A wireless carrier by any other name...

If you read my old blog before it was migrated here, you probably know about my earlier misadventures with AT&T wireless regarding the lack of signal in midtown Manhattan on my iPhone.

Well, in cleaning out some older items in my gmail account today, I came across this gem of an email I'd sent to Cingular president Stan Sigman back in June 2006 after numerous problems using my phone overseas. Cingular/AT&T really just absolutely suck at customer service.

Mr. Sigman,

On two previous occasions I have taken the time to send an e-mail via the Cingular contact page I found via Google (you certainly go out of your way to maintain anonymity from customers) following months of frustration in trying to find some form of help from your customer service staff via phone, your website, or in one of your store locations in New York. I am taking the time to send this e-mail as there has been NO resolution to the issues I have been having for almost an entire year, and continuing to follow the same patterns of contact have proven themselves to be ineffective. My hope is that some how, some way, this finds its way to you so you can fully understand what exactly your support staff does, and the steps I am prepared to take to resolve this issue once and for all.

Before I do that, let me recap exactly what has been going on since I signed on with Cingular a little over a year ago.

In March 2005, my fiancé and I visited the Cingular location on 86th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; at the time, we were both customers of AT&T Wireless and were in the process of being migrated to Cingular. We had decided to purchase a family share plan, and spent time shopping around at Verizon and T-Mobile (as our contracts had both expired and we were paying month-to-month). At Cingular's store (technically it was still an AT&T location, but was in the process of being converted), I spoke with a rep and explained what our needs were: we wanted a shared phone plan with text messaging and the ability to use our phone overseas, in particular while in the UK and Ireland. I stressed this point particularly as we had a wedding coming up in September of 2006, and would be spending some time there in the months leading up to the wedding and needed to be able to make phone calls while we were in Co. Clare  (western Ireland).

The rep assured me at the time that a tri-band phone would be fine, and I wound up purchasing a Nokia 3120b phone, along with an international calling plan at a cost of 3.99 a month which, I was told, would keep the cost of roaming charges down.

All this was fine until I actually visited Ireland in September of 2005 and had no service for the entirety of the two weeks that I was there. And not only did I not have service, but neither did my fiancé, whose Motorola phone is also a tri-band, and the in-store rep assured us both phones would work fine.

At cost to myself, I placed a phone call to Cingular international support to find out why I was not able to pull a signal; the first rep I spoke to dismissed the problem and said there was probably no service in the area (a ridiculous notion, considering another person traveling with us had a Verizon phone and was roaming with Vodaphone service); I was subsequently transferred to someone else who suggested the possibility that the tri-band phone was unable to pull a signal to allow me on the network.

Now, I'm fairly certain you can understand the immediate rage I felt at this suggestion. I had been fairly clear in my request for both a PLAN and a PHONE that would work while in Ireland, and now I was being told by a support staff member that my phone was incapable of being used over there.

Immediately upon my return to the United States, I returned to the Cingular store on 86th Street in Brooklyn only to find that the rep who sold me the phone no longer worked there; when I explained the problem I was told two things: 1) My phone should work just fine in the UK, and 2) I should call Cingular for any future issues. When I explained that I bought the phone in their store and they had some obligation to help me, they stated that they sold phones, they didn't support them. I would need to call Cingular support directly for help.

So I did. I logged another call to find out if my phone was capable of working in Ireland, and the rep I spoke to first asked "Where is Ireland? Is that in Europe or something?" The call quickly went downhill from there, where I was told, yet again, that the phone should work fine, "with no problems" while I was in Ireland. I also asked that my text messaging plan be checked because I had not received a text message in several months; I was told there was no problem on that end, either.

I once again visited Ireland in February, and again, had no signal to be able to use my phone. In addition to this, my fiancé's phone, which began experiencing bad static in late December, reached a point where she could not be heard on either incoming or outgoing calls. We both visited the Cingular store in-person in February, and wound up talking to Cingular support on the phone while in the store. The in-store tech spent half an hour assuring the phone rep that there was no water damage to the phone, and I was told that the phone would be replaced via mail and covered under the warranty. Once the new phone was received, she sent the old one back in the same box.

