The sales rep did his song and dance and insisted that I test out the phone service for 2 weeks. I said no a few times but he wouldn’t hear it. Well, he gave me 2 phones and 2 phone numbers. No credit check, no money whatsoever. I walked out of the store with 2 free phones and some paper work.

Now Rob can't give the phones back. After several fruitless visits where the store manager told Rob he had to talk to the original salesman (who was never there) to return the phones, Rob simply left them on the counter. A few days later, they arrived at his doorstep via FedEx—along with a photocopy of another customer's driver license.

Here's the full story of what happened after Rob brought the two phones home back in July:

Seven days later we returned to the same store to drop the phones off. They hadn’t been opened or anything. Previously in the week I was cleaning and probably threw out a white piece of paper with what phones we had.

...I had to speak with the exact rep because I didn’t have the all important white piece of paper and there was no way to look at what I had. The rep was not working that day and was told to return Tuesday during the afternoon. I refused because I don’t drive and I'm not taking a bus to a mall from the southern part of the twin cities to the northern part just to drop phones off.

We return that next Sunday (27th) and again were told we can’t give back the phones because the rep isn’t working. I demanded to speak with a manager. I tell him my story, and he finds it interesting about how I got the phones and service. I made a point to say "I said no," and he said, “Yeah he does that a lot.” He mutters something about letting him go and says he can’t do anything because I don’t have the piece of paper.

Flash forward to August 11th, almost a full month after getting the phones, my fiancé and I finally have time to go back to the mall (she works nights I work days). I walk in with the phones. The manager sees me, throws his hands up in the air and says "Not you people again." He tells me to stand over out of the way while helping people. We wait for 15 minutes. Only one person approaches us, some sales rep, and I explain the story and he’s dumbfounded. Finally I walk up to the counter and put the phones on the counter and explain again what’s going on and all I want to do is drop them off. I was assured that it would be taken care of.

Later that night my fiancé and I went to a real T-Mobile store and purchased our phones and service.

On August 15th, a Fedex box is sitting on my door step. Not expecting anything, I open it—what do you know they sent the phones back to me! But whats this, there is more then just two cell phones. The missing piece of white paper they said they don’t have, the whole reason I couldn’t return the phones. But wait there is even more! Two other identical pieces of paper but with others people’s phone information / plan information and a copy of someone’s drivers license!

So I quickly called Mobile Solutions HQ and talk to some girl in California. I explain the situation and she says, “Well we need those phones back. I’m shipping you out some prepaid UPS labels.” I asked what about me getting other people’s identification information. “Well I’m not there so I don’t know what to do.” I look at the address of the license, and it turns out the woman on the license only lives about a mile and half from me if that.

My fiancé and I get in the car and we drive to her house. I knock on the door, ask her if she is so and so on the card she says yes. I asked her if she purchased a phone from the Mobile Solutions in Northtown Mall in Blaine? Again she says yes. I then ask, “Does this look familiar?” showing her her license. Her jaw is on the floor. She exclaimed, "How in the world did you get that?" I explained to her how it came in a Fed Ex package and she was very grateful and thanked me several times, and she was also upset and said she would call Mobile Solutions promptly.

So now I’m still stuck with 2 phones, 2 lines of service that I’m sure still runs if I cared to try and other people’s information. What should I do now?

If Mobile Solutions doesn't have any of your personal information where they can't ruin your credit, return the phones via the UPS labels and promise us you'll never step foot in that store again.

If they have a copy of your drivers license or other important personal info, it's time to make it very clear to Mobile Solutions that you have no intention of being their customer, no matter how hard they make it for you to return the unopened phones. This is a funny story, but it sounds to us like they're trying to force a sale on you, which is criminal rather than incompetent.

Contact Mobile Solution Corporation's main office in San Diego and file a complaint against the Blaine store. Make it clear that you have tried three times to return the phones, and that they are refusing to accept your return. You should also make it clear that the only acceptable resolution for this issue is for Mobile Solutions to accept your return and promise to leave you and your credit history alone. Look at our various EECB posts for more information on how to effectively communicate with a business.

Mobile Solution Corporation
3030 Plaza Bonita Rd
National City, CA 91950
(619) 472-1018
(619) 479-1648

You may also want to contact the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General and file a formal complaint against the store for its business practices, even if the corporate office in San Diego is able to resolve the problem for you. We suspect the Blaine store has some rotten apples on staff and you may help future customers by sounding an alarm now.

Update: Rob sent the following information to us after we posted the story.

As an update I called back the corporate # and [they] didn’t find it cool I wanted to sell the phones. There is some sort of investigation being done and the original salesmen has been fired. After reading some comments I could have been more clear. The only info they got was a copy of my State ID which had my current address on it. I also signed a piece of paper saying “You have two weeks if you don’t return them the phones in two weeks we can charge you blah , blah, blah.” Well, they never took money or a credit card.

Anyway people have been in contact with me. I took the phones because the guy kept insisting and I wanted to be nice. At best I thought what's the worst can happen? I keep the phones for a week bring them back unopened and that will be that.

We still think you should make sure the company accepts a full return and absolves you from that signed agreement, because even without a credit card they may still try to bill you, then eventually send the bill to a collection agency.

