Complaint Review: Cingular - Lubbock Texas

From the map on Cinuglar's Site

For those of us old enough to remember the movie, "Love Story" (early '70s), the theme song, sung by Jack Jones starts off, "Where do I begin, to tell the story..."

That's my sentiment about Cingular wireless. Do

I begin with how a "Customer Service" rep can tell you one thing, you believe them and change your contract to increase minutes or coverage? Back in the early part of this past Spring (2002), I called Cingular to take advantage of a great (seemingly-great, I must state afterwards) offer whereby if you renewed your contract for 1 year, you'd get a free battery for each phone on your Cingular account. To further tie you in to a longer contract, if you re-upped for 2 years, you'd get extra "stuff" - I don't remember the particulars, but up to that time, our Cingular service had been as good (or as bad) as we'd had with two other wireless companies.

The "free goods" came, eventually, after a second call to see why things were taking so long - the CS person said that there was no record of my previous call. OK, said I - just do the contract extension thing and send the batteries, etc. I was told by the previous rep and the second one that the net effect on my contract (besides the 2 year extension) would be that we'd now have more anytime minutes and night/weekend minutes too. I specifically said that I wanted to keep the coverage the same - it had been the entire state of Texas (our home state) and I was told that this wouldn't change.

Well, it seems that the "new" plan that we'd signed up for was for "most of Texas" (where we'd have no roaming charges and no long-distance charges for any calls made to anywhere in the United States) and that there were areas that we traveled occasionally that were not included now that we'd changed the contract. After a great number of calls, more than one involving a "supervisor" and a number of e-mails from me to Cingular, I was told that my "old" plan DID, in fact, cover every square inch of Texas (I must add, it covered every square inch where the phones would work - in some areas, there wasn't a strong enough signal to make the phones work), but because of expenses of renting tower/antenna space in parts of Texas where Cingular didn't have a big presence, the "new" plan simply didn't cover all of Texas and I was referred to a map on Cingular's site to see just where in Texas I could call without roaming, etc. It covered the areas where we lived and did most of our traveling, so I wrote it off.

As you look at the second map, you can see that McGregor IS closer to Gatesville than I believed, and strangely enough, calls made from McGregor a few months ago didn't get billed as "roaming" - they cannot even be consistent when they're screwing a customer!



Here's a map from Mapquest - Gatesville is under the "END" mark on the map, and Temple-Belton is under the "START" mark

(note: Gatesville nearly comes out as "Endsville" on the map!)

Then, one Summer day, we noticed that a number of phonecalls on our phones were getting roaming charges for Gatesville, TX, which is maybe 40 miles from where the calls were placed. Hell, we've never even been to Gatesville and the closest we'd been had been maybe 30 miles away, on Interstate 35 which is ORANGE on the Cingular map of our area, indicating that it's our "home" area. A call to Cingular was handled by a young man who told me that the Temple-Belton-Killeen area of Central Texas wasn't a big Cingular area, and that whenever the number of calls going through the antenna/tower space that Cingular had rented in this area exceeded a certain number, calls would get routed through the antenna/tower in Gatesville. I'm no communications expert, but it made sense (in our first wireless experience, with GTE Mobilnet, we had this happen in another part of the state). Cingular actually gave me a credit for the roaming charges and I thought that I was home free.

Wrong! Next month...more roaming charges from Gatesville (as of the date I'm writing this, I've still never been to Gatesville or any closer than in previous months!). I made a call to Cingular (I must add that each call to Cingular lasted 1 hour, most of the time being spent on hold listening to their crappy, WRONG commercials about how wonderful Cingular is, how a "promise is a promise is a promise" - what a load of crap!) and explained that this call was for a problem that occurred the previous month. The CS person said that they'd remove the charges.

