Alltel That Ends Well
4/2/03

Alltel bought out Aliant Cellular in 1999.   Being a customer of Aliant at the time, I rolled over into Alltel and didn't really give it much thought (the only difference was the logo on the payment envelope).  I was content until my Startac started to die, so I watched the fliers for a special and looked into Verizon and AT&T as well as Alltel.  As luck would have it, the first deal I liked came from Alltel (they ran a special on the V60i phone), so I clipped the sale ad and stopped by the local Alltel kiosk on the way to work on a Friday afternoon.

Things started bad right away.    The kiosk was packed.  The line started at the customer help desk and ran all the way to the front door (it was six people deep when I arrived, not counting the people already talking to sales reps or wandering around).  I stood in line for almost twenty minutes while the front desk person tried to explain the finer points of billing with an elderly lady who couldn't quite grasp the concept of "roaming" and the kids (I have to admit they were cute) of the couple in front of me made "snow angels" on the floor.  I finally made it to the front of the line, where the nice woman behind the desk told me that if I wasn't in line for billing questions or to make a payment I'd have to wait for a sales rep and to take a seat.  By now almost half of the hour I'd allotted was gone.  I sat and listened to several other customers discuss problems with specific phones or argue about billing or sign up for new packages (at least one other person was there for the same promotion I was).  I only had to wait for a few minutes before a sales rep became available.

The actual process of getting the new phone was pretty quick and painless.  I told her I wanted the V60i that was on sale and pointed to the new phone package I wanted (I'm dropping my home phone and going all wireless so I needed a bigger package - phone package, for those giggling 12-year-olds reading this).  She gave me the new phone and switched the number over and gave me the instruction sheets, and then asked if I wanted any accessories ("like a car charger," she said specifically).  I said sure, that would be a good idea.    Wrong.  I later discovered that what ended up costing me $30 in the store runs for about $7 on eBay.  Sheesh.  Lesson learned.  Buy accessories elsewhere.

I left the store with a few minutes to spare on my hour and went to work.  The next day was Saturday and I spent a few hours reading the manual that came with the book (yes, I actually read the manual) and setting up the various features.  Problems started when I tried to set up my voicemail.  I was already being very unimpressed with the instruction sheet for voice mail, which appears to be a bad photocopy of a fax.  I present Exhibit A, an actual number from the sheet that I'm supposed to recognize.

Exhibit A - Crappy Photocopied Fax Sheet

Come on, people, how hard is it to retype the damn thing, or spend a few bucks in postage to mail the kiosks real copies?  That's not very professional.  Things went downhill from there.  I present Exhibit B:

Exhibit B - Voice Mail Setup Instructions

Step One is quite clear.  I followed the instructions.   I dialed my 10-digit wireless number.  I got a busy signal.   I dialed it again.  I got a busy signal.  I looked at the instruction sheet again.   I dialed the number again.  I got a busy signal.  I tried putting a "1" in front of it.  I got a busy signal.  I dialed it from my landline.  My wireless phone rang.  I dialed it from my wireless.  I got a busy signal.  I read through the entire instruction sheet twice.  I read through the phone manual on voice mail (which just says to refer to your provider, since Motorola doesn't really care if my voice mail works or not).  By now I was frustrated and had spent fifteen minutes on it.  I broke down and called customer service (I hate calling customer service).  I had to go through four or five menus ("If you need help with billing, press 1 now.  If you need help with service, press 2 now."   Etc.) before getting the "talk to a real, live, living, breathing, human person who may or may not be able to help you" option.  Pressing that gave me a polite recorded message informing me that their customer service center isn't open on the weekends (they couldn't put that information at the beginning?).  So I had to wait until Monday to call back.  By now I was irritable.  But I finally got a live person and I described the problem.

So, my half hour of frustration stemmed from the store being too lazy to put the actual instructions on the sheet and instead using some generic sheet faxed from somewhere else.

My opinion of Alltel at that point was faltering, but it was compounded by the other service for which I signed up.    Alltel's Web site advertised an Emergency Roadside Assistance feature (although it conveniently lacked price or information).  I asked about it at the kiosk and figured it out in my head to be cheaper than AAA, so I signed up for it.   The sales rep gave me an instruction sheet for it (also a photocopy of a fax, and this one is off-center - again, very professional . . .), but I didn't look at it until I got home.  There I discovered that, even though half the page is taken up by cute pictures of gas cans, keys and flat tires and paragraphs explaining everything the service covered, and even though the off-center page left huge margins of unfilled space, they apparently didn't have enough room to include the phone number to call to use the service!  I had to read the page twice to make sure, but a second glance confirmed that there are no instructions for actually using the service on the instruction page.  So, that was another call to customer service.  They were happy to provide me with the number (after I went through all the menus again), and I have to say that the customer service people were very friendly.  But would it really be difficult to put actual instructions on an instruction page?

All in all this was more of a minor inconvenience than a "I'm switching to another company tomorrow!" thing (not to mention I have a bloody 2-year contract . . .), but it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the company.  It's all in the details, after all, and these are details that would take very little effort to "polish."

In the meantime, the phone is cool . . .

P.S. - If you really want to see the entire instruction sheet, here you go.

My Phone