A Time Out New York reporter paid nearly double MSRP for a new G1 phone she bought off Times Square from Cellular Stop. After she realized she’d been had (internet access and texting were sold to her as “add-ons”), she went back to the store asking for an explanation. Instead, she says, six clerks began circling her and her friends, screaming and cursing and threatening to “break” their “fucking faces.” Her friend was tossed against a wall and another clerk tried to smash her camera.
She then tried six different ways of solving the problem, from filing complaints with various bodies to trying to track down the elusive store owner to including having 25 TONY staffers come into the store and screw with the staff to calling the T-mobile media relations line and getting an investigation launched. None of them worked. T-mobile did end up “terminating its relationship with the store,” the reporter still never was able to return the device and get a refund.
That’s a lot of work with little to show for it. Try this order of events instead:
1) Pay for item with credit card
2) Realize you way overpaid
3) Ask to return item for refund
4) Get cursed and thrown out of the store
5) Call credit card company and do a chargeback
6) Get money back
7) Watch Scrubs
What to do if…you’ve been had [TONY]
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“I did my homework to find out exactly what the phone came with.”
She did this AFTER she bought it? And she is a journalist? Even my mother knows how to type in t-mobile.com. The price and info is there for the whole world to see. No wonder Village Voice is a sad shell of it’s former self. What a pathetic moron.
Sorry. Time Out Mag. Same difference.
Actually, a chargeback wouldn’t work in this case. By signing the receipt you’re agreeing to pay the amount listed on the receipt. If the company bilks you and you agree to pay the higher price, the bank can’t override that agreement. A chargeback would work in the case where you agreed to a $50 item and got charged $500 (eg a processing error).
I remember when these shyster electronic stores (and similar carpet stores) used to infest 5th ave.
Around 1980, when Sony walkmen first came out and were $100-$200, Peter Sellers heard about them and went shopping. They sold him a walkman for $1100.
I remember also, when, some 10 years later, a now-famous actor got screwed at one of these stores on W. 32nd St. (not Willoughby’s).
He went back and in his calm, tough-guy way, threatened to tear the store apart. He got his refund.
Even as a kid I knew that shady things were sold near Times Square and that you could buy fake Rolex’s. I have never been to NYC either.
But my high school class went there and half my class got robbed of their valuable possessions (jewelry, etc) because they were trying to get fake ID’s. Another girl got money taken out of her purse because she was walking around NYC with her purse hanging open. Explains why I don’t want to go to my 10 year reunion coming up, I went to high school with a bunch of morons.
I wonder if the cell phone she got was even real, or if it was some chinese knockoff.
Her friend was tossed against a wall? Doesn’t that constitute assault? Why not just call the cops at the very least right then and there?
@Atheist Jew: Aaaaaaaaand of course, that’s what I get for asking before I read the source article.