Taking On Cricket Communications

You've just enjoyed a great meal and a nice evening with the kids, you order desert and tuck in, the server drops the bill and you make your way up to the cashier and they say “$37.86 plus $5 convenience fee.” Absolutely absurd, no one would charge their customers to pay their bill, right? Wrong. This is where my battle with Cricket starts, on a sunny afternoon in the middle of Pittsburgh International Airport.

At one point in time I had a USB 3G wireless broadband modem from Cricket for when I traveled. Since I work mostly from home and charge clients extra for me to work on-location, I don't usually travel that much so I generally just pay the modem bill only if I know I'll need it in the next 30 days, and this works for me. On this particular occasion I forgot to pay the bill before I left, being in a hurry and needing to catch a flight and all, so I give Cricket a call.

They gladly pass me over to the billing department who kindly tell me I have to pay a $5 convenience fee in order to process my payment over the phone, to which I promptly say “No way in hell.” I'm already giving the company $50, so why should I pay them five dollars, merely so that I can hand over another fifty? The foreigner on the other line spits out the same line of crap time after time, a canned response showing up on his screen. Finally I've had enough, and ask for his supervisor.

When the supervisor gets on the line, I explain to him my situation and also explain how ludicrous it is that I should pay them in order to pay them. He spits out a slightly different line of crap that's shown by his computer screen again and again, and after another half hour of back-and-forth, me making valid points and him spitting out some flimsy excuse and apologizing again and again, I ask for his supervisor. Another half hour goes by before this guy finally gives in and takes my money without me paying a convenience fee. I'm happy (and I've effectively killed a ton of time waiting for a flight) and they can wash their hands of me, for now.

Normally I pay my bills online, that's how I pay all my bills, it's just easier, I'm always at my computer anyway and Cricket charges no fee to pay online because apparently that's, in their opinion, the least convenient method to pay and therefore requires no “convenience” fee. When I signed up with this company I was never told about these fees or many of their other policies which I'll get to in a second, because my run-in with this company is far from over.

I also have my cell phone with Cricket because they're fairly cheap and have a good "unlimited everything" plan which is what I need, given my call and text message volume, plus I spend a lot of time searching the Web when I'm away from my PC in my phone's browser, normally I pay my bill online, like I mentioned before, but on this particular day, I'd somehow procrastinated too long, and it's now the day the bill is due and I only have cash so I drive down the road to the Cricket store to pay my bill. They want me to give them a $3 convenience fee to pay my already $66 phone bill (I'm an Android user and they require special data plans at Cricket) so I have to give them money in order to give them more money. So I mention my phone incident and how they waived the fee and how I expect them to do the same. He basically laughs, and says (this is a direct quote) “If you don't fucking like it, go somewhere else and they can put up with your shit.”

I gave him the “Wow, really?” look and figured he'd just lost his job so with a self-knowing grin I gave him the money and left, pulling my phone out of my pocket on the way to my car. While I was still in the parking lot, I dialed the number to corporate, they took my complaint and all my details, the store location and the clerk's name. Not long after this I'm at my friend's house, enjoying a drink with him and his wife, and his wife Denae looks at me and says “What was that guys name who gave you so much crap the other day at the Cricket store?” I told her asked her why, she explained how she was there with her mom earlier while they were out shopping together and her mom had told her to be careful because she was Denae's ride home (I guess my friend had made sassy joke). The same guy who I had complained about had overheard this exchange and quipped “Don't worry baby, I can ride you home.” Denae laughed and explained she was married, he said, and I kid you not “Honey it's mind over matter, if you don't mind, it don't matter.” (lame pick-up line anyone?) I told her to call corporate as I had, and she did. To this day that employee still has his job, and still regularly harasses customers.

At the beginning of September, I had some further issues with the company and so did some close friends so I basically said I'd had enough and decided not to pay my bill, I planned on switching to T-Moble because they have a no-contract unlimited plan priced similarly to Cricket with better coverage and award-winning customer service (literally). T-Mobile's only draw-back is that their phones are $500-700 without a 2yr-agreement, so I was saving up to get a nice phone and be able to pay the first month. Unfortunately I have the least favorable odds in the world and things almost never work out as planned.

Shortly before I'd be able to make the switch I get an E-mail telling me I'm going to need to travel out to a client's data center on the other side of the state to do some maintenance, and I don't travel without a phone, it's just not a good idea at all, and besides my sister and I share my house so I'd need to keep in touch with her while I was away. So I break down and log-in to MyCricket and pay the bill, and my phone turns on. For about a week.

