Service - whats that?

I got a new cell phone as part of my deal with my service provider. It was supposed to be free. But on sending it, they charged me 350$. I called up and they rectified the problem. Or atleast they claimed they fixed it. I checked my online account and it looked fixed. When the day came for them to take money directly from my bank account,as they do every month for my cell phone charges, they took an additional 350$ %&^%*&^*. I called them up and spoke to a representative. He first told me, we don't give 350$ worth cell phone for free. So I have to pay for it. Then he asked me to send my current phone and offered to replace it with some lousy phone they were currently offering for free. I was totally pissed off. The instrument I got was one that they offered me free at the time of the deal. I told him see, if I knew I had to pay for the phone, I would have gone to a different carrier who would have been more then willing to give me a good free phone. If you are going to charge me for the phone you sent me, I shall cancel the contract and go to a new carrier. This put him on the defensive and started to read what must have been pasted in his cubicle - 'sir, you are a very valuable customer and we would certainly like to continue to serve you'. Ya right. Thats why they make us wait for half hour, making us listen to advertisements for their various services. To mollify me, he said he will ask his supervisor to talk to me. She came over and explained what had happened. The change they were supposed to make to my account was not done on time. They went ahead and withdrew 350$ + the usual monthly charges from my bank account. Then they remitted back 350$ into my phone account. They can't put that money into my bank account nor send me a check. They can only credit it to my phone account. So now, the way things stand, my cell phone account has a surplus of 350$ :). It means, I have pre-payed more than 7 months of my cell phone charges :(

All this inspite of they claiming to have fixed the charges 15 days prior to when they were to withdraw from my bank account. All this can be blamed on the system? Or the lack of it? Or the lack of proper communication between the personnels? With service providers like these, who needs swindlers???