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For this story I have waited a year from it’s start, so as to give my former cell phone company a chance to respond to me. If anyone who reads this blog uses Cingular I recommend that you run the other way and find another cell phone company as fast as you can. Do you think I am overreacting? I don’t, read on for why.

Originally I was with AT&T Wireless for three years. During that time I never had any real problems other than a few minor billing issues. The service was great and the customer service was pretty good. Then in 2004 Cingular and AT&T Wireless announced their doomed merger and impending downfall. At first I had no problems with merger, since it allowed me to save up minutes using Cingular’s rollover minutes. As I look back on it the service went down hill as well. I started having more problems being able to make a call and more dropped calls. Since Cingular and AT&T Wireless used different types of phones and networks I assumed maybe it was their way of phasing out the AT&T Wireless network.

Fast forward to December 2004, I decided it was time to upgrade my phone and switch over to the Cingular network completely. The phone I chose was the Motorola MPX220, a windows based smart phone and the biggest POS on the face of the planet. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, but back to my story. For about 4 months everything worked great, until about mid april on a business trip my phone started rebooting itself into a ROM programming mode. It would reboot just fine and the phone would work until it decided to reboot into ROM mode again. Imagine waiting for an important call only to find out you missed it because your phone decided it wanted to be in a programming mode rather than in a calling mode.

Once I returned back from my trip then the real fun began. It took an hour and a half on hold and only 10 minutes actually talking to a live person to be told that my phone was malfunctioning, but the fun didn’t stop there. The customer service representatives have no actual power to actually get a replacement(even within a warranty) from there the only department that can handle replacements is the RMA department. After 4 failed transfers I finally got the direct number, not that it helps much. It took about 4 hours in total to actually talk to a live person, once I did I was informed that my phone was on backorder and it wouldn’t be available for at least a week or so. When I finally received the replacement phone I sent my old one back immediately thinking nothing of it. The next morning I received…or at least attempted to receive a phone call. It was then that I discovered that my new phone didn’t work. I could hear people just fine, but no one could hear me.

Luckily I had a second phone for work that I could use in order to get ahold of Cingular once again. First I had to get ahold of customer service again and then the RMA department. Except this time my phone was backordered for a minimum of two weeks(is this starting to sound like a broken record yet?). Towards the end of the second week I called the RMA department again and was told that my phone was still backordered and that nothing could be done about it. I wasn’t about to stand for that at all, so I asked to speak with a supervisor who after arguing with him for a few minutes he finally offered to send me a different phone temporarily until my phone came into stock. I received that phone a week later and at least had service.

Once I actually had a working phone I called customer service again and asked for a credit for the time that I was unable to use my service. Now keep in mind my airtime only charges averaged about $79 dollars a month. Customer service decided that I was only entitled to an $18 credit with nearly 3 weeks without service. A few days later my replacement for my original phone showed up, but this time I decided to test it first. It’s probably a good thing that I did, since this new phone refused to power-up. At this point it was mutually agreed upon between myself and Cingular that we should give up on my phone and have it replaced by a comparable phone both in price and features.

Unfortunately I don’t remember what phone the attempted to replace mine with. I only remember that it cost less than half as much as I had originally spent months ago and it was missing major features that I had originally chosen that phone for. They did this not once, twice or even three times, but five times. During this time I talked to multiple agents who agreed that I should be getting a different phone, but every time I received the “replacement,” I still got the same phone. Around mid-July I called Cingular and informed them that I would be moving my service elsewhere, however, when I told them this they offered me a month’s free service. This flabbergasts me because when I didn’t have phone service for 3 weeks I only got $18, but when I threaten to cancel they offer me a full month’s bill. On July 22, 2005 I moved my service to Verizon Wireless and haven’t had any problems since.

Epilogue: Shortly after transferring my number to Verizon, I also sent a letter to Cingular’s corporate office describing all of my problems. In it I asked that they waive they cancellation fee since I couldn’t get a working cell phone, or a cell phone that was at least comparable to the one I had and because I had been dealing with this issue for over two and a half months. I never received any response Verizon when they decided to send me to collections in September. I payed the bill before it went to the collections agency and affected my credit. Next I wrote Cingular another letter and once again have never heard from them.

What is with all the letter writing you may ask? Well in order for any kind of a complaint or dispute to be worked on you must write to Cingular’s corporate office. Nothing can be done or tracked by the customer service reps, so there is no way to know if anyone even received it. Unless of course you send the letter registered mail so that you receive confirmation. I neglected that step so it’s my own fault on that part, so learn from my mistake if you ever need to deal with this yourself.