CellularChoices.net -- Inphonic Advertised phones unavailable or out of stock. Lied to several times. Phones still not activate after 20 days waiting. Washington Washington DC

After finally receiving my phones from cellularchoices.net, aka Inphonic, they still have not been activated, 4 days after requesting activation. I then received an e-mail asking me how I was enjoying my new phones. Well, I am not enjoying them at all. I went to great length to make sure they knew that and now offer you my response so that you may be well informed before ordering from any Inphonic company. (i.e. Wirefly.com, cellularchoices.net, etc.) This activation issue is just the cherry on top. Read on for an account of my entirely crappy experience with this company.

Tons of complaints are found regarding rebates. This didn't surprise me so I still ordered from the company. half the people do the rebates wrong anyway so I felt comfortable ordering. I wish someone had written about thier crappy customer service before I had the following experience.

As delivered in response to the "customer satisfaction survey" I give you the following...

I ordered my phones on August 5th.

August 7th I called to see why the order wasn't progressing. I Was informed that the A900 I ordered was no longer available. At this time, on the 7th, the phone was still listed for sale on cellularchoices.net. I was informed I had to change phones. This was the first negative aspect of my experience with your company. I changed phones so that they were a Samsung upstage, one black, one red.

My order still wasn't progressing, so I called in again. Only then was I informed that my phones were out of stock. I was told I would have to wait up to 3 days. I inquired and learned that the upstages were out of stock from my initial order, yet I was not informed of this at all. I had to inquire to find this out! Not good at all.

While my two upstages were out of stock, the LG MUZIQ became available on your website. I called in to change my phone order to the LG. Since it was just listed, I falsely assumed that you had some in stock. Nope. Not in stock either, but still newly listed on your site. Anyway, I did change one phone to the LG MUZIQ since my spouse wanted it, but I was still pissed that you had nothing in stock. Many times during my many calls or chats with customer service I was i told I could switch to a phone that was in stock at that time. I didn't wan't to do that, I wanted the phones I ordered.

However, during one of my chats with a CSR, he offered to check for what phones were available then. This was the third or fourth time this option was being offered to me. He came back and informed me that NO phones were in stock for Sprint at that time. ZERO phones in stock!!! Are you kidding me? Whoever you have in charge of purchasing should be fired. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

After being told numerous times that the phones would be in within three days, I finally received the phones on the 21st of august. 15 days to receive the phones. I was always told they would be in within three days. Bull crap! Just tell your customers how long it will really be. This information is not hard to get out to your CSRs. I would rather have just waited patiently for a week instead of calling every day to see if any progress had been made. Regardless, I had to wait two weeks.

It is not considered ethical business practice to promise your customers one thing, and then deliver another. Had I known it would be two weeks before my phones would come into stock, I likely would have canceled my order and gone to a different company. I suspect this fact is the reason I was continually lied to by your CSRs regarding my order.

I am doing a contract extension with Sprint so I received my phones unactivated. After receiving the phones on the Tuesday the 21st, I called on the morning of the Wednesday the 22nd to have them activated. I called at 7:30 MST, which is 9:30 eastern time. I called early in the morning so that the activation could be taken care of in a timely manner. I was told it would be done within 24 hours. This meant that by 9:30am eastern time the next morning, my new phones should be working. They were not working on Thursday morning.

I waited until 4-5 MST (6-7 EST). This was significantly more time than I was told it would take, so I called the activations department again. They informed me that "the phone will be activated within 24 hours." After having been told this once already, this was sounding too much like "Please allow 48-72 hours for the phones to come into stock."

I called again on Friday the 24th when the phones were still not activated. I demanded to talk to a supervisor, who at least made me feel like she was helping me. She tried to tell me that the information was sent to sprint to activate the phones, and that they received word back that the phones were, indeed, activated. This sounded reasonable enough, but since the phones were not actually activated, she sent them through activations again and informed me that they would be activated by 5 o'clock on the 25th. That is todays date. Whether she meant MST or EST, I do not know.

However, as of 5:30 MST, 7:30 EST on the 25th, my phones are still not activated. I am especially unhappy that a promise from a activations floor supervisor was not fulfilled. Of all people, your supervisors should be able to inform customers properly.

After the phones were still not activated I decided to investigate the information I was given. I called Sprint and asked if there was any record of communication from cellularchoices.net or Inphonic regarding activating new phones. I learned that no such contact was ever made with Sprint. This means that the supervisor lied to me when they told me that they sent information to Sprint, and received a reply indicating the phones were activated. Whatever the reason for this crazy delay in activation, I realize now that I will not get a straight answer as to why this is taking so long.

After calling Sprint, I called the activations department at cellularchoices.net again. The CSR informed me that Saturday is a "non-working day" so no activations would be done that day. This was extremely disappointing to me since yesterday, a Friday, I was told by a supervisor that my phone would be activated by 5pm today, a Saturday.

So here I am filling out a survey asking me how I am enjoying my new phones. Well, I am not enjoying my new phones. I can't, they aren't activated after 15 days waiting for them to come into stock and ship, and then 4 days waiting to get them activated. I learned today from the CSR that I will have to wait until Monday for my phones to be activated. Assuming the phone is activated late in the day on Monday, that will be the sixth day of waiting after requesting my phones activated. We will see if it actually happens or not.

Over all, I would never recommend your company to anybody else. I will do everything in my power to ensure that no one I know has to deal with the crap that I have gone through with your company. It is a full twenty days after I placed my order, and I still don't have phones that work. Quite frankly, this is the very worst experience I have had with any company.

Sincerely,

Name omited for public report.

P.S. The reason I rated your website, whereismyorder.com, relatively unhelpful was due to the fact that it did not display the information that I needed. When my phones were out of stock, or no longer available, the website did not inform me of this. It simply said processing, or credit approved. I had to call customer service asking why my order wasn't progressing before I ever learned this very important information. The "Customer Support" tab on your website clearly states that "Out of Stock" will appear under status if your phone(s) is/are out of stock.

Furthermore, my order started by saying processing while my credit was being approved by Sprint. It then said "Credit Approved". This is of course, as normal. However for the rest of the time I waited for my order to ship the site kept switching between processing and credit approved. One day it would say credit approved, the next it would say it was processing again and you were waiting for a reply from Sprint. It did this until the order finally shipped. This was pretty flaky for a company that is supposed to have a professional website.

Jacob
Provo, Utah
U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on InPhonic