• Holding $5,000 in tickets from a family for six months, then telling them the day before that the flight has been canceled;
• When confronted with the fact that the flight hasn't been canceled, telling the family that the reservation has been lost;
• Finally admitting that they've bumped the family from the flight and were lying about the cancelation and the lost reservation;
• Offering replacement seats on multiple planes and days, splitting the family up on different flights and depositing them at different islands;
• Offering to get them there 5 days into a 7 day vacation, part of which was scheduled to spend time with a family member who was dying in a hospice in Hawaii;
• Refusing to write a letter on the family's behalf so that they can collect their insurance payment on the house they rented but never used.

How could United mess up a trip so badly? The mother who arranged all of it, Anita Cabral, suspects it has to do with the bottom line:

Cabral has a theory for this shabby treatment: fuel prices.

Between January and June, as the oil industry mounted its historic shakedown of consumers, the price of those tickets tripled. The folks who paid the most got to fly.

The columnist who wrote about the Cabrals' problems said he called United directly for a response, and was never called back.

"Bad airline stories are nothing like this" [Sign On San Diego] (Thanks to Randy!)
(Photo: Cubbie_n_Vegas)

There is a company by the name of Ticketsmyway.com (Event Tickets LLC) that has the scam of the century running. Their operations run like this.

• Advertise tickets slightly cheaper than Stubhub and other sites.
• Consumers place an order online for tickets often months in advance
• Credit cards are charged full amount immediately
• Customers are told to check status of order online
• Orders always show as "processing"
• As date of event gets closer, customer starts calling to find out Status of shipping
• 1-2 days before event, customer are told tickets are "no longer available"
• Phone rep says a refund can only be requested online
• Terms of Use online say any refund request is considered a "cancellation" and customer is charged 45% of the purchase price

Even though company cannot produce tickets, customers lose 45% of their entire purchase price.

The reader adds, "After first call that gets through, company notes number and consumer can NEVER AGAIN get through. Calls are forwarded to a voicemail account."

We looked around online and indeed there were lots of complaints about TicketsMyWay and Event Tickets LLC. Tracy at Rip-off Report says a live CSR told her the tickets were going to be shipped within a few weeks—but they never arrived. When Tracy finally got through to the same CSR again, she was told they were no longer available. A second CSR offered to replace the tickets for $200 more, despite the fact that "their terms and conditions clearly state, if your seats are no longer available they reserve the right to upgrade or provide comparable tickets at NO EXTRA COST."

A customer at onerave.com claims only six of his eight tickets were shipped, because ticketsmyway added $332 in shipping and handling fees "and decided to make up the difference by removing two tickets!"

Rocky at pissedconsumer.com spent four days seeing "processing" on his order and not getting his calls returned. He finally canceled the order and disputed the charges. "I never heard back from them until I received a lawsuit package saying I have to pay by 5/30/08 or go to court."

After our tipster contacted us, she sent in a follow-up email a few days later:

Fyi, I just received a call from someone (no name given) at that company threatening legal action if I continue to "make slanderous statements about them." From other stories online, this is their basic modus operandi and strong-arm intimidation tactic to get consumers to stay quiet about being defrauded and scammed. They steal from you and THEY threaten legal action. What country are we living in again?

Stay far, far away from ticketsmyway and Event Tickets LLC.

(Photo: Getty)

Over the weekend, Creative's forums have exploded with posts from angry customers who have sworn to stop buying their products. There's already a boycott site up at boycottcreative.com.

A Creative Forum poster named "youAREkidding" summed up Creative's stupidity quite nicely:

Imagine what would happen if 10%, just 10% of the people who will read about this, be in a store somewhere, see someone about to buy a Creative Labs product, and say to that potential customer. "If you have Vista, Creative has non-functioning drivers for it, there was a guy who created a Modified driver, but Creative made him stop distributing it, and there are still no workable drivers for Vista." Some people might laugh at him, but the majority of computer perhiperal buyers don't know squat, and if they hear it from someone who presents themselves in a knowledgeable manner, they may actually think twice about it. Creative loses another sale.
 
So, yes, Daniel may very well have stepped on some copyright rules, and Creative had the lawful option of doing what they did. Score 100 on the law, score minus several millions for not doing the job themselves in the first place, and putting someone like Daniel in a position where he had to do what he did, just to get the customers of this company happy.

Let me just remind you that for example NVIDIA still supports GeForce generations 5, 6, 7, and 8 in their latest video drivers for XP, XP64, Vista, Linux and Mac OSX. All those old cards still get performance improvements instead of being crippled.

Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: 03-30-2008
newegg
Message 1179 of 1,436
Viewed 2,595 times
 
To Whom it May Concern:
 
While it is not our place to condemn the decisions of Creative regarding this issue, our customers come first. That being said, it has come to our attention that many of our customers are not happy with the products Creative has released nor the support for those products. To wit, we have processed nearly 5,000 return orders within the past 48 hours. While it is not normally in our best interest to publically comment in a manufacturer's forum, the overwhelming concensus has left us little choice. As such, effective tommorow morning newegg.com will suspend sales of the sound cards in question, particularly those indicated as "Vista compatible", pending an investigation into the matter. Those of you whom recently ordered such a card will still recieve your product as indicated in any relevant conversations. While we regret this abrupt decision, it has been deemed neccessary to protect the interest of our consumers. We welcome contact from Creative as soon as is possible so that we may resolve this issue.
 
Thank you,
 
Newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com

Daniel_K:
 
We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.
 
Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.
 
Phil O'Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.