This scenario was repeated a couple of more times and I was told that a "committee" would decide what they'd do with my roaming charges, but I was told to pay the undisputed amount, in the mean time, which I did (in this whole span of time, we paid our Cingular bill on time either with the full amount on the bill, OR, the amount that we were told to pay, with a credit to be applied, etc). During this time, though, the roaming charges continued to accumulate and the discrepancy had grown to around $200. Our service was discontinued for a day in late October because of the outstanding unpaid balance (all for roaming, late charges, taxes associated with the roaming charges, etc) - two phone calls got things supposedly straightened out and I was told that a credit of $196.34 was due to us, which strangely enough was a few dollars MORE than the amount that they said that I owed on that date. They gave me an exact amount to pay by 11/8 (for some reason I remember the date) and we did exactly that.

The next bill was still wrong. I was now spending my lunch hour fighting with Cingular on the phone.

Finally, in late December, we got a bill that looked like a house payment did a few years ago. Strangely enough, the amount past due was $196.34. Coincidence? I think not. After talking to a CS rep, who told me that in November, a Cingular CS supervisor told me that we'd not be getting roaming credits for Gatesville charges in the future. I told them that her notes could say anything that they wanted...I'd have NEVER let them end a phone call to me about my bill if they told me this.

I asked for a supervisor, who wasn't much help and when I asked for her supervisor, I was surprised that she had one on that day (it was the Saturday before Christmas). This guy was obviously a person who stood in line for the company Kool-Aid more than once. He had all of the "make the customer think that you're on their side" memorized perfectly, but it didn't work on me and it took only a minute for him to get downright rude, condescending and patronizing - all at the same time!

He said that they would send a team of technicians from Waco (near to our town) to check out my "claims" of not making calls from Gatesville. I told this idiot that from looking at my statement, I could see that most of them were made to my home phone from my parking lot where I worked in the middle of Temple (which is surrounded by orange on their precious map!) and that I could prove it with my work schedule, etc. He said that it didn't make any difference, etc, etc. He said that the results of the technicians' "investigation" into the matter would determine whether or not they'd give me credit for the roaming charges. He told me that he'd be better able to serve me if I didn't yell at him, or talk over him or continue with my "antics" (his EXACT word), but that if I was looking to get credits from him on that day, I was wrong. He promised to call me the next week, and I told him that since I would be out of town, to call me on my Cingular phone and gave him the number of the phone to use (we have 3 phones on the account). No calls came in from them (unless their coverage wouldn't find me in Dallas-Ft.Worth where I'd be for the next two weeks).

I made a call this past Monday (12/30/02) to them and got through to the second person that I talked to before the rude man that I had the misfortune of talking to on the Saturday before Christmas. She said that the techs did their thing and that the Gatesville roaming charges were correct and wouldn't be credited to me. She said that she wasn't going to "argue with me again" and all that stuff. She then had me "reprogram" my phone and she called my wife to do the same to hers, to do something to "fix a problem." She then said that she'd give me a "courtesy credit" for 2 months of Gatesville roaming. I asked about the months dating back to MAY - I'd found even more wrong roaming charges that we paid for May - the bill wasn't very big that month, so they kinda slipped by. She said that they could go back only 2 months.

She said that she or someone else would call with the credits to apply to the bill that we still couldn't pay because it was sooooooo wrong. They called the next day and said that we'd get about $290 in credits and gave me the amount to pay and said that it was due 1/3/03. I said that they'd have to give the mail a few days for it to arrive, and I got their assurance (like it's worth anything!) that we wouldn't be cut off or have late charges applied till 1/13. Oh yes - on 12/30, I asked for the name of the president of Cingular - I told the "lady" that I appreciated getting the bill somewhat corrected, but that my poor service over the last 6 months would be outlined in a letter to the president. She wouldn't even give me his or her name! She said to address it to the Office of the President, and gave me the address. I mailed a long letter (as if it'll get to the President, and as if it'll do any good) today, 1/5/03.

I've left out a lot of the fine points (believe it or not, this MONSTER that I've just written here is small compared to the one that I sent to the president).

I will get justice, one way or another - if it means the Texas Attorney General's Office and/or the Better Business Bureau, then so be it. I want OUT of my contract and I do not want to pay the contract termination fees. I still have about a year and a half on the contract and I can't put up with this much longer.

There - that's about it!

Tom

Belton, Texas
U.S.A.

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