Cingular Wireless

I got my bill in the mail today. Well, it might have arrived acouple days ago, I don't go out to my box too often because all I really get is junk mail.

Anyway, apparently I owe cingular wireless 400.00 american dollars because I went over my minutes. I apparently was signed up for 1000 nights and weekends and 250 minutes during the day. First off, I wouldn't have joined a plan that wasn't unlimited nights and weekends, but that's beside the point. I do not talk on my phone enough to go over BOTH nights and days. That's right, I went over my 1000 minutes by 500 minutes. 1500 minutes in one month? And this is only on nights and weekends? Are you retarded cingular? Do you seriously think I have that much to say about anything? I don't. Neither does anyone I know. I think I also went over by 300 in the day time. Which is amazing seeing as how I go to school from 630am-1245pm then I go to work from 2pm-10pm

Do you see anywhere in there where I can talk for 550 minutes? I fucking do not.

I've done absolutely nothing different this month from what I've done any other month.

Anyway, there is no fucking way I am paying cingular 400.00 dollars for this.

I mean, even if I did this shit, 400 dollars is rediculous. I'm so sick of wireless companies. I'm just going to get a phone for the house until wireless companies are no longer completely retarded.

wirelesswirelesswireless

I really don't feel like calling them again, but I must.

im on the prepaid shit,but its soo complicated to do anything on this phone that i want..i feel like throwing it out the window.

My job pays for my cell, so I dont really think about it.

really that means that whenever the phone rings I'm afraid it's work related.

I've had days where I'm so paranoid about missing a call that I take the thing into the crapper with me first thing in the morning.

haha i feel that key,i often find myself taking a sketch book and a phone into the shit closet.

i'm on cingular, too. they fuck me up constantly. first off, i've had bills like yours before. thing is, i have 5000 nights and weekends and some odd amount of daytime minutes. they have repeatedly fucked me over.

at the moment, my phone is fucked. super fucked. i get virtually no reception in my house, and i ahve to go outside to get a few bars...keep in mind, i live right outside of the city. i can see a tower less than a mile from my house.

i got my phone decmber before last, moved around september of last year...went to the local cingular to have my number changed (turns out i can call them tom do that), fuckers lost my phone, then when i got it back, it wasn't activated....bah! to top that off, for the first four months i was up here (new place) i was ion the phone with cingular every other day...for four months! tring to get something done about my poor service. i finally started getting good service for about 5 months, then this shit happened...my phone is flaking out a ton...the service is flaking out a ton....i fucking hate you cingular!

anyway, i'm not doing anything about it this time, i'm tired of the hassles.

i'm planning on making them give me a new phone, just trying to work out some angles to hit them with.

Yeah. Recently the only place my phone works in my apartment is near the windows. I step outside and I have 3 bars.. but I step back inside and I have 0. I already called once, when their website finally loads I'm going to go on there and check my bill to see what they think is going on.

I'm done with this fucking company.

fuck cingular

I've got something like 500 anytime minutes and unlimited night and weekend. I haven't even come close to maxing out my minutes. Of course the longest I'll talk on the phone anymore is like 30 minutes.

Ive had the same problem. After starting my contract i got a bill through 2 weeks later charging me a whole months worth line rental. Also the bill was double! There was noway i went over within 2 weeks. And you cant even get in contact with these people to sort this shit out, puttin you on hold for hours charging you stupid amounts per minute. Its crazy.

foreal i went to cingular last year to get a new phone and they told me they can't let me have the same number. they said " we cannot do it." i asked this bitch why the fuck the other companies can do it, but you can't. lazy sonuvabitches.

i am now with sprint, but sprint has shit phones and i don't get phonecalls. how do i know? i get ppls voicemails but no call.

so pretty much i dont like either.

is Verizon good? T-mobile? what else?

on this note, WHY THE FUCK ARE CELL PHONES AND PLANS SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE????? AND WHY THE FUCK DO THEY MAKE YOU SIGN 2 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE AWAY WHILE THEY SUCK YOU DRY WITH HIDDEN FEES AND SMOKE AND MIRRORS??? AND IF U WANNA CANCEL EARLY???? 300 bucks early termination!

Hahaha if you only knew....

argue with them, but do it politley, most places make notes on how you speak with employees, if your a constant knob to them, they wont work with you. you can usually get out of anything, just mention youll switch to another company and they try and get you to stay. i recently went through cell phone hell dealing with a bill.... i argued and got a pretty decent amount of money off.

my plan now is flat rate with no contract, but soon youll have to sign a contract if you want the same plan. when that comes i think ill go to prepaid and just text people...or d the home phone thing, its nice not having a cell phone. im not signing anymore contracts.

