Stay Away from Alltel
Written: Jan 03 '02
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Pros: No better or worse than others on phone service
Cons: Deceptive (a nice way to say liars and cheats)
The Bottom Line: stay away or at least be very careful
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| wharri63's Full Review: General Reviews of Alltel Customer Service |
I regret that I must write a bad review for Alltel since it is an Arkansas based company and I am from Arkansas. I also know very many people that work for Alltel and its subsidiaries since I am in the computer services industry.
This is an incident that happened 6 years ago, and by information from others, is still indicative of their practices. I can say until the incident I am describing, I had Alltel service and was happy with it. It was not the best and not the worst. Even after discontinuing their service, I was able to use their service to place an emergency call and I am appreciative of that. However, that does not make up for their deceptive sales and harassing collection methods.
My mother-in-law did not have a credit card and at that time a credit card was required to subscribe to Alltel, it may still be. My wife agreed to also sign the contract if it did not obligate her make payments if the account was in default. She asked the sales associate this question and he affirmed she would not be responsible. There was not a problem until close to the end of the contract when my mother-in-law ran up over $500 in charges, plus monthly contract fees.
Several months after the account was terminated for non-payment, we began to receive phone calls from Alltel collections and from a local collection agency, which was probably another subsidiary of Alltel. Because my mother-in-law was moving and changing phone numbers to evade collection, we provided new addresses, phone numbers, and employers. I do not condone her actions, but I felt we were meeting any responsibility by providing ways to contact her.
After a half-hearted attempt to collect from her, they started after my wife and me. No amount of discussion with the collection agency or Alltel would deter them. In the last conversation I had with them, they called my wife a liar about the sales associates response regarding her obligation. They said no sales person would ever make a statement like that. Even though this was found to be common practice during that time (i.e. sales people being deceptive) for Alltel and other providers. They implied my wife was stupid because she should have expected to be obligated even if the sales person miss-spoke (another nice word for lie).
We finally gave in and paid the bill. We did not want it to hurt our business or credit rating, since we were applying for business loans and felt we had no other choice. Even if the collection agency is not a subsidiary of Alltel, I still hold Alltel fully responsible for the actions and practices of Alltel and the collection agency.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 750.00
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Epinions.com ID:
wharri63
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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