My Horrible Experience with Wirefly

My Horrible Experience with Wirefly & AT&T.

A back story to my experience: I've been a Sprint customer for a bit more than 3years and during that time have had a Palm Treo. I've never had an issue except for the fact that I was getting tired of this old palm and anxious to get a pre. However, my job requires me to have a Blackberry and with my work bringing me to Canada frequently neither Sprint nor Palm were cutting it anymore. Whenever I went to Canada I had to carry both my Treo and my work Blackberry. I was paying Sprint $2.99 extra a month plus .20min for calls made in Canada. I could not use any internet or email on my own device because Sprint doesn't have a data plan for Canada. I looked crazy making business calls on my palm Treo and checking stock quotes on my Bloomberg for Blackberry. Work made the enticing offer of paying for my cell phone bill if I took some old 8830 Blackberry under an AT&T plan.
I didn't want to go from an old 3G palm Treo to an even older 2G 8830, so I opted to buy my own Bold and have them pay the monthly bill. Perfect plan, right? Wrong!

The awfulness begins: AT&T (at the time) had the bold for 299.99 (basically $300), but Wirefly.com had the Bold for 162 and change all in, no activation fee, and including taxes. This was a no brainer, so I order the phone and put in the request to port my sprint number to a new AT&T account. I get the phone the next day. However, wirefly's technology is so archaic that they cannot port the number when you call in and they don't allow you to call AT&T to activate. They say your number should be activated and ported within 5 days, except customer service couldn't tell me which day during this 5 day range so again I had to lug around 2 fairly large smartphones.
Day 5 hmmm, phone still isn't on. The customer service rep promised my phone will be on by today. I am traveling to Canada internationally. It will be a good idea for this porting to take place before this. Not only is it important to have a phone when traveling, but also I still have to call AT&T afterwards to add all the internal roaming and data plans since this couldn't be done through Wirefly. I call customer service. Ring, ring.

This is where it starts to get fun: Customer service says the porting should be done by now. I agree. They hang up on me 3 times and finally I get someone who seems to know what they're doing. I restart my sprint phone and I see that it is no longer working. OK, great so now when I turn on my new AT&T Bold it should be on. Yep, any minute now those bars should come up. More bars than anywhere else is the motto. "Why is the phone not working customer support person?" They aren't sure and they have to send this to escalated support that won't be able to look at this request for 24hours. What?! 24hrs are you serious, so what am I supposed to do while on the road. "We apologize for the inconvenience." Wirefly is very good at apologizing for the inconvenience but as this story will prove they do nothing about it. I got so tired of them apologizing I had to ask them to stop. So, will you reimburse me for a day's worth of service that I am paying for but am not getting? We apologize for the inconvenience but we will not be able to do this. Why? No answer….

In the clear: Eventually the phone turns on, I add my international plans, and I start playing with the phone and in the next few days this bad service leaves my thoughts. Not a big deal. I am happy with my new Bold. It's really an awesome phone, so I am good. *Java Error* *java Script* *Code debug*. What is this crap?! Click ok, ok, ok again; ok one more time…applications disappear from my screen. Reset the phone once, twice, pull the battery out. OK back to normal, maybe just a bug. 2 days later my phone is on vibrate and I get a text message during a meeting and it lets out a loud thunder sound (sounds courtesy of crackberry.com). I furiously fumble with my phone trying to turn it off. I step out check the profiles…The text messages are on vibrate. What the hell? Maybe it’s a fluke. Go back into the meeting. The speaker is talking and gets to one of the more important parts BOOM-storm crackle thunder crack- (that's the sound effect by the way). I excuse myself again. Now I am upset. I rush to the AT&T store. Hi can I help you? Yeah, wtf is wrong with my phone; it keeps making sounds when it is on vibrate.

AT&T's garbage: We apologize for the inconvenience. Argghh if I hear that one more time. Don't worry about it sir go right to the repair store on 34th street and they'll swap it out for you no problem. But, it shows there is one on 42nd that is closer. Yeah but no one goes to 34th so it will be quicker. Really? Yes trust me sir. All the way downtown and cross-town to the Westside I go. Get to the service center 25min trip, 15min wait, Felix at the center pulls up my account (by the way, the guy at the AT&T store should've pulled up my account but neglected to).
Oh, you just got this phone a week ago. Yes, why is there a problem. Man all we can give is refurbished phones. I don't want a refurb when I just spent all this money on a brand new phone that doesn't work. Felix agrees. He says go back to the AT&T store with my box, receipt, and everything tomorrow and explain to the manager that I want a new phone. You sure? Yea man they'll take care of you. Thanks a lot Felix.
Next day: we can't replace this phone. Excuse me? You bought this phone through a 3rd party vendor so you have to go through them to return the phone. Expletive, Mother Expletive.

