In July of 2004, I purchased a phone and plan through the then-current AT&T Wireless, knowing since May or June that Cingular was going to buy out the Wireless division of AT&T. I was very happy with my service but ended up 1) getting injured on the job, taking 3 months off work and 2) breaking my phone and thus "suspending" my account until I had the money to replace the phone. My understanding was that I would be able to suspend the account (translation: no service, no pay) until I could pay the charges up to that month of use, and purchase a new phone. This was in the first part of November.

I received a call from Cingular Billing in January saying that my account was delinquent. I had not paid the November balance because I had forgotten that it was not a pro-rated bill, meaning I got billed after I completed the month of use. Example: Octobers use = November bill etc...
That was my mistake. However, they showed no record of the suspension on my account.

Short story: I kept getting a different result each time they called because it was a different person each time (which doesn't make sense) however, I believe this was because of the snafu with the merger. It was said that it would be phased in by October 15, as in all AT&T towers and all Cingular towers would all work on the same network. I have no doubts as to this. But the cust. service department had not yet gotten up to date. This is why I think I had misinformation on these different occasions.

The result? I paid the remaining balance, somehow managed to waive the early termination fee, told them I did not want my account reinstated, and now am looking into buying another Cingular plan because of their awesome coverage.

In short: I think we should give them a chance to work out the bugs: one big corporation that had just bought another earlier, bought a portion of another (AT&T) and because of that we should not expect everything to be perfect. Well, I found out by doing a little research that the reason for the buyout was due to AT&T's terrible customer service. I believe that when all is said and done, Cingular will win out not only because it's all-digital coverage that they are phasing in is better than any other networks analog and digital combined, but because they will prove that they can have awesome customer service. Let's give them some more time; cell phone coverage in Chicago is always bad, as with all big cities (high call volume, skyscrapers,)

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 167.00