Cricket markets themselves heavily based on the fact that they're a no-contract provider, with no late fees or early termination fees. They don't maintain the same business practices that companies like Verizon Wireless use, allegedly that is, aside from providing absolutely terrible customer service. So when I got the text message “reminding” me that my bill of $66.35 was due on the 7^th of October (I paid it on the 29^th of September) I thought it was a mistake and dialed up Cricket. Turns out, it's not a mistake, they actually thought I was going to give them $134 for one month of service.

Before I go any further, I need to crunch some numbers for you, the same numbers I crunched for each and every person I spoke with at Cricket. On average there are 30 days in a month. My bill is $66.35 which works out to 2.21166... or $2.21 a day. My bill is due on the 7^th, they shut my phone off on the 8^th at midnight (so at 12am on the 9^th my phone no longer had service) Which means I had one day of service that I didn't pay for, but I mean, that's their fault for not shutting me off right away, assuming it was a courtesy I'm willing to accept responsibility for it though. I paid my bill again on the 29^th, because I needed to, God know not because I wanted to, and they wanted me to pay again on the 7^th of October. In effect, I should technically owe them $2.21 for the 8^th, but since “we can't just change your billing date” and the payment I made for essentially the next 30 days of service would only take me to the 29^th of October, I told them I understood, and that I'd gladly pay for the 9 days needed to get me back on track with the 7^th of November billing date. So in the end I was paying for a total of 10 additional days of service (one of which I conceded to pay for as my way of being reasonable and trying to meet them half-way) which at $2.21 per day is $22.21.

They refused to listen to any of it, well they all listened, and every single one of them said, and this is an almost word-for-word quote “I'm sorry sir, I do understand sir but the maximum rebate we can provide for time without service is $25.” In other words I was expected to pay $41.35 for 10 days of phone usage, and this is after I'd gone through 2 supervisors.

The third supervisor very, very rudely told me “You can't just pay your bill whenever you want, it's not a pay-as-you go service, it is [a] pre-pay service.” I responded asking him if I was wrong in my belief that Cricket had a no-contract service and he confirmed I was correct, and I also mentioned I never signed an agreement with Cricket and he confirmed I hadn't. So I told him that I wasn't Paying-as-I-Went, but merely Pre-Paying for 30 days of service beginning with the 29^th. I finally asked this twat for his supervisor who pretty much said all the same stuff with the same accent and a slightly ruder tone. I'm not sure if it was this guy or if I went through one more supervisor before I finally, becoming so very frustrated, explained again the mathematics of the situation and that I was willing to pay for an additional 10 days of service to bring me to the next billing date. He told me that because they require a payment every month, if you miss a month, you still have to pay for it, plus the current month, to restore service. If you don't pay for 2 months, or 3 months, you'd have to pay for 3 or 4 months of service to restore your phone connection. So much for a no-contract plan, eh Cricket?

We ended up arguing for another half-hour, and finally, at long last he said “How about this sir, you're the customer and [other stuff], we want to work something out how about $20.” I promptly agreed, and made the payment, reminding him again calmly and politely that this is all I'd been asking for for over 3 and a half hours, and honestly, they'd have gotten more money if they'd just listened to me from the start.

Why did I just type over 2 thousand words about Cricket? Because they're an awful company and I want people to know about it. Further, Cricket isn't a no-contract wireless carrier after all, because their terms of use are considered by them a “legally binding contract between you and Cricket” which essentially does say that you have to make a payment every single month or you'll pay for the months you didn't have service too, even if their FAQ leads you to believe otherwise. Just pray the sales person who sells you your phone lets you in on this and hands you their terms and conditions pamphlet because I never got one, and lots of other people I know didn't get one, so either this is new, or it's the terrible service at the neighborhood Cricket store. Either way, this company is ridiculous.

But it's not the first and only company to indulge in unsavory business practices, plenty of companies charge you a fee for you to pay them, for instance, and the only way they'll stop is if we force them to, by refusing to pay their fees, or use their service. Big businesses don't care about customers anymore, just like they don't care about employees, we're all replaceable. As a small business owner/freelance developer, I can say that I will never treat customers like this, I've fired my customers before, and gave them a full refund, but Cricket wasn't even willing to give me a refund and send me on my way. I am leaving Cricket, and honestly, I don't care about a contract at this point, I'll need a phone for the next two years pretty much no matter what, so I might as well, right?