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You could just say that it's the mugger's charge on that credit report.
You could just say that it's the mugger's charge on that credit report.
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since when did Mobil start selling phones
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Shouldn't the headline be how NOT to get out of a re-stocking fee?
A sensible course of action would be to just buy a battery from Cellphoneshop.net and a sim card from ebay, which you would then call in and activate. You might even be able to get a T-mobile store to give you a sim card. If you go the cellphoneshop.net route, you can use the following coupons they just sent me: SUMCLEAR10 and SUMCLEAR20 for 10 or 20% off a $10 or $25 purchase. I have no affiliation with them, that's just where I usually go to get cheap phone parts.
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...reception was awful - and this in in Philly, one of the largest cities in the U.S.!
Well, big cities tend to have tall buildings, thick concrete walls, crossing signals and bunch of other stuff that cause signal interference. Yeah, a service provider should ensure decent reception, but expecting decent signals because it's a big city is just silly.
This is really not a story of bad customer service. If your phone is defective and they're replacing it because it has a warranty, then you must give the old phone back to the warranty program. All the wireless carriers do it the same way and T-Mobile's shipping fee is $9.95 and it covers UPS tracked shipping both ways. They read you a script explaining the entire process in detail and they even credited him the shipping fee which you can tell he greatly appreciated by his sarcasm.
Unfortunately this guy was mugged and his phone was taken, that's not TMO's fault, so he either sends the replacement phone they sent him back or he keeps it for the cost of $100 and that's not a restocking fee because he didn't send the stolen phone back that's the cost to keep the new one without sending the defective one back.
I'm very disappointed with this story. It seems the Consumerist has been posting many twisted stories by costumers lately instead of focusing on the actual bad customer service out there.
James here...I think maybe you guys missed the point?
Assuming for a minute there are three \"phone parts\" - the body, the sim card and the battery. The part that they sent me was the body. They wanted me to take the sim card and batter out of my STOLEN phone and put them in the new body, and to send the OLD body back to them.
So even if I went out and bought a battery and sim card for the new body, I had no OLD body to send back to them, meaning I would still have to pay that $100 restocking fee.
The obvious solution would have been to send back the NEW body, and to just go buy a new phone. But after all of the B.S. I didn't want anything to do with them anymore.
And for the record, yes, I think it is absurd for a company to demand you pay a shipping fee to have them send you a replacement part for a device that was clealy not working when you purchased it. I don't think that should be a \"courtsey\", I think it should be standard.
PS - Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking with the \"mobil\" instead of \"Mobile\". Chalk it up to having just been robbed at gunpoint. (Perhaps I should write an article about the Philly police department and my experience filing that report. My fav part: \"Where did he put the gun?\" \"He pressed it to my clavicle\". \"Your...what?\"
Apparently the mugger also got James' E key. Still, uhh, cancelling your credit card isn't a successful way of getting out of paying the fee. They will use a collection agency, and it will end up on his credit report, giving James an even worse credit rating.