All I asked from the Spectrum reps was the phone number of their local (40 mins away) phone store, no one would give this to me, then all hell broke loose.
About 3 weeks ago my cell phone died, nothing bupkis. This after 3 months of deteriorating battery performance and continual crashes.
So the dreaded day comes, I call our "carrier" to order new phones since Marg's is also acting up and the battery performance is lacking. Of course I had to call on Marg's phone cause mine is dead, really dead...
I spend at least 30-40 minutes on the phone discussing what is going to happen and order the phones telling them what our shipping address is.
1st landmine that I stepped on.
Spectrum, a multi BILLION dollar company cannot change my address because I have a "stand alone" account, meaning mobile only, not a package account.
This was never brought to my attention during the ordering process, it took weeks to find this out.
Order was placed on a Friday, the following Monday I got an email from Spectrum that my phones had shipped, cool, no wait, as I look at the shipping information Spectrum is shipping them to our old address. WTF!
I immediately call them on Marg's phone (since mine is dead) and after 1 1/2 hours on the phone, talking to 3 different reps/managers they flat out REFUSE yes REFUSE to contact Fedex to stop or change the shipping before delivery.
This after I talked to Fedex and they told me twice that yes they could stop or change an address as long as the shipper called and talked to them (latter on in this nightmare, a Spectrum supervisor told me that yes they can stop a shipment, too late asshat).
3 days later I get a notification from Fedex that they attempted a delivery (signature required), no luck. Next day I get another notification from Fedex that delivery was made, signed for by me, at our old address.
I have 2 witnesses that can testify that I was not in North Carolina on that day, I was at home in South Carolina.
Now the second shit storm starts.
I first call my bank and tell them that I have been fraudulently charged for the two phones ($850 value) that were stolen and Spectrum had already charged me for taxes and activation fees. My bank, as usual is very happy to go to bat for a card holder, that problem solved.
Fees reversed next day, piss on you Spectrum.
I then call (yes on Marg's phone) Spectrum again to explain the situation, I keep getting passed around as no one has ever had this kind of problem before. Finally 2 hours later I reach ANOTHER supervisor who tells me I have to file a police report so they can stop the charges on my account. I HAVE TO FILE A POLICE REPORT BECAUSE THEY SHIPPED $850 WORTH OF PHONES TO THE WRONG ADDRESS???
Okay, so off I go wasting another hour filing a police report, then taking another hour talking to the very nice police officer about this absurd situation and they then sent me the completed incident report information.
The police report received, I then have a very specific date to send this report to the asshat's at Spectrum. I sent it twice 2 days before "their required response" and guess what? the shit heads sent me an email that said "since I did not send a copy of the police report in time I would have to pay for the phones" my claim was denied.
In the meantime I got an email for our Spectrum autopay that showed SIX LINES and a different plan than we were on originally. 4 of the phone numbers listed were 999-999-9999 (yes really).
Guess what, I called the asshats (Spectrum) yet again, went through the chain of command and found a supervisor that actually had a brain. He could see the two emails (police report) that I sent in their system, before the due date, and that yes I did not have four lines with a phone number of 999-999-9999 and that our plan should not have changed. I was very hesitant to trust the latest representative from Spectrum but...
He said he would correct these problems, understood what had happened and would get us back to where we were before I was stupid enough to order 2 new phones from Spectrum. He did send me an email confirming what he did, so that problem was solved.
He was nice enough to tell me that I could order the phones directly from Apple and "bring my own" to our Spectrum account. Okay since this multi billion dollar company can not change my shipping address I am not going to order from them again.
3rd landmine I stepped on...
Apple, another multi billion dollar company should be able to help me right?
I place the order with Apple confirming our shipping address, and sign up for their Apple pay credit card so I can get zero % financing on the 2 phones with payments that we can afford, cool, back on track.
NOT
I get the notification that my Apple card is on the way, once I get the card I need to activate the card, okay every other credit card I have gotten you call a number and activate your card, BUT NO, NOT THE MULTI BILLION DOLLAR BEHEMOTH APPLE, you have to activate your Apple credit card via the wallet feature on your Iphone. Well my fucking Iphone is dead, so I can't do that.
I then call Apple credit support and explain the situation, an hour later the rep comes on the line and tells me the only way to activate a F'n Apple credit card is via my Apple Iphone which IS DEAD. Fuck me...
I ask if the fact that I can't activate my Apple credit card, that I paid for my new phone on, will stop the phones from shipping. Get placed on hold again, no one ever asked that question before, then she says the transaction will be fine, yea sure...
Over the days since I applied/received the amazing Apple credit card, I kept getting email reminders to activate my new card, NO WAIT, I CAN'T MY F'N IPHONE IS DEAD.
During this stressful time Apple was kind enough to send me emails stating basically nothing about when your phone order will actually arrive? Gee thanks.
This morning I received an email stating that we should have our new phone today, 2 weeks after ordering! Wow what service Apple!
Okay so there is a light at the end of the tunnel (it is a train though, trust me). Sure enough the phones arrive, no signature required? wow, this all started when someone forged my signature and stole our phones...
So I carefully open the package, yes they are what we ordered and I start up my phone, check the battery and then figure out how to get the SIM card out of my dead phone. I install it into the new phone I just got and start up the phone. As I go through the process I come to a screen that says it needs to send an authentication code to my old phone. MY OLD PHONE IS DEAD
There are no other choices, a brand new iPhone can only send an authentication code to my old dead phone, remember the train, it's coming faster now...
I go ask Marg for her phone again and call Apple tech, spend about an hour talking to 2 different people and the bottom line is I can only send the authentication code to activate my new $425 Iphone, to my old phone WHICH IS DEAD.
To top it off, they (Apple) send you a charging cord, all of their previous cords have a USB plug on one end, guess what the new phone cord does not, so it is totally useless, it has a plug type like an Android on one end. Think the asshats at Apple would send you a plug with your $425 phone, fuck no, you have to buy one from the money grubbing assholes...
In all disgust with Apple they did say that I can drive to their nearest (can you say to the moon) or local Spectrum store (I don't have a local store) and they can put my old SIM card in a bogus phone get the code and activate my phone, or I can try this with my wife's phone which is the only working phone we have, and if something happened to everything Marg has on her phone I would never hear the end of it, I fucked it up like everything else...
Bottom line of this sad long story, I'm shipping the phone back that Apple that they can not turn on, and I'm not sure if I will every have a phone again.
I might get a flip phone and go back to my old ways.
God I hate technology with my whole being, I did not miss having a working cell phone at anytime during this adventure, disgusting waste of time and emotions.
I thought I would miss the maps feature, but heck I still have a memory and know how to read a map.
In less than one month, I have gladly stopped spending money with the following behemoths (Amazon, Spectrum, Apple) because of their piss poor customer service, shity technology and total lack of care for their customer.
Sure I have spent very little with all of you asshats in the big picture, but I can still smile knowing that I am not sending you any more of my money.
W
3 comments:
Just wait. They it will get worse.
...So, what do you do if you loose your phone, or it goes down the toilet? How do you activate a new one? On an adenoid phone, you log into your google account and you're in business. You can't activate the apple phone by logging into your apple account on the new phone? That's beyond incredible and I guarantee you aren't the first one to need to activate a new phone with out access to the old one.
Wow, two crazy, incompetent customer service systems. There MUST be a way to replace a broken iPhone without needing the second factor--people drop those things all the time and they're more fragile than a potato chip. You'd think this would be a common occurrence...
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