Alright -- round 2

I call back and ask what my plan was before I changed it. (a year ago..) and she said 5000 nights and weekends. Ok, good.. I tell her that the lady I talked to when this happened said that nothing on the plan would change except for my ability to call nationally. She said, "wow, you have an amazing memory, that was over a year ago" completely sarcastic... I said, actually, I have a terrible memory, BUT I do remember when I request something specificly, such as nothing changing my cushion of minutes. She said "well the lady that you spoke with left a note here saying she did inform you of the 4000 minute night and weekend minute drop etc etc" and I said.. ok.. I'm glad she left a note. I used to work for a company that let you leave notes on people's accounts too... Guess what, my fingers were capable of typing lies as well. She said "well, if someone were to do that they wouldn't be working her for very long" and so.. I asked if that lady was still working there.. and she said "I wouldn't know, there's no name to go along with the note."

Ok. Whatever. I get my 400.00 dollar bill knocked down to 150.00 and request my account be cancelled. She says ok, that will be 150.00 added for early termination fee. I said what the fuck are you talking about, I've been with this fucking company for 4 or 5 years, how the fuck am I still in a contract with you morons? She said "well, in december of 2003 it appears you purchased a new phone which started up a new 2 year contract."

I laughed for a bit.. and then asked if she was serious. And obviously, she was. Apparently, if you buy a new phone *EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE INSURANCE FOR IF YOUR OLD ONE BREAKS* you get put into a new contract. So, my contract is up december of this year. And that my friends.. is when I will never have to speak the name Cingular for as long as I live.

Also, I was nice as fuck at first. I was very respectful, no cursing nothing. Very calm. But when they kept bringing up the note for every point I made, I just flew off the handle.

I really want to break things.

Originally posted by SteveAustin@May 20 2005, 07:37 PM

I've got something like 500 anytime minutes and unlimited night and weekend. I haven't even come close to maxing out my minutes. Of course the longest I'll talk on the phone anymore is like 30 minutes.

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same here. i get 500 minutes a month for £30. doesnt change..

i get through about 100 - 150 mins a month.

I have Cingular...I havent really had any problems with them? I get good reception too everywhere.

Sorry I guess...?

I got pretty good reception at first too. Then recently there's been a lot of "emergency only" shit going on where I can't call anyone at all. and I can only call out of my apartment near windows and shit.

I'm glad you have been having a good experience. I was too up until acouple months ago.

if your paying for a phone at a promo price so really any thing under $400 then most likelly your getting your self into a contract....

Do you use an oline browser on your phone? to check your mail or messenger? That cranks up your minutes too..not too mention the fact they charge you for every MB you download and time your online...

:king:

http://wirelessimports.com/ProductCatalog.asp

No no, that's incorrect. If you use your insurance plan, you don't sign a contract. You pay a $50 deductible and get the same phone/comparable phone that was broken. Likely what happened was, you got a new phone (whether it was free or you payed something for it), switched to the new GSM network (which could account for your signal strength, the network isn't up completely everywhere yet), which came with new rate plans (a la your 250/1000 plan for $29.99), and signed a 2 year contract.

I'm familiar with all this because I work in Marketing for said company and we restructured the new rate plans recently. You actually should be on our 200 Day/1000 N&W plan for $29.99, which is the newer version of that rate plan, but you are grandfathered into that 250/1000 plan for now.

Your contract buy-out price is $10 for every month you have LEFT with a 2 year contract and $20 for every month you have LEFT with a 1 year contract. We are trying to call them agreements instead of contracts. To customers "contract" sounds too restrictive and binding, whereas "agreement" sounds like a mutual understanding.

And as for going over your minutes, we don't overcharge customers or add on extra used minutes. That is HIGHLY illegal and we could be sued via Class Action for that shit (a.k.a. millions of lost dollars/customers/trust/integrity). What happened is simple: you went over your minutes. Whether this was due to you not fully understanding your plan or you just lost track of minutes used is not known. What is known is that you did go over, and we charge 45 cents a min over for the $29.99 rate plan. Also keep in mind that Nights & Weekends start at 9:00 pm your time, end a 6:00 am. Let's say you call someone at 8:55 pm and don't get off until 9:55 pm. Just because you talked past 9:00 doesn't mean you are using your N&W minutes. You are charged for when the call originated, which means you are charged for 1 full hour/60 minutes of your Anytime minutes.

