Voicestream Wireless is a ripoff that makes false promises & has poor customer service. Internet, Nationwide

I have been Voicestream customer for over 2 years and when I first got my wirless phone, there were some issues regarding their billing. Should I say they billing was always wrong! It took me 5 months to get it straightened out but only after they changed their billing methods and statement printing.

Mostly what I am writing about today is that where I live (Hawaii), there is an issue with Voicestream service that only affect people calling into a Voicestream wireless phone. The issue that I have been constantly contacting Voicestream about is that when anyone calls me from any type of phone (Land line or wireless phone) about 10% of the time when I answer it I hear nothing, but whoever is trying to call me, they hear a fax/data noise and it is NOT a low volume noise either.

So if someone is calling me from a wireless phone they have just waisted 1 minute of their phone service and also it charges me for that call and I couldn't even answer it but I am being charged for it. For the last couple of months I have tried to contact Voicestream through their web page as I have found out that if your contract is either close to being up or you are already on a month-to-month, and you CALL their customer service number they tell you, you need to verbally agree to another 1 year contract with them before they can help you. My issue with them is on-going and either this problem will be solved or I will be talking to an attorney sometime soon.

This section hopefully will help people who are stuck with a Voicestream phone and it is either obsolete or is not physically working properly. I have a Nokia 8290, when I bought it over two years ago it cost me 220.00 for the phone since I was already a Voicestream customer. I was not entitled to the rebates that came with it. That did not bother me as much as the fact that just a few weeks ago my LCD on it was not working properly, probably due to the age of the phone and the usage. I went to Voicestreams website to see if I could either order another 8290 or maybe find out where I would need to send it to to get it fixed.

What I found is that they no longer carry this phone and that I would need to do a handset upgrade to the Nokia 3390 or a new model offered by Voicestream. Needless to say I did not want another style of phone. Or even if I did find a style that I liked, the handset upgrade department said that they did not have it in stock. (I am not speaking badly about the handset upgrade dept., they were actually very curtious and helpful to me). Since I have a great connection to the internet I found that a lot of people have problems with Voicestream and are selling their phones on e-bay but just know this, you may need to get the unlocking code if you get it from someone outside your area. What I ended up doing was searching for a way so that I could fix the phone myself. I was not going to send my phone to some state 4000 miles away from Hawaii and not have my phone for at least 4 weeks and on top of it pay their repair fee.

I fixed my Nokia phone by myself and purchased a new LCD from e-bay and with a few pointers from the seller at e-bay, my phone works better then before. Lastly regarding reading one of the Voicestream (rebuttals). Since Voicestream uses GSM & SIM technology, we can only use it with Voicestream. If we purchase a phone from a Voicestream retail store or from the website we are locked into using their system. Its not like you can buy a phone from another wireless company and set it up with Voicestream or vice-versa.

Voicestream as a company need to be conscious of their customer service and their e-mail responses to customers, who knows maybe one day they will upset some politician or a politicians relative and then they will be in a world of hurt (hypothetically speaking of course)

Bill
Honolulu, Hawaii