Many of us shop around for the best cell phone plans. This is what I did several years ago when I came across Cricketâ . They had unlimited minutes in all their plans. I thought this was great. I purchased two phones with services plans. At the time Cricketâ was fairly new to the Pittsburgh, PA area. I come to find out the service was very poor. I constantly had dropped calls and the phone would not work in certain rooms of my home. Over the years this has improved drastically. I very seldom ever have a dropped call and the phone works though out my home now. Another drawl back was the phone only worked in the greater Pittsburgh area. If you traveled outside the area your phone would not work. This has also changed over the years and now they offer unlimited long distance, roaming and even international calling.

The product that they offer has greatly improved, unfortunately their customer service has not. I have come to find out they have the worst customer service of any company I have ever done business with. Ever time you turn around there is a fee for something. You can not even go into their store and make a payment over the counter without being charged a fee. The only way to avoid being charged a fee while making a payment is if you mail your payment in or have them automatically withdrawal the payment from your credit card or bank account. I use to have them automatically withdrawal from my account, until they double billed me one month and tried to say it was my error. This happen about a year ago. This caused a my bank account to overdraft. I had three checks out that where all under $10.00 and at $35 each it cost me $105.00 in overdraft fees. The manager at my bank gave me a letter and copies of my statement proving this was caused by the cell phone companies withdrawal on my banking account. The worst part of this is I caught the mistake the day it happen and called the Cricketâ help center and spoke to a supervisor requesting she reverse one of the payments. She informed me she had no authority to reverse credit card payments and that it would just go toward my next payment. I had my bank stop payment on the charge and notified their corporate office that I did. After several months a lady from their corporate office refunded half of my fees from the bank by means of giving me a free month on my cell phone account. They refused to take care of all the fees. From that day on I stopped Cricketâ from taking any withdrawals from my bank account. I now pay $3.00 more per month, because I go into a authorized payment location to make my payments in person. As I stated this happen about a year ago. The last time I was in their Monroeville store a customer told me her phone was shut off once because they said she did not make the payment. She stated she pays here service by automatic withdrawal and she had statements from her bank showing the payments had been paid.

I though my customer service issues where over a year ago. I was wrong. I had two cell phone on account. I needed to cancel one of the phones on the account, because it was no longer needed. Over the weekend I telephoned their help center. I informed the lady who answered the call that I need to cancel one of the phones on the account. She stated that I would have to visit a Cricket Store to cancel the phone service. I take it they do this to try and retain customers. The reprehensive stated that is not the case and it is done for security reasons. In the past I have made changes to my plan over the phone and I was never told I would have to go in to the store to do so. A week ago I upgraded my plan and also added roaming to one of the phones though the help center. Would that not also be a security issue? At this point I asked to speak with a supervisor. A supervisor took my call. She gave me the same answers that the previous reprehensive gave me. I felt that it was ridicules that I would have to leave my office and drive to the store to cancel one phone. I was not cancelling the account, just one phone. At this point I asked the supervisor for a phone number for the corporate office, so I could voice my complaint to the management. The supervisors answer to me when I asked for a number for the corporate office was she does not have one to give me. She continually tried to give me the number for the corporate store in Monroeville, PA. I told her I did not want to talk to a corporate store, that I wanted to talk to someone at the corporate office. I then asked to speak to her supervisor. She informed me that her supervisor was busy and could not take my call. I stated to give her supervisor my name and number and have them call me back. The answer that I got was that their employees, including supervisors have no means to make phone calls to customers. I was speechless that was the answer I got from their employee. She inform me that I had no other recourse other than to go to one of the corporate stores with my complaint. At this point she abruptly ended our conversation by hanging up on me.

This is where I learned that Leap Wireless International is the parent company. I went to the investor relations page and got the phone number and address for the corporate office. I telephoned the corporate office using the number I found on the web site and was told someone would return my call. I waited an hour and never got a call. At this point I decided to just go to the store located in Monroeville, PA. I arrived at the store at 12:36 PM and took a number to be waited on. Finally at 1:28 PM my number was called and the store manager waited on me. I sat in the store for 52 minutes waiting for my service number to be called. I explained my situation to the store manage and I told her how I felt about the company level of customer service. The manager handled my complaint in a polite manner, but did not take any actions to address my issues. She canceled my second line as requested and I believe did her best to get me out of the store as quickly as possible to keep other customers from hearing my complaint. She gave me an amount that I need to pay on my next due date. The amount did not make sense to me, so I requested a print out of my account charges. She stated she had no way to give me a print out of what was due and could only tell me verbally.

When I got home I telephoned the corporate office once again, because I still had not gotten a return call. I requested an email or fax number that I could send a letter of complaint to. My call was transferred to Almar. He stated he works in the corporate office and could address my complaint. I informed him that I am the publisher of Pittsburgh Web Source and that we are a Cricket customer. I also inform him that I am not happy with the poor customer service that I received today and I have intention of doing an article about it in my publication. He listened to my complaint and stated the situation was not handled properly and apologized as such. He offered and did give me one month free service, on the phone that I still have on account. He stated he would address the situation with all parties involved.

I think the company has one of worse attitudes in customer service toward its customers. They have done so much with their product line. They need to take their product line strategies and applied them to there customer relations.