No Phone, Again: By this time I have already turned in my work Blackberry and by me sending in the phone I have no access to any communication. Oh and guess what I am traveling again. I ask Wirefly again about reimbursing me for the time I am paying for but not receiving service and guess what their answer is: We apologize for… I officially hate these people. I send the phone via FedEx prepaid packaging slip Thurs June 11th. I go on a personal trip and that same day I make a promise to myself that if the phone is not at my house by the time I return on Sun June 14th, 4 days later, I am going to cancel my order through Crapfly (aka Wirefly) and get the phone directly through AT&T.
AT&T made more sense at this point because it was obvious Crapfly only had "sorrys" with no service and AT&T started offering the Bold at 199.99 a couple of days after I bought it through Wirefly. Sunday rolls around no phone. Ok I will call tomorrow to cancel my order, but I have to check with AT&T 1st if I could just keep my account.

Here is where the real Fun begins: I call AT&T at approx 9am and I don't get off the phone with them until 10:30am. At the same time I am in an electronic chat with Wirefly customer service determining if I will get a full refund if I cancel my order at this point. I call AT&T customer service, the 1st rep is helpful, and He passes me to sales. The sales rep is not helpful, he passed me to SSG. SSG is the department that handles people's accounts who have been open less than 30 days. The sales rep doesn't even bother to re-explain this long drawn out situation to the SSG rep so I have to tell my story again: I am cancelling my order with Crapfly for a Bold which will cancel my service with AT&T. However, I would like to keep my account with AT&T because I want the Bold at the 2year new plan discount rate and I need to keep my ported number. Try explaining that to your average customer service rep. Ok now try explaining that 4 different times, because the SSG rep couldn't help me and she passed me back to Sales. Sales then passed me to Jeanette in the porting dept. Jeanette was helpful. She began a conference call between us and Sprint's porting dept. The resolution was temporarily port my number back to Sprint under a friend's account as an additional line so as not to start a new 2 year agreement and then go to an AT&T wireless store and get the number ported back by reactivating my new account and getting the Bold at the 199.99 rate. Did you catch all of that?

I'm Done: Sprint ports the number quicker than they say they would. Sir it will be 24-48 hours before the port is completed. It's done in 2 hours. It boggles my mind why Sprint is losing so many subscribers. I go to the AT&T store the next day, explain my issue to the sales service rep, and start the process of porting my number. Here is where I messed up, I had my number ported on to a family member's account that lives 3 hours behind and just getting into work by the time I walked into the store requiring all types of personal information: account number, password, social security, panty size, etc. As I am waiting to get all this info the rep starts telling me how a lot of people have had issues getting their mail-in rebate back for the Bold and how some guy came in yesterday who applied for his rebate in Feb and still hasn't got it, blah, blah, blah. And, while she is "blah, blah, blah-ing" I start thinking to myself do I really want to deal with more BS. I let it roll off my back and think I've come this far don't let this woman's diarrhea of the mouth stop you. But, then in the middle of me going against my gut feeling she breaks the final straw.
She starts pulling accessories of the wall, "Oh and you'll need a cradle and an extra battery, and…
"Wait, wait, wait is this stuff free?
It'll be the same price as I didn't give it to you."
"I don't understand."
"Well I'm going to give you the value of the rebate in accessories in case you don't get it."
"Get the rebate?"
"Yeah, so you won't have to worry about it."
"Are you f@c&ing kidding me, after all the sh!t I just been through you want me to pay $299.99 for this phone and your giving me a bunch crap I don't need that AT&T says equals $100 but eBay says equals $30?"
Ok, so I didn't say the last part but I thought it in my head and it almost made it out of my mouth. Instead what I really said was, "I don't need any accessories, I want the Bold at 199.99, and after all the stuff I just been through I can't even start to think about not getting back a rebate. I appreciate your honesty, but I am not going to proceed with the porting at this time. Thanks, I'll stick with Sprint." And, I walked out.

Conclusion: This saga is far from over as I now need to get back on my own account at Sprint, get a new work Blackberry, and hopefully get approval from Work to buy the new Blackberry tour 9630 on Sprint. If I didn't need a Blackberry for work I would definitely just keep my old Palm Treo and be happy with my Sprint plan. The moral to this story is do not ever, EVER buy a phone through Wirefly.com (aka crapfly). Oh, and AT&T sucks.