Cingular- The Worst Customer Service

Around the House
Cingular- The Worst Customer Service
By Cynthia Kirkeby
Jan 26, 2008, 16:15

Once again Cingular proves itself to have the worst customer service in the world of cell phones. If you're looking to sign up for a plan or your plan is about to lapse, run don't walk to sign up with anyone other than Cingular.

I have a family plan, originally on AT&T before the merger. If you want to read the horror story about trying to switch to the Cingular side of the Cingular/AT&T merger please read my article on Abandoned by Cingular. One of the phones belongs to my son. I pay $9.99 per month to have him on the plan.

He picked out an inexpensive phone at the time we signed up, and I gave him the option of taking out insurance on the phone. He chose not to. The retail price on his phone was listed at approximately $60 when we signed up, although it was very inexpensive of course when you sign up for the plan. He did the math and decided that he could replace the phone for less than the cost of insurance if he didn't lose it for a little more than a year.

Unfortunately the phone has gone missing and we have attempted to replace the phone...to no avail. Each Cingular store we walked into told us that the cheapest phone that they could sell us was $140.00. What about the $60.00 phones? "Oh," they would tell us, "we don't keep those in stock."

So I went online to buy a new phone for him and there were many phones listed as having retail prices under $50, none of which they would sell me. "Those are only available to new customers or to customers upgrading, but you're not elligible to upgrade your equipment." As of today, Cingular only shows one phone with a $29.99 retail price (see screenshot of the Cingular site).

screenshot of $30.00 cell phone on the Cingular site. Date of image 7/26/06 Photo taken by Cynthia Kirkeby

I would tell them that the phone online showed a "retail price" of X amount and a special new customer price of $0.00, and all I wanted was to purchase it at the listed "retail price." But NO, the cheapest phone that they have for an existing customer online is $120.00!

So I said, then cancel the extra line (which the sales rep said I could change at any time - don't believe it). Sure they would cancel it, but there would be a cancellation fee of $150!

Cingular has the singular worst customer service!

So now I am on the hunt for a phone through a third party. Thank god for companies like eBay. This will be more work, but at least I won't be handing over a rediculous $140.00 to an unethical company like Cingular.

If you have a choice, choose someone else. At the very least talk to someone else that is using them, and see if they have had any better luck. I read a recent study showing that they had the worst customer service of all cellular companies, and if anyone is having the kind of experiences that I have been having... I have no doubt that it's true.