The following is a letter I wrote to the CEO of Cingular February that went unanswered...
I am writing you to make you aware of the horrible customer service and phone service I have received ever since migrating to Cingular. Your company has disappointed me and I fear there is nothing to resolve this issue other than to relinquish me from my contract.
"I have been a long time customer of AT&T's cellular service and recently migrated over to Cingular and added a second line to my service. Since the day after ordering my new services, I have had problems with Cingular. The representative, Juan from FL, who I spoke with on Jan. 15 at first seemed to be very helpful, but as I later found out caused more trouble than anything else.
First, he never sent the order to the warehouse and I received a phone call the next day from another representative that said there was something wrong with my order. He then asked me what I had ordered and said he took care of the problem, which he never did. Even after talking to two of your reps, my order was never sent to the warehouse, which I discovered 1 week later!!!
When ordering the phones in the first place, I told Juan that I wanted the second line of service to be a specific number that my boyfriend has had for two years at Verison. He never explained to me that we had to keep that line active in order for this to happen. I even told him on the phone that my boyfriend, Rick, was planning on shutting off his phone as soon as I got these phones ordered. Had he told me then to keep the line active, we'd still have that number.
So after Juan told me that I should receive the phones in 3-5 days, and after waiting a little over a week to find out what was taking so long (we had had a bad snow storm and I thought that maybe that was why I hadn't received the phones), I finally called to find out my order was never placed and I would have to wait 3-5 more days. Meanwhile, Rick was without a cell phone for eleven days. This is very inconvenient when one does not have a regular landline and only uses a cell phone.
Finally, our phones arrived. I believe this was on the 25th. I set my phone up right away but had problems with Rick's because we didn't know that his number had to still be activated. After talking with someone for a half an hour, they told us that we would need to get a new number and SIM card at a local store. So Rick went and did so, only to come home and have another problem. The SIM card had somehow locked him out of the phone and I had to take it back to the store to get a new one! By this point I am regretting ever buying these phones.
A couple days later, Rick tried to set up his voicemail but neither one of us could figure out why it never prompted him to create a pass code. I set up mine with no issues, but for some reason his phone was causing us much headache.
I called your customer service line at around 9pm to try and fix this. I would wait on hold for a couple minutes and my phone dropped my call a few times. So rather than wait on hold only to have to call back and continue waiting, I called the only customer service line where I've never had a problem, AT&T. The rep there told me that he would have to get me a Cingular rep and I could be on hold for a long time.
He explained to me that Cingular's customer service is not really a 24-hour service like AT&T's was. I was very disappointed to hear this. So I waited on hold for over an hour before finally talking to someone!!! I think that is ridiculous to have to wait that long to talk to someone and that certainly never happened when I was an AT&T customer.
My latest issue finally put me over the edge. I received a bill for activation for the number that could never be activated xxx-xxx-xxxx. So I called customer service to ask them to take this off my bill and the girl told me that she was not able to pull it up on the screen and that I would have to take my bill the a local store.
I explained to her that I've already been to the store twice because Cingular can't get their stuff together and she said there was nothing she could do. She obviously was not willing to help me with this. So I hung up and got another person on the phone who found my charge easily. They said that they would take the charge off since I don't even have a phone with that number, but if I go online, I still see the charge.By the way, the bill was due Feb. 8 and guess what day I got it? Feb 8th!
I can't even express to you how angry I am with your company. It's been nothing but a headache and I convinced my boyfriend to leave Verison for this. Such a waste and very disappointing. Since all this has happened, I have purchased a new phone with a new carrier and gave my phone to my boyfriend's mother.
I can't deal with your company anymore. I want to be released from this contract with you. Your service is horrible and I want all to know it. It's shocking that you would treat a happy long time AT&T customer with such carelessness.
I ask you, if Cingular is raising the bar why is it that my service is worse than ever? Why do my calls get dropped? Why is your customer service less than decent? I'm very sorry that your company ever bought AT&T and I will never return to Cingular."
January update - Almost a year later
Since that letter was written, my (now) fiance and I gave our phones to his parents and we signed up with (deleted). When I called Cingular to tell them that we had to keep Rick's number because it was his business number, the rep said we would have no problems migrating the number. I explained that once this was done I would get a new number for that phone and continue service for his father. I wanted to continue the service, but I just needed a new number. I was told that all this was ok. However, I would soon find out that that rep forgot to input that information in my account.
The next bill I received had a fee for about $300 for a cancelled contract. I contacted Cingular again and asked to speak with a supervisor who was rude, unhelpful, and lacked any knowledge of my history with Cingular. I was told there was nothing they could do to correct the problem because the rep never wrote an excuse in my account. I was told I had to pay the fee.
To this day I have not paid the fee and a collection agency contacted me last week. I am fighting this corporate beast. They can not treat us this way. Their reps lack training and are to be held responsible for their mistakes; not the consumers. I can see from this site that this is common for Cingular customers and it makes me sick that I should have to defend myself against them. I have EXCELLENT credit and now I have to defend it. It's horrible that corporations can walk all over the average American consumer this way.
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