Customer disservice: Burned by Cingular

Fidelity Observer is a reluctant mobile phone user. I have talked about it before, but it needs to be discussed again. I put off getting a mobile phone as long as I could -- I didn't talk much on the phone, the plans seemed like an expensive commitment, and I didn't want my life to be dominated by the phone the way my friends' lives were. I eventually caved when my wife was pregnant with our first child, and wanted the reassurance of being able to instantly communicate in case of an emergency. But I still got only the bare essentials -- a pay-as-you-go plan with AT&T Wireless' cheapest and bulkiest phone. We bought two phones, one for me, and one for my wife.

We have kept the 1990s-era phone (and a slightly smaller 2002 model that my wife uses) through all of these years, along with the pay-as-you-go plan. I still don't talk much with friends, but on several occasions the phone has been great to have for car emergencies and shopping coordination. But recently I've noticed a change in the service I'm getting from Cingular, which acquired AT&T Wireless a few years back. First there was some monkeying around with the pre-paid programs' pricing. Then there was the experience I had today, which brought to light three major problems with Cingular's service

1) An inability to buy over the phone more minutes just before my current minutes expired -- the automated system hung up on me when I attempted to buy time on either phone
2) An inability to register online to manage my Cingular account, or use my old logon information from AT&T Wireless.
3) An inability to get anyone on the phone to discuss these problems, or buy more minutes

A little background: I usually buy $25 dollars worth of minutes (I think about 100 minutes) which last for 90 days, unless you renew before the time is up, in which case they'll last another 90 days. That's expensive, I'm sure, compared to the plans most people use, but I'm only paying about $100 a year for connectivity (plus another $100 for my wife). we have a few hundred minutes stored up on each phone, which we want to keep. That's why it was so important to get through to buy more minutes.

But the phone tree just dumped me at the instant I pressed "2" to indicate that I wanted to make a purchase with a major credit card. No reason was given -- the system said "Thank you for using Cingular!" and hung up.

Hmm. Let's try online. I went to the Cingular site, indicated I was a former AT&T customer, entered our phone numbers, but no dice: They couldn't register this type of account. My old AT&T logon info didn't work either.

OK, so let's talk with a human. Dial the 866 number. Navigate through the tree, then press 0 to speak with a human. Listen to some not-bad jazz, and the repeated messages about how important I am, and apologies for keeping me waiting.

But no human ever came on. I got on before 1 pm, and hung up at 1:20 pm, angry at my inability to conduct two simple transactions or speak with someone who can help.

Keep in mind that I am not a nuisance customer for Cingular. I am a loyal customer. I use old equipment, pay high per-minute fees, don't receive any paper mailings, almost never bother their human reps, and in this case, only wanted to pay them more money. But I wasn't able to get through.

And I am not the only one having problems. Seattle Duck, another AT&T orphan, has also had a trying experience with Cingular. Here are some more blog posts about Cingular.

Is it time for me to ditch the 1990s brick and get a new phone and new service provider? Any companies I should steer clear of?



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