Cingular Wireless
Family Plan RipOff

I have Cingular (previously BellSouth Mobility) for many years. I have not been totally satisfied over the years with various aspects but the issue I have today has really blew my mind.

Last year, I added an additional line for my elderly mother and was put on the Family plan. I had a Nation plan that, with all the bells & whistles added in, including the $9.99 family plan charge for her phone, came to $107.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the local Cingular store and ended up upgrading to a Motorola V400 and changing my service to a plan that was going to be a little cheaper b/c I was not using all my minutes on my other plan.

Imagine my surprise when I received my bill for over $200! I just called the 800 customer service number and explained the whole nine yards to the CSR and was told that b/c my phone and my mother's phone operating on different technologies, we could not be on the family plan. I advised Ms. CSR that at no time did my salesperson explain this to me. She asked if I had told him that we had the family plan and my response to her was that since it was all on one account, and I could only assume that he could read, that he would have seen the information on the screen when he was looking over my account initially. Basically, the CSR at the 800 number said she couldn't help me that I was going to have to contact my salesperson, to which I advised her that I was definitely going to do the first thing tomorrow morning.

I completely understand if there is a reason that the two different phones cannot be on the family plan, but somewhere during the 45 minutes that I was in the store making these changes, I feel I should have been advised that I was either going to have to upgrade my mother's phone or we were not going to be able to be on the family plan.

I am going to contact the salesperson in the morning and give him three options. One, place me back on the family plan with the phones that we currently have; two, provide a compatible phone, free of charge, that will enable us to use the family plan; or three, give me the names and contact info for everyone above him, including their legal services department, and I will turn it over to my attorney, which incidentally, is my boss.

Company: Cingular Wireless
Country: USA
State: Louisiana
City: Slidell
Address: Gause Boulevard

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