Cell Phone Shopping Dreamed 6911 days ago | | 640 words

I am an Alltel customer.
Have been for about a year.
I broke down and got a cell phone because (despite my hatred for them) it was easier and cheaper than getting a land line.
I have had a series of cheap Nokia phone. I say cheap because it’s nearly impossible to get the real price of the phone from Alltel.

On their web site, they have all the phones listed with prices… only including a two-year agreement which I already have. I don’t need nor want another. I just want a new phone because both the Nokia 3585i and the 3587i are pieces of crap that last about 4-6 months then start having massive software problems.

So far the list includes:

The only solution was to remove the battery, wait a few seconds and put the battery back in to get a working phone.
And I am sure there are some I have forgotten.

I want to purchase a new phone because I am fed up with these models. I have had 4 in the past year, though I only had one for 3 days because it had so many problems it was unusable.

Every 4-6 months I am back in the store with the same problems. So instead of repeating this dance over and over again, I just wanted to get a new phone. So I went to look at the prices and compare online.

And much to my dismay, they do not list any realy prices! All the prices are with a two year plan, which is completely counter-productive.

Upon further digging, I came across one-year prices and "pay as you go" prices. However, these are still not helpful. All I want is the retail price of the phone, since it tends to be $100-250 more expensive than the prices listed on the web site in the store. Without the two-year plan, phones are very expensive.

I don’t even ask for much, just a phone that works. Period. I don’t need a camera phone or one with lots of fancy bells and whistles. I just need a phone that can place and accept calls, send and receive text messages and do it all without dying halfway through.

However, this is a seemingly unattainable dream.

The Alltel store is even a more hostile place. The first time I went in to get a replacement phone, I was charged the insurance fee (of $50) because of a tiny, less than quarter-inch crack on the top of the phone near the antenna. That counted as "damaged" which I contested, as this tiny crack had nothing to do with the problems I was experiencing. My problems were software related with crashes and mysterious reboots.

But sure enough, I paid the $50 for a new (to me) used phone. And sure enough, I was in within 3 days to get another new/used phone because the first one, the one I paid for, had so many fatal problems it was unusable.

My next go around I got the "upgraded model" which was the 3587i. (Read: I got a color screen and some more craptastic ring tones, that’s the "upgrade.")

This phone, while it has served me slightly better than its predecessor, has had many of the same problems. And all I want is to get a new phone that is not a Nokia.

I just want to buy a new phone, not get a runaround.

Sprint PCS tells me what their phones cost without plans.
Cingular does too.

Come on Alltel, get with the program.

No one likes to get the runaround, especially on something as simple as this.

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