Cingular
Coverage is misleading lots of places still roaming! Ripoff chicago illinois

Before activating service in March I spoke with someone from Cingular to make sure they had service in Charleston, IL where I go to school. They assured me that I would have service. I called a couple of times to make sure of this. I wanted to make sure that there was Cingular coverage, not roaming. Charleston, IL is a somewhat rural area and other services roam here.

I had T-mobile and it did not work well due to roaming. I had the phones registered at my home address where my family would have one phone and I would have the other at school. After signing up with a 2 year contract I brought the phone to school to have terrible service. After calling multiple times the problem is still not resolved.

The first time I called I was on the line with a customer service rep for over an hour talking about the situation. She claimed that Charleston, IL is a roaming area and that coverage and service is not guaranteed. I tried to explain that I was told that it would work. Also, we had a billing problem that was eventually resolved after calling several times, we were being charged 40 cents a minute for anytime minutes that were supposed to be in our plan.

It is like we were on a pay as you go plan except we were paying twice. It was resolved after a month of calling. The first person said it was roaming charges. Then finally they said "oh yes its a billing error, it will correct itself next month, our engineers are working on it now." After calling again, a representative would not even listen to what i was saying. I was trying to explain and she kept telling me that the coverage is fine in my area. She would not listen to the fact that i was in a different area, having problems.

I asked if they were going to put up a tower and she kept repeating there is no plans to expand to this area since there is already (roaming) coverage. I kept saying that it doesn't work. Finally she understood what i was saying, I had to keep repeating the zip code. She finally said "Oh yes it is roaming in that area" She said you might get a letter of termination if you roam to often. She said try not to roam.

I said that I have to go into the next town 20 minutes away then to make a call? Completely unhelpful. Basically calls are dropped, calls cannot be placed, low signal, even if there is a full signal there is still issues. Display will say call failed and/or network busy. Calls are missed and voice mails are received hours later. Basically I just want it to work, they would not let me out of the contract and I just wanted their customer service to improve.

I have been paying nearly $70 a month and it does not work well. It seems like they have trouble listening and that i know more than they know. All i believe that the advertisement "More bars in more places" and "fewest dropped calls" needs to be investigated. I think its one big lie.

A big portion of their coverage area is roaming, where "coverage is not guaranteed". Just now in November they put a better map on the site. Had that map been there in March I would have been able to see that Charleston was roaming.

DesiredSettlementID: Other (Requires Explaination)
Product_Or_Service: Motorola / v360/familytime 550
Account_Number: 7xx8
DateServiceStarted: 03/01
Purchase_Price: 59.99

I have filed a complaint since, on the BBB site, and they just put me in touch with someone from the corprate office, who was very nice, but said there was still no time frame on better service in charleston. She did send out engineers to the area and she agreed that there is a problem there. All other CS reps seemed to have no knowledge. All i wanted was an answer. I do not like being mislead.

They will be addeding new towers in 2007 to the charleston area. I would still like to see a discount since the services i am paying for are not working correctly.

Mike
Crete, Illinois
U.S.A.

Company: Cingular
Country: USA
State: Nationwide

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