Two weeks later I received a letter from Cingular stating that I was being charged for the phone because there was water damage.

Remembering my frustration at going through normal channels the previous time this happened, I sent an e-mail to you (or someone who gets messages sent to you through the Cingular website) lodging my complaint about both this issue and the problems I was having getting reception in Ireland. I was soon contacted by Katrina Halstead, who, after reviewing the records, agreed that a mistake had been made in charging me for the replacement phone and removed that from my account. Additionally, she stated that my phone was a tri-band phone, and there was no reason it should not work while I was overseas. After numerous phone calls explaining the problem, she promised to have a tech look into the problem and get back to me.

I was never contacted by anyone, and I left Katrina a message stating as much. She didn't get back to me, either.

Finally, I again visited Ireland, and, shockingly, again had no service. Upon my return, I visited a Cingular location near my office in midtown Manhattan on Park Avenue and 50th Street, only to be told that they do not provide support in their store and I would need to call customer service support.

So, once again, I contacted your office through the Cingular website and again stated my frustration at continually having this problem. In addition, I also mentioned that I had still not been receiving text messages for some time; I also learned that my fiancé was not receiving text messages I had been sending to her. At this point, I felt that as a holdover long-time customer of AT&T, I was entitled to something back, since I have been paying for services that Cingular is clearly not providing.

Three days after sending this complaint I received a message from Winifred Dryer (sp?), who stated the following:

- nothing was wrong with my account and my text messaging should be fine (it's not); if I called Cingular support they can try to troubleshoot the problem but I would not be entitled to any refunds;

- a quad-band phone is required to work in Ireland as they operate on cycles of 800 and 1800 MHz, and the tri-band phone I use operates at 900 and 1900 MHz; the international plan I have been paying every month since April 2005 would also not be credited back, despite the fact that I have never been able to use it.

Her message cuts off after just over a minute, but I did return the call to let her know that this was no an acceptable response, and asked for a call back to clarify. Two weeks later, I have still not been contacted, although I did attempt to contact support through your website; I was told that "network problems" were responsible for the issues with my text messaging problems. Nothing more specific than that, just "network problems".

At this stage of the game, I think it's fair to say that your support has been, in polite terms, an absolute joke. I have been paying for text messaging that doesn't work; I have been paying for an international plan that I can't use because the phone I purchased to use overseas does not WORK overseas.

Worst of all, too many of your employees have been all too eager to tell me that everything "should be working fine from what we see on our end".

As things stand right now, this issue is going to play out in one of two ways.

1) You can release me from the remainder of my Cingular contract and allow me to find another carrier to port my numbers to; if you do not wish to do so, I will have the numbers ported over to another carrier anyway and pursue this matter legally to terminate the remainder of the Cingular contract;

2) There is an acknowledgement from Cingular that they have provided poor support in resolving this problem, and steps are taken to rectify these issues, in the form of credit to my account or providing me with a quad-band phone capable of doing what I asked for fifteen months ago.

I know there have been complaints about your customer service support previously from reading up on a number of consumer report sites; the past nine months of Cingular service have been an absolute disaster, and, quite frankly, I am tired of giving your company my money when there are carriers out there who may be able to provide what I need.

I would appreciate some form of communication on your end, to let me know that you have received this letter, and that someone within this organization has an interest in something resembling quality customer appreciation.

Comments

[Peter F. Freep]

For those of us who havn't been at your old blog, could you add a short update to that singular saga? Perhaps in these comments would be preferable to a new blog entry ..... I'm hanging on to the fading signal.

[Joe Reiter]

the cingular saga ended with them crediting me two months of service and providing my wife and i with (at the time) new razrs

then they were sold off to at&t and the saga began all over again