I am writing to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the quality of service that I have received from Cingular Wireless over the past two months. I initially signed up with Cingular in October, and purchased the Motorola V60 phone, and was very satisfied with the quality of the Cingular network both in my home area (New York City) as well as several other locations nationwide that I traveled to on business.
On September 4, I decided to look at the current phone selection featured at the Cingular company store located at 475 Fifth Avenue in New York. Based on the recommendations of two of the salespersons at that store, I upgraded to the Samsung 307 phone and agreed to a twenty-four month contract extension in order to obtain a more favorable price for the phone.
Shortly after purchasing the phone, I began experiencing more and more frequent problems with my cellular service.in particular, I noticed that I could no longer obtain a signal in areas where I previously had no problems placing or receiving calls. I also was notified by several persons that they could no longer reach me on my cellular number, and would receive a message stating All circuits busy over and over again. To my knowledge, this never occurred prior to upgrading my phone. Finally, I experienced a higher rate of both dropped calls and calls that would not connect than I ever have in the past, either with Cingular or for the prior three years as a customer of Sprint PCS.
Approximately three weeks after upgrading my phone, I grew tired of the dropped, missed, and otherwise poor quality of my calls, and called the Cingular customer service center. The first representative was very understanding and placed me on hold while speaking with your technical support area. She could not confirm if my problem was due to network or phone issues, but suggested I return to the Cingular retail store to exchange my phone. When I informed her that I would not be able to get to that store during their business hours for at least the next few days, she offered to call the store to see if they could ship me a phone (a service that was standard practice for Sprint PCS).
However, the store could not locate any record of my purchase, so the representative requested that I fax my receipt to her. She also noted that my contract had not been extended in the computer system. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the fax number and had to call back to ask for the correct number. During that call, the second representative confirmed that my contract had not been extended, and told me that if the problem could not be corrected to my satisfaction, that I could cancel my service with Cingular without penalty. I subsequently faxed the receipt.
When I called back later in the day to check on the status of my request, I spoke with another representative (Ms. McCormick) who, unlike the first two representatives, was extremely unprofessional. During our conversation, she initially confirmed that my contract had not been extended. As I grew more frustrated with the situation, I implied that I would like to simply close my account. However, by this point in the call, she was aware that I had signed a new contract on September 4, and then stated that my contract was listed as expiring 9/4/05.
When I reminded her that just a few minutes before, she told me my contract had not been extended in your system, and that prior representatives had verbally committed to me that I could cancel my service without penalty, she admitted that she extended my contract in the system, and that even if my problem could not be resolved, I had still signed a contract and was responsible for payment. When I tried to explain that I felt it was unfair to be held to the terms of a one-sided contract that penalizes the customer for wanting to cancel yet contains no true penalties for the service provider in the event that the level of service received is unacceptable, she questioned the sincerity of my claim that I could not receive calls, stated that the individuals who could not get through to my phone were exaggerating the severity of the problem, and told me essentially that it is not a big deal if I cannot receive a few calls.
I suggested to her that if a family member was hurt or in an accident, and I could not receive a call pertaining to such an emergency due to a faulty phone and/or network, and she backed down on her claim that one call doesn't matter.
Realizing that I was getting nowhere with this representative, I asked if the original representative could call me back the following day. When asked for a contact number, I provided my cellular number. Immediately, the representative questioned why I would offer this as my contact number if I was having problems with the phone/service, and again implied that there was not a real problem. I find it incomprehensible how a representative of a cellular phone company would chastise a customer for using their cellular phone number as a contact number.
In my particular case, I travel to different clients each day, and do not have another number to offer, but I feel that this is beside the point. If Cingular is confident in their network and phones that are offered, then I do not see why they would have any problems with a customer using their cell phone as a contact number.
After all, if I cannot use my phone as a contact number, than what am I paying them for? The representative's only suggestion was that I use my phone at a time and place where there were not too many other individuals on cell phones. When I mentioned to her that I work in New York City and not some small village in middle-America, she simply suggested that I look around me to check if other people are on the phone, and wait until they are done before attempting a call.
If I waited until everyone in New York was off the phone, I would be long since dead and gone before I could ever make a call!!! Eventually, I gave up and called back just so that I could speak with a representative who would treat me with the respect that any PAYING customer should receive, and subsequently went out of my way to go to a store and exchange my phone.
Unfortunately, the replacement phone (same model) has been no better than the original phone.in addition to encountering difficulties obtaining a signal, frequent dropped calls, and the network busy message that callers receive, I now hear several high pitched tones in the background of about thirty percent of my calls.
Quite frankly, I cannot deal with Cingular telephone representatives any longer, and Cingular stores are interested in generating sales, not customer service. Every morning when I head out to work and unplug my phone from the charger, I know I will go through another day of dropped/missed calls, a problem that my colleagues who use Verizon, AT&T, and Nextel rarely experience.By lunch-time, I am usually so frustrated that I am ready to toss my phone in the nearest trash can. I am not sure if the problem is truly my phone or the network, and the representatives have been unable to give me any truly useful information. So now I am basically stuck with either paying apprx. $200 to cancel my contract, or to deal with consistently poor serivce.
Scott
Yonkers, New York
U.S.A.
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