Being an environmentally conscious good Samaritan, Erika Anders recycled her cell phone after she was done with it at a local Best Buy. The next month, she received a bill for $20,590.67. Many of the calls originated from Brazil.
cellphones
T-Mobile Hopes You Forget Your Security Deposit
By 6.22.06
Shh, no one must know we have their deposits…
AT&T No Longer Exists
By 6.21.06
Some people just are gluttons for punishment. Ed Horrell gets his fill by calling up customer support lines and recording the results.
Crossing Swords With Sprint PCS
By 6.6.06
Gregg wasn’t paying attention. Slowly, every so surely, his Sprint bill had crept up until it was charging him $100 for a data service he never used. After four months of inattention and automatic credit-card bill payments, his overpayment mounted to over $800. The low-level CSR argued with Greg that it was his fault so he leapfrogged her and did battle with the supervisor. We’re making it sound more exciting than it really is, after all, Greg says in his intro:
Vonage Bleeds, Consumerist Feeds
By 6.1.06
The buzz this morning is that Vonage could be a sweet “acquisition target” i.e. dismembered whale lumbering through shark waters i.e. their recent stock drop could have takeover kids licking their mandibles. Maybe their new daddy is someone willing to give their call centers a hot beef injection? (We mean that in the best way possible…)
T-Mobile Rep Parries Consumerist Complaint
By 5.31.06
Back in February, we ran Sam C’s complaint about a T-Mobile price increase for text messages, raising it from five cents to ten cents per message. On the page detailing the change a footnote remarked how long the “discounted” price would remain in effect. Our complainant compared it to the novel 1984, wherein, “Winston notes that people had demonstrated to thank Big Brother because their chocolate ration had been increased to 20 grams. (when it had actually be reduced to 20 from 30).”
The News: Hungover, Hating Self, World
By 5.30.06
• CMP Media trying to >prevent anyone from using the term Web 2.0. God, at least somebody is. [NYT]
Dial M for Murder
By 5.18.06
If you’ve ever wanted to kill someone for yakking on their cellphone, watch out. They may be packing heat.
Cingular Removes Racist Ringtone
By 5.11.06
Ring ring! Who’s there? Cultural insensitivity, that’s who.
Cingular: We’re So Union
By 5.9.06
If you’re a union member, you can get 5% off your Cingular cellphone plan. That’s because Cingular is a unionized wireless company, according to this sub-level of their cingularswitch website.
LG Says Life’s Good in the Ghetto
By 5.8.06
This is an LG billboard in Caracas, Venezuela, shot from one of the city’s worst slums.
UPDATE: Calls From A Stranger
By 4.28.06 — Updated: 10.25.12
Remember that strange Spanish phone spam scam that was going around? Two weeks after we first started reporting it, and hundreds of people complaining about it, it’s still going on. And from the same number, 305-503-8068 .
Verizon Shoots Foot to Spite Face
By 4.27.06
Like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a cellphone to work the way its supposed to, some users can’t get high-rez pictures off their high-end Verizon phones. To protect its “Get It Now” multimedia revenue model Verizon cripples the Motorola’s capabilities by implementing a 300kbps transfer limit.
CUB Consumer Clinic Cures Nurse’s Ailing Cellphone Bills
By 4.27.06
- “With her son stationed in Iraq, the last thing Maria Gonzalez needed was a collection agency hounding her about a $1,027 cell phone bill she didn’t deserve.”
Sprint Won’t Let Soldier Cancel Cellphone
By 4.26.06
We must be a tabloid, we’re getting our stories from Sploid:
Renegotiate Your Cellphone Bill
By 4.25.06
Here’s some some salient pointers on doing battle with your cellphone company to get your cellphone contract to not feel so terribly much like a roll in the ol’ iron maiden.
HOWTO: Block Text Message Spam
By 4.20.06
On Tuesday, several readers wrote in complaining about receiving text message spam. Toby says that T-Mobile’s customer service refunded the 20 cents the spam cost as well as showing him how to keep future unwanted messages away. He writes:
T-Mobile Trying to Kill Customer, For A Mistake Company Made
By 4.20.06
Through the frosted glass, in walks this dame into our office, she says:
