Doin' battle

We had switched to a new cell phone company last month, and before doing so, I had called our old company to verify when our contract would be up and to make sure we wouldn't get hit w/an early termination fee. Well, I found out that when Jon had to get a replacement phone about 1.5 yrs after we initally set up the contract, that had extended his contract for an additional 2 years! So his line wasn't set to expire until 2009...however, this extension was never disclosed to us when he got the phone. So after talking w/the rep, he said he'd go ahead and adjust the date and make notes on the account to indicate that both line's contracts were up at the same time, and that there wouldn't be any sort of fees. Great, right?

I called back a few days later before we actually set up service w/the new company just to verify AGAIN that the notes were there, and that the changes had been made, and there were no problems. Again, I was assured that everything was good.

So yesterday, I get home from work and in the mail is a bill from the old company, which included -- guess what -- a $200 early term fee on Jon's line!

I was livid.

I got on the phone, spoke w/a nice girl who was able to locate all the same notes as the previous people, and she says that she has to xfer me to the cancellations dept, as they're the only people who can issue the credit. OK.

I get xferred to cancellations, and all of a sudden, ALL the notes that everyone else had been able to see w/no issues had magically disappeared! There just weren't ANY notes there validating anything that I was claiming, and there was no way to credit the $200 back.

I lost it. BIG time. Up till that point, I'd been keeping myself in check pretty well, even though I was pissed. But that pushed me over the edge. And when I asked to speak w/the guy's supervisor, he thought it would be a great idea to HANG UP on me.

Wrong move, buddy.

I called back, asked for a supervisor immediately, explained the situation to the guy, and he wound up not only crediting back the early term fee, he wiped out the entire balance on the account.

That was 1 of just 3 calls I had to make to various companies last night to get crap like this taken care of. The other ones went much more smoothly ;)