I chose a Cingular Service Plan because I was looking for a very inexpensive plan ($19.99) and had been a Cellular One customer for a number of years. Verizon and Cingular had similar plans so I went with Cingular. I am sorry to say that the Chicagoland office that controls my account is very poor with information, customer service and accurate bookkeeping. I made a payment by phone in June and got a confirmation number for it. It didn't show up as paid when I went to get my teenage son a prepaid phone plan at Cingular. Time and time again, over many phone calls, they showed the confirmation number, but couldn't find the actual payment. They said "don't worry, as long as you have a confirmation number". Well in July, after a very harassing phone call in which the person wanted me to fax a copy of my credit card statement to PROVE that I had made the payment, I told the person I was speaking to that it was their bookkeeping error. They turned my phone off! When I discovered that, I called them, yet again. They did eventually find that the payment was put in someone else's account, and there was literally ONE person out of at least a dozen that I have spoken with, who was kind, courteous, and knew it had never been my fault. Well, my next bill arrived and STILL did not show that payment, plus had added late charges. It took THREE people to get someone to send me a letter that showed what I actually owed on the next bill. So you would think that that was it. NO, it wasn't. I sent my own letter with the letter I was faxed from Cingular along with my next payment. Yesterday I got a call on my voicemail to call someone at that office about my letter. I thought it would be a courteous person offering an apology, but he said that he didn't receive a payment with that letter!!! GEEZ, then, of course he found that I HAD sent a payment with the letter. The thing is, that it is the attitude & continuous inefficiency at that office--in Schaumburg--that is what makes this whole situation horrible. It's not even the misplaced payment as much as it is person after person after person who is accusatory, harassing, and takes no responsibility in any way (except for that ONE person). The icing on the cake that prompted me to write this review is that I sent an email to the Cingular website customer service telling them about this situation and making it clear that it wasn't so much the mistake as it was the way it was handled and the way I was treated. They just sent me back a short businesslike email telling me they are sorry for the misapplied payment and what I owe on my NEXT bill. They didn't "get it." So my suggestion is, when you are looking for a phone service, ask people who have had a problem, how the customer service is. Every business makes errors, it's how those errors are handled that make happy customers. If this is an indication of how all of the Cingular offices operate, they won't be in business very long.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 19.99