Why have a phone when it doesn't work 80% of the time??!! UPDATED
Written: Dec 15 '04 (Updated Feb 06 '05)
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Pros: Not really any at all
Cons: VERY poor service, horrible customer service, just all around bad.
The Bottom Line: Find yourself a different service other than Cingular, they're just not worth the time and trouble.
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| djdizzy28's Full Review: Cingular Mobile Phone Service in Philadelphia |
After getting tired of paying the jacked up prices for a Nextel cell phone, I decided to go and look for another company to throw my money at. After doing some searching, I decided on Cingular and now I wonder why I ever made that decision.
Now, I use my cell phone for my disc jockey business being that nowadays with the Christmas season I'm on the road 90% of the day. It is very important that I have a link to my employees and customers that they can always reach me at 24/7. Cingular was far from able to provide that needed link. I purchased thier 800 minute plan which was about $65.00 a month which isn't all that bad in the way of pricing. If $65.00 is what it takes to make running my business easier then so be it. But paying that money out of my pocket each month for a service tat would either not give me a signal in half the places I went or would just up and disconnect me while in the middle of a phone call is just ridiculous.
The First Days
When I first got my Cingular service, I got the 800 minute package like I said and it came with this nice Cingular LG-1300 cell phone for free and Cingular requires you to sign up with a 2 year service plan. Normal price on this phone was around $80.00 so it wasn't that bad of a deal. The first few days I didn't use the phone all that much cause I was still getting my new number to all my employees and customers. But after those first few days I started seeing ALOT of problems with this service. Like I said, it would just not have any service at all or it would just hang up in the middle of a call. Now having an important business call with a client just disconnected on you right in the middle doesn't exactly make you seem all that professional. After about a week of dealing with this and making numerous appologies to my customers, I decided it was about time to call Cingular customer service and have at it with them.
Cingular Customer Service
Now, when you go and pay out money out of your pocket, you at least expect customer service to be at the least able to help you with your problem. In this case, Cingular's customer service was far from helpful. The first time I called I explained my problems to them and they told me that I had to turn off my phone for about 15 minutes so that some update could be sent to my phone and that would solve my signal/reception problem, so I did just that (I even left it turned off for about 45 minutes). When I turned my phone back on I decided I was going to call a friend of mine to test out this "update" that Cingular sent to my phone. Well I called him and about 5 minutes into the call it just disconnected me right out of nowhere again. Now when this disconnection problem happened, it wasn't like I was moving around. I was sitting in my chair out on my front porch so it's not like I moved into one of thier "dead zones" or anything. So after this called Cingular abck once again. This time they tell me that it might be my phone. The representative explained to me that every once in a while there is a batch of phones that go out that are faulty and have these kind of problems. So off I go back to the Cingular store to get a replacement cell phone that will supposedly fix my problem. Needless to say, I had the same exact problem even with this new phone.
So we go to call #3 to Cingular customer service. This time I got an answer I just wasn't expecting: "Sir, if your past 2 calls did not resolve your problem then obviously there is nothing that can be done about it." But yet they would not let me get out of this 2 year contract without paying thier early termination fees. After about 10 minutes of arguing and wasting my time I asked for the customer service supervisor. So I had to start all over once again and tell my story for the 4th time now. After explaining it all again the supervisor agrees that there is nothing that can be done but he is unwilling to let me out of the contract without paying the fees as well.
This argument went on with Cingular for about 3 week before I actually got somewhere. The last call I made to them I ended up talking to a manager this time. I spent about 45 minutes arguing my point with him and I was at the point where I was ready to snap. I told him that if they can not resolve my problem with thier service I would have to contact my lawyer and have him dispute this non performance problem with them. As soon as I said that, the manager turned around and had a whole different attitude. He asked me exactly what I wanted out of this. I told him that I wanted out of the contract and I refused to pay any fees and I also was not willing to pay my cell phone bill being that I had to go through so much aggravation during the whole time I had been using thier service. It took a little while but I finally got him to agree with me. So now I sit here with my new TMobile phone, which I am very happy with.
The bottom line is, if you don't want to have to deal with this kind of stuff from a phone company, then I suggest you find someone other than Cingular to bring your business to.
UPDATE: So it seems that even after the long conversation I had with the supervisor, that he didn't put the order through to end this whole fiasco. I recently received a collections notice about my Cingular bill. I called back Cingular, spoke to the supervisor I spoke to before and he claims he has no recollection or records of the conversation I had with him so therefore there is nothing that can be done. So after arguing with the collection agency for about an hour, I flat out told them that I was not going to be paying Cingular for thier lack of service. They told me to submit a letter explaining the situation with any people's phone numbers that can vouch for the constant disconnections and the process will go from there. So now I sit and wait for an answer to this very annoying problem with a company (Cingular) that really does not care about thier customers, only the money.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 115.00
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Epinions.com ID:
djdizzy28
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Member: Scott
Location: Lansdale, Pa
Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 2 members
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