Complaint Review: CINGULAR WIRELESS - Internet

Send a certified letter (ALWAYS send letters to a company cetified where you recieve the green signed card back in the mail). It is what is called a validation letter. Include your name, address and contact info, acct. # and write something to the affect that you are requesting validation of these charges (meaning an itemized bill). Send a validation letter to the Collection agency also basically I am asking for validation of this account and charges. They legally have 30 days to respond and this letter is in no way telling them you are responsible for these charges...you want PROOF of the charges, that is it.

I recently recieved two letters...one from cingular and one from a collections agency. The letter from cingular states that I had agreed to pay for my overcharged bill which amounts to almost$1300.00, which in fact is a lie........every time I call customer service to disput the issue, I get disconnected and hung up on. How am I supposed to fix this problem if they are going to be too scared to confront an angry customer. I also recieved a letter from the collection agency that they sent me too.......and for some reason I have been unable to connect with them.........hmmmmm.........they state that after 30 days they will assume that everything is accurate.......

I used to be a collections representative for Cingular Wireless in their Johnson City, TN location and I can tell you right now that we did not operate in that manner. As a collections rep we were trained to deal with situations diplomatically. On many occasions I had to clean up after "customer service" would drop the ball and treat customers like garbage. That is why you will notice that she said the collections rep was kind to her. Unfortunately, it would seem that for some reason the caller got sent back to customer service. Normally we would not handle the situation in that manner, but we were only allowed to credit an account up to $250 dollars. After that it has to go to a manager. There is no "billing department." We handled all of that. Most likely she was sent to the "High Usage Team," but I am concerned that when her bill got that high that she was not contacted. We have systems in place to prevent new users from raking up bills such as this one, and in this case it should have automagically snipped her way before the 900 dollar mark. I want to let the poster know that she can go to one of Cingular's retail locations and request a copy of the detailed report. Once you have the detailed report you *can* dispute the charges. A rep would be able to go through the charges one by one until you are satisfied, but you have to escalate the call. Don't just talk to a normal rep - ask to speak to a manager as soon as you get on the phone. The rep will try to help you but you have to just keep asking until they get a manager for you. Once you get the manager, then you can get stuff done. MAKE SURE YOU GET ON THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. ONCE THEY SEND YOU TO COLLECTIONS IT IS DARN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO PULL IT BACK. About the lack of e-mail contact on our website... You have to realize that they have tens of millions of customers. Offering a publice e-mail address would open them up to insane numbers of viruses, spam, and silly questions that are best handled over the phone. They would have to hire hundreds of people full time just to sort the e-mails, not to mention reply to them.