I signed up with Cingular Wireless on May 25. I had no reception in my new home with my current company and was hoping Cingular's coverage would be better. I explained my situation to the salesman and he proceeded to sign me up on a two year program, informing me that if their reception wasn't any better I had 30 days to cancel my service and not pay the cancellation fee. If I cancelled within three days I would also not be responsible for the activation fee.
Cingular's reception ended up being much worse than the previous company, so on June 3 I went to Verizon wireless and signed up with them, taking my number with me and thereby cancelling my service with Cingular, or so I thought. It had worked that way when I switched from T-mobile to Cingular, so I had no reason to believe it wouldn't work the same way this time.
I then received a bill from Cingular. The bill was for the activation fee which I knew I was responsible for, one month's worth of service plus all the miscellaneous fees that come with any cell phone bill. I called Cingular's customer service number and they informed me that they could not tell me what my prorated charges were for the 10 days or so I had service until I retunred my phone. On June 22 I returned my phone to Cingular. The salesman called the company for me to determine what the prorated charges would be. They kept telling them I owed for the whole bill. He even asked to speak to a supervisor who informed him that bc I ported my number over they did not consider that as cancelling my account and thus I was responsible for the full month's charges even though they had it in their system that my service was disconnected on the 3rd of June and after that day I was not able to use my Cingular phone at all.
The salesman who was helping me was just as surprised as I was that this was their policy when porting over a number. It seems that Cingular has created this policy know that if people are unhappy with their service they are going to want to switch and take their number with them. I've had this same number for almost three years now and as it's my only phone I didn't want to have to switch to a new number.
Another intersting fact is that when I returned my phone to the same store I bought it from the salesman that helped me was able to pull up my address and he was able to tell that I was in a dead zone. I had told the salesman that sold me the phone that no reception was my issues with T-Mobile, and it seems to me at that time he should have pulled up this same map and informed me that they had a dead spot there also and it wouldn't have helped my situation.
Cingular needs to
1. Explain their cancellation policy to their sales staff
2. Have their sales staff inform their customers that if you port your number over you are still responsible for a whole month's charges, even if you only had service for a week!!!
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