I received a bill from Cingular for a really large and suprising amount because I had minute overages so I called and upgraded my account from a 600 minute plan to a 1100 minute plan.
The plan was upgraded roughly halfway through the billing cycle so the charges and minutes were prorated for each half of the month.
I used 658 minutes total for the entire billing period and I was billed for 131 minutes of overrages and I still have left over minutes.
Cingular used the following method to come up with those numbers:
They prorated the 600 for the first half and came up with 260 minutes. I used 391 minutes minutes in the first half and so they subtracted the 391 - 260 to come up with 131 minutes of overages.
They then gave me 624 minutes for the 2nd half and I used 267 minutes from that. Resulting in 226 minutes still available.
Common sense says that if you have 600 minutes available and upgrade to 1100 minutes and you only use 658 minutes total for the entire month then there is no way they can charge you for 131 minutes of overages.
What they should have done is combined the minutes together as follows. 260 available 624 available = 884 minutes used for the entire month. Then they should subtract minutes used (260 131 267) 658 from that and resulted in 226 minutes still available.
What cingular is doing is creating an artificial loophole so they can exploit their customers. The accounting method used by them does not make sense logically and is shady, abusive, underhanded, unfair, and exploitive.
I called Cingular and eventually spoke with a customer support manager. He kept on telling me how they came up with the numbers. I explain I understood how THEY came up with the numbers, but it was the fact that THE WAY they are coming up with the numbers that is wrong.
I explained it to them as follows. If you have 600 minutes and then you upgrade to 1100 minutes and you only use 658 minutes there is no way they can charge you 131 minutes in overages. The service representative pretended he didn't understand what I was coming up with (nobody is that dumb), most likely to protect himself from upper management or something, and just kept defaulting to explaining how they came up with the numbers.
I repeatedly told them I know how YOU are coming up with the numbers and the way you are doing it is wrong. He just kept saying no I don't understand how you can say it is wrong. I explained my side of the story over and over and he said he couldn't understand why I thought what they were doing was unfair. He kept on insisting the way they were doing it was right and that I was wrong.
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