Cops in front of Front Street phone store Friday.
Downtown Plainfield was abuzz with police activity about 5 PM on Friday.
But the only violence turns out to have been by a store's owners against its customer's wallets.
The cops were shutting down 1-Stop Wireless, a phone store on East Front Street next to the Faraone club.
Area merchants tell me that the store has generated lots of complaints by customers that they were being ripped off.
The allegations include selling phones that will not work on U.S. cellphone networks, selling refurbished phones as new and refusing refunds to customers who brought their phones back after having problems.
Tales are also told of a bait-and-switch, where the walk-in customers see a window ad advertising a cellphone at one (low) price, only to be told when they go to purchase the phone that they must pay a higher price (hundreds of dollars more) and that they will get the difference in a rebate check by mail. The problem? Rebate checks never come and the phone store denies any responsibility.
Customers of the store are often Spanish-speaking immigrants who are unsophisticated shoppers or lack the credit ratings necessary to get cellphones from major suppliers.
The Plainfield shop, said to be a branch of a phone shop operating in Perth Amboy, was shuttered on Saturday.
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1 comments:
If only we could get a $1 store to open there...sometimes I go for the easy shot, I admit it.
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