks right up there with Enron, HealthSouth and Tyco. May you soon follow the same fate as each of them.

Mary, oh dear Mary, I'm afraid you are quite mis-informed. You made some bold accusations, which of course is your right to do so, however they were grossly inaccurate. As was some of your grammar, but I'll stick strictly to your claims regarding ALLTEL ripping you off.

Let's first touch on the statement that "They SAY it is free mobile to mobile... but it is free to call... the OTHER mobile still gets charged minutes!" ALLTEL right now offeres free unlimited mobile to mobile calling. This is a feature added to phones with eligible rate plans. If a mobile that has free m2m calls another ALLTEL phone with free m2m, then the minutes will be applied to the free m2m calling, and neither will be charged. HOWEVER, if one of the phones does not have a free m2m feature added, then that phone will not receive free mobile to mobile calls. Surely you understand this concept.

Now to discuss your second accusation: "and free night time ninutes only applies to you calling people, not people calling you..." This again is simply not true. If your phone has free off peak minutes, those minutes are good whether you place or receive calls. There is no way around that, so you were either grossly mis-informed regarding the way the OP minutes work, or you simply mis-understood.

As far as taxes go, I defy you to find any company offering any type of service that does not have taxes involved. Although you feel that ALLTEL charges an unfair amount of tax, if you will simply take the time to further investigate the tax charges on your bill, you will notice the titles of: State Tax, City Tax, Federal Tax, etc... These are just that--taxes for those specific purposes, decided by the government, not ALLTEL. I would also defy you to show anyone a bill where the taxes were DOUBLE the cost of your rate plan--that simply does not happen. Taxes are a percentage of the bill, and not equal to the cost of the bill.

I would suggest that you read the terms and conditions of your contract before signing up with any company, and fully understand the service you are signing up for. It is not the fault of ALLTEL or any other company if customers are too ignorant to completely understand what they are agreeing too.

ALLTEL has customer service representatives both over the phone and in their local retail stores, and we are happy to educate you on how the service works, we cannot, however, force you to listen and understand.

I do pray you do not let any more animals attempt to gnaw your leg off.

Sincerely,