How I Got Scammed At A Wireless Kiosk In A Big-Box Store

We just got scammed big time. We were going over our budget last night and checking our bills when we realized our wireless bill was way higher than it should have been. We had just upgraded our phones at a wholesale warehouse big box store. I'm not going to specifically call it out because multiple wireless providers have kiosks at different stores.

Our personal story on how we got scammed.

We walked by a kiosk that had our wireless provider's logo on it, and we were stopped by a salesperson. We needed new phones, and we were paying way too much on our wireless plan so we listened to the sales pitch. We were promised brand new phones, a huge savings in our plans, and we did the paperwork right there. We just had to wait for the new phones to come in the mail and then mail back our old phones.

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A month later our phones arrived. The first red flag was there was no return label included in the shipping. So there was a runaround of getting a label printed and then finally sending it off, but it wasn't that big of a deal. The phones were new, they worked great, and we were saving money.

Fast forward a couple of months and we noticed something wrong with our account. Our "free phones" weren't free. In fact, they were charging us and our bill was now about $70 more a month. On top of that, we were paying $20 a line for phone insurance which we were told was included free.

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We contacted the wireless provider's customer support.

We contacted customer support, and they informed us that the promotion we were referring to ended two weeks before we signed up at the wholesale kiosk. So, let me get this right: Is it our fault that the salesperson lied to us? They offered the deal, we weren't even looking for it, and now we got scammed. The wireless provider (which is one of the top three in the country) basically told us there was nothing they could do.

Those kiosks are sometimes run by a third party.

I guarantee if we had just gone to the provider's brick and mortar store in town this never would have happened. Clearly this guy was just out to make a buck and wasn't regulated like a normal employee would be. I've read horror stories about people getting refurbished phones instead of new ones in the email. Others, like myself, have been overcharged or lied to about promotions.

Take it from me. Don't ever buy a phone outside of a wireless provider's own store.