My better half and I are about to leave cingular after our most recent two year nation-wide plan went very sour.
Over the last year, we've had two or three occasions where the minutes listed on the bill are SO far out of whack with our calling habits that we started to get suspicious. Once or twice we called in but were only able to get vague explanations and excuses why "that's just the way it is", with only one or two calls credited back.
Now, as our account is coming up to its two year minimum period we get a HUGE bill, padded of course on the minutes side to numbers we normally take and receive calls from. It's like you'll see two or three calls with a minutes range that's normal then an extra one right after that's not. Like:
08/01 - 3:30pm - Joe Shmo's number - incoming - 6 min
08/01 - 5:00pm - Joe Shmo's number - outgoing - 3 min
08/01 - 5:11pm - Joe Shmo's number - outgoing - 12min
...all over the f---ing bill from every common number.
And then this was my favorite:
08/01 - MY number here - INCOMING - 5min
08/01 - my number here - incoming - 3 min
08/02 - my number here - incoming - 2 min
08/02 - my number here - incoming - 7 min
08/04 - my number here .... you get the idea
To a tune of about 40 f---ing minutes (can you tell I'm pissed?) @ $.45 each per.
The best part is that my phone tracks the last ten calls made and received, and between two sample dates that I used to test it, there are 9 calls on my latest bill that do NOT show up on my phone, even though there are calls on my phone log the day before AND after that DO show up.
Here are the Cingular explanations:
C: "Well sir, even though the incoming call lists your number, it was somebody else's number, we just couldn't track it so we put yours in there... but trust us, you took these calls".
Me: Ohhh-k. How am I suppose to verify that I took all these incoming calls if I don't even have an area code to go by?
C: "Well sir, our system works pretty good, unfortunately there's no way for you to check, but you took those calls."
Me: So you're asking me to pay for a service I can't even verify that I used?
C: "Unfortunately sir, yes that's the way the system works."
Me: What about the calls on my bill - from just a two day sample - that do not show up anywhere on my phone even though 9 show up on the bill, not including voice mail? Not only that, I have calls both incoming and outgoing the days before AND after this two day sample, some with multiple calls of each type on the same day.
"Well sir, you can't really trust your phone to accurately track calls. The software could be bad. You can't go by what your phone says."
Me: When we bought the phones, they told us a good way to track our usage is by checking our call logs, and that the software updates itself over the network.
C: "Quite honestly sir, it's really not a good way to check your calls. You can't rely on your phone to do that."
Me: Then how am I suppose to watch my minutes and know the status of thing if I can't use the phone the way your sales rep said we could?
(and I'm not making this up)
"If you feel you're going over your minutes, check your phone each month periodically to check the totals."
So of course, after about 10 minutes of back and forth and being as polite as I could muster I very calmly said:
"I understand you don't write your billing policies and that you may need a manager's approval for certain things, so I don't mind waiting to get this straightened out. All I can tell you is, I have over a half hour's worth of incoming calls to myself that I have no way to verify. I have call logs on my phone that directly contradict your bill and you're telling me I can't use the log to get a credit because my Cingular phone software is unreliable. I have numbers I don't recognize and you're telling me I can't get a credit for those.
Why don't you go talk to someone and see what you can do for some or all of it, because if do nothing we're going to closely evaluate whether we have any reason to stay with Cingular after our two year agreement."
And of course he goes away and comes back with "I can't help you I'm sorry sir" and that was it.
So here's what Cingular does:
Cingular pads your bills with calls you can't verify.
Cingular tacks on minutes to people you commonly call.
Cingular will not credit back calls you've researched and still don't recognize.
Cingular will tell you their phones have great features to track your usage, but when you use those features to question your bill, they tell you the phone can't be trusted.
Cingular will, at the end of your service term, pad your bill heavily in all the ways above if you haven't purchased new phones, add-on services, etc. They know you're going to leave because you haven't been a good little consumer, buying all their new shit every year, so they fuck you before you go.