Today while checking out news about Blackberry Storm, T-Mobile G1, iPhone etc I ran across the Cricket Wireless website and thought what the heck, $25/month for unlimited wireless sounds good so I’ll give them a shot and compare to my Virgin Mobile plan.

A customer service rep via their site’s Live Chat answered my many questions and seemed very patient, maybe too patient. at the time I thought what great service. I was trying to find the least expensive phone and wasn’t really sure what I wanted since I found the site accidentally so the Cricket rep discussed all of my otpions and was patient when I kept repeating that the prices were higher than what I expected to pay considering my current cell phone (my very basic, very uncool and very ungeek-like cell phone) was only $10-$20 depending upon where I bought it. I settled on their basic phone the Cricket EZ for $49.99 (minus $20 rebate after 45 days service = $29.99) since the one I wanted with MP3 player and the one with the camera was more than I needed to just test the service out. So I called a local store I found on their site while I was waiting for a Live Chat answer and found the very same Cricket EZ was only $19.99 and I didn’t have to wait 45 days for a rebate or 3-5 days for shipping. Then I told the Live chat operator at which point she said “Thank you for letting me answer all of your questions for you and not giving me the sale.”

Wait, what? Although I can understand disappointment on the part of the salesperson its not my fault that Cricket doesn’t give their reps decent information (probably on purpose) and I think that sucks for their sales force, but it doesn’t mean I’ll pay extra cash to wait for a cell phone I’d like to start using tomorrow.

Well, I went and picked up my Cricket EZ at the local Wal-mart and caled the toll-free number inside of the Welcome to Cricket PAYGo pamphlet and my call to activate the phone was dropped. No big deal, my cordless phone has dropped calls before (I guess, right?) and I called back. This time a person answered right after the automated service and told me they were closed, so I need to call back tomorrow morning.

So, I’m very hopeful to get my new Cricket Wireless service started tomorrow, and I’ll be blogging about that later.

CRICKET WIRELESS COMMERCIAL JULY 2008
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