Man, it's very important you fuckers keep track of your minutes. 250 Day/Anytime minutes is a shit amount of minutes, only get this plan if you need it for emergencies or quick little "i'm at the store, what you need" type calls. Do a little math: 250 Day minutes w/20 days to be used (N&W isn't included) until your bill cycles, is an average of 12.5 minutes a day. 12.5 A DAY! You can eaaaasily go over that. Think about it. As for your N&W going over, assuming under a 30 day period, you used 1500 minutes during that billing cycle, that's only an average of 50 minutes a day. Again, not very many, especially considering that from Friday 9:00 pm allllll the way until Monday at 6:00 am, you are under N&W minutes. I would suggest picking up the $39.99 plan, you get 250 more anytime minutes (well, you will get 200 more) and you get 5000 N&W minutes plus Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile minutes, for only $10 more. It's worth it.

Anyhow, yeah Cingular is cool. We're 50 million customers strong and the main problem is we got a little too big all at one time and now we are trying to cope with that. People can say, "Well they should have prepared!" We did. We are talking about a 100% increase in customer base, and all that that comes with it. If you know the infrastructure of such an enormous task (the merge *acquisition*), then you should know that it's a process that takes TIME. We don't expect to fully recover and bounce back (start actually making money) from the acq, until 4th quarter this year. We're actually doing very well and expect to exceed our projections.

The end.

Originally posted by Tyler Durden@May 20 2005, 01:41 PM

I have Cingular...I havent really had any problems with them? I get good reception too everywhere.

 

 

Sorry I guess...?

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ya same here, ive had it for a month and everything is good so far.. except my brother was charged $300+ for the internet shit on his phone

Perfect, seldoon works for them.

What is your policy seldoon if I know for a fact the lady told me that my plan would be the same? Even if she left a note saying she did otherwise? Do you guys keep phone calls for up to a year? The lady I spoke with today said you do not use the recorded phone calls to prove what an employee did or didn't say.. but who would I need to speak to to see that that happens?

Also, if I call back and continue arguing with them about this will I be able to raise my account to the 40 dollars a month plan with 5000 minutes etc etc and just pay the extra 10 for last month and then start paying 10 a month starting now? I'm really not in the mood to talk to customer service people right now, because I will get angry.

T-moblie, get more!

Well, like I said, I'm in marketing, not customer service, so how long they keep the recorded calls is unknown to me. I do know we definately record calls, but it's random, not every call is recorded. And I doubt, based on expenses, that the recorded calls are kept that long. Maybe in some obscure database somewhere, but that's probably only for the police and feds to access to pursue criminals. I would give this avenue up. Spend your time concentrating on how to lower your bill. More on that in a minute.

There probably isn't much you can do about that note. Usually what the note says is what happened. An employee can and will get fired over grosse customer abuse, which is what that would be if she lied (I'm not saying you did, nor that she did). Basically, you know for a verbal fact, we know for a recorded (noted) fact.

Now, you're best bet would be to call customer service and try to get as much of that bill removed as possible. Say you are sorry, you weren't aware that you were over your minutes, please please please help me, I want to stay with Cingular (which is alluding to you leaving us if nothing is done. It's their job to prevent that, initially that is. We have a retention dept to really attempt to keep you if it comes down to it). Ask to change your rate plan to the $39.99 Nation 450 Rollover rate plan effective tonight. You'll see prorated charges on your next months bill for the rate plan change. I promise you, if you get pissed and start to yell, they will be less inclined to help you. Honey and Vinegar. You will probably just have to bite the proverbial bullet and pay about 150-200 for that bill. If they have to speak to their manager, which I assume they would for a credit that large, their manager is going to look at your history (cancellations, overages, etc), your ARPU (Account Revenue, basically how much money we make off you) and any previous credit given, which will all affect how much credit you receive.

Good luck, lemme know how it goes.

Originally posted by Seldoon@May 20 2005, 09:10 PM

Let's say you call someone at 8:55 pm and don't get off until 9:55 pm. Just because you talked past 9:00 doesn't mean you are using your N&W minutes. You are charged for when the call originated, which means you are charged for 1 full hour/60 minutes of your Anytime minutes.

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skamtastic.

can you hear me now

Originally posted by Seldoon@May 20 2005, 09:10 PM

which could account for your signal strength, the network isn't up completely everywhere yet

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So, tell me... why is it when my friend and I stand side by side with our cingular v551 phones. He gets full reception and I get nothing... that's gotta be the most frustrating gripe I have with my cell phone.

Originally posted by ...SaZiE_UnO...@May 20 2005, 12:32 PM

fuck cingular

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Raising the bar huh?

seldoon: i'm going to kidnap one of your pets until you get me a new phone and better reception.

This is why prepaid is awesome. Talk less on the phone and all problems will vanish.