Below is my complaint filed with the FCC regarding my incorrect billing with Cingular Wireless. If anyone needs to reach the office of the President, I have a contact for Mark Kendall at 877-707-6220.
Dear FCC personnel,
I am sending this communication in reference to my complaint against Cingular Wireless LLC due to an unresolved billing issue on mobile number 337-412-1823. I am in the process of paying them the $343 that they claim that I owe, only in an effort to prevent the charges from going to a collections agency. My billing issue goes back to late October through early November. I was in the process of relocating from xx to xx. I was on a Nation plan with 1350 anytime minutes and ended up having calls on my bill that were classified as roaming in xx when it is specifically a part of my calling area according to Cingular.
Consequently, I ended up having overage charges on my bill because there were calls that should have been classified as mobile to mobile (m2m), but instead came out of my anytime minutes rather than being a free call. This dilemma caused me to go over my minutes used when placing non-mobile to mobile calls. I had spoken to two different customer service representatives regarding this issue and they advised me that they saw the problem and would re-rate my bill and then return a callback to me. This never happened. I also advised these representatives that my last bill needs to be prorated and to make sure that I'm not billed in advance for a full month of services that I won't even receive. The representatives advised me that this will take place automatically (which I knew it wouldn't).
On January 9 Cingular ultimately disconnected my services for non-payment. I have since then decided that it is probably in my best interest to just pay the charges so that they will not refer my account to a collections agency and destroy my good credit rating as a result. I did receive a letter from them advising that my account is in jeopardy of being sent to collections, and then they had the nerves to send me another bill to charge me for services for 1/2/06-2/1/06, even though I was not able to use services after the 1/9/06 disconnection.
The problem with this is that I was not on a contract with the company. I am a former employee who resigned in good standing 6 months after being promoted from Customer Service within the company. I have a sound knowledge of their products, services, and billing procedures and apparently higher management agreed as well by offering me the promotion. One of the major reasons why I left the company for a lower paying job is due to the unfair and deceptive practices with employees as well as customers. I felt that the company's values were no longer in alignment with my own.
I often felt sorry for customers and empathized with their issues when I felt as though it was my job to defend the company's policies regardless of if I felt it was wrong or right. Well, when you are on a contract, Cingular obligates you to still pay for services for the next month in advance even if your services were cancelled during that particular bill cycle. They claim that this is in accordance with your contract agreement, and that I do understand.
However, I was previously on an employee rate plan that gives me 1000 free minutes per month, but changed over to a non-commitment consumer plan rather than a promotional commitment plan upon my resignation. I would only be subject to a new contract if I were to take advantage of a phone upgrade at discounted pricing, or change my plan to a commitment plan. Therefore, I was not on a contract and they have not disagreed with this notion. I gave up on disputing the overage charges and decided that I would just pay the bill and get it over with.
I finally spoke to another representative on February 18th. I advised her that my final bill needed to be prorated because I did not have services for majority of this billing cycle. This representative advised me that it would not be credited. I advised her that I was not on a contract and therefore it makes no sense that I pay for almost a full month of services when I had none. Nonetheless, I ended up requesting to speak to a supervisor.
The supervisor was Mary Conith from Johnson City, TN call center. She also advised me that the monthly service charges would not be credited regardless of the fact that I no longer had services at this time. I advised her that the policy that I was advising her of can be found in "CSP". This is Cingular's policy, procedure, and information database used by employees. She declined to look up the information and again advised me that the charges would remain. Although I explained to her that the reason why I have most of the past due charges was due to an unresolved billing issue that the previous representatives advised they would take care of - she still did not seem to care. She seemed to just brush it off as though I never said it.
As a Customer Service manager, I feel that Mary should have inquired further about my unresolved billing issue and have a desire to help me resolve it. Unfortunately, she did not. She didn't even advise of if or not she would see to it that the previous representatives follow-up on my re-rate of my bill or return a call to me. As a result, I am now faced with paying a $343 bill of which half of it consists of incorrect charges. When these sort of practices are applied on consumers by the thousands, I'm sure it generates an enormous amount of revenue for the company. However, it is these kinds of practices that keeps complaints flooding in about this wireless provider and leaves consumers unhappy.
I can recall one of my last days in the department of Customer Service when my manager had me get offline from the phone queue and handed over to me a handful of customer complaints about unresolved issues. He advised me that he would have me handle a load of dirty work before being promoted to my next position, Scheduling Analyst of the Workforce Administration department. I must admit, this task was tedious and often got frustrating as I was bounced from one company department to another over the phone. However, it felt good to know that I had helped these customers to resolve the irresolvable. I took pride in knowing that I had helped these customers and ultimately rekindled a positive image of my company, and was honored that my manager had assigned a managerial task to me.
Finally, I am not requesting that my services be reinstated with Cingular Wireless. Since I already had an account under my name with Sprint for the phone that my father is using, I ended up activating myself a phone on his plan where we are sharing the minutes. I honestly prefer Cingular's service offerings compared to Sprint, but I can not cope with their billing practices. I am going to pay these charges that were billed to me now, but I am requesting that my billing issue be addressed and corrected and reimbursement of the incorrect charges. Please help me, as I am no longer understanding what the word "Customer Service" means to this organization. I thank you in advance for your time.
} Oh and get this... I had to call Cingular today because my online account manager showed a new bill with a reconnection fee. The bill was credited. Unfortunately, OOP has declined to correct and credit my bill per voice message left for me by Mark Kendall.By the way, Mark Kendall may be a pseudo-name (common practice there), as I was not able to get any of my former colleagues at Cingular to find this name in the Outlook global address book.
Nisha
Fresno, California
U.S.A.
0 comments