Cingular's old, bad habits at the new AT&T Wireless

If you've been following this blog, you know I've been having lot's of fun with Cingular as the result of a 14 day trial of their service via a 3rd party retailer in Utah, Spring Communications. This latest entry is the notes I typed up during my call today to Cingular. (yes, it is awkward sounding but grammatically correct) I received a $400 bill a few days back. This bill was supposed to show either a zero balance, or at worst show a $50+ balance that would be wiped out in the next monthly billing cycle.

The summary is this: if you have no job and nothing better to do, and if you can keep good notes from each of your conversations with people at a monolithic enterprise, you just *might* finally get them to do as they promised.

Here are the notes. Gosh, they're L O N G!

04-23-07 T/C Cingular re: Bill Due April 24th of $400.24. (Argh!) Called at 1:22 PM CST. Pressed "0" at 1:24 PM. Pressed "0" again for a "real" person, and choose to NOT participate in their "customer service survey" (why can't the live person I deal with actually find out how I feel about this?). I got Barry (male) phone login ID #30538. I very briefly explained what happened. I also told him that I had spent at least a solid 10 hours of my time on this problem in various telephone calls to Cingular since returning the phones. He sees what happened. He assures me that since that bill in my hand for April 24th is not correct. He states that the early termination fees ($175.00 x 2 phones = $350.00) should not be on there. The CURRENT charges of $57.60 still ARE owed to Cingular because (1) the connection fees are owed if you don't return the phones within 72 hours; and (2) actual usage charges I ran up during the days I actually had the service. Start of service fees still must be paid. I tried to explain that the promotion to which I had responded was "if you're not satisfied, return the equipment within 14 days and owe us nothing". Barry said he reviewed all the promotions in the Pacific market from last December to present and Cingular has had no such promotion. Barry was getting a bit too much into 'lecture mode' here. 72 hours to return phones for no "start of service fees". I had to stop him and ask if it was possible that Spring Communications could have had such a promotion without Cingular being aware of it. "Absolutely", Barry said. He continued, "That's why it is "buyer beware" when you go to a 3rd party..." retailer. He actually said that!! Barry said that after he and I finished today that I would have to take up the matter of the remaining $57.60 with Spring Communications. He then asked if I had any written documentation of the 14 day promotion from Spring (if I did, maybe he could help me out). So, what I did was start to read Barry my notes from my March 21 conversation with "Berre", a female. These notes make it very clear that Cingular had already agreed to waive the $57.60 and completely zero out my account.
Barry put me on hold, then came back to say he has a floor supervisor to make sure he does everything right. Back on hold. Person I spoke to on March 21 was actually Brianna. The supervisor's name is Bradley (don't know his last name) and Bradley's getting this all fixed while I sit here and wait on the line. Not on hold, I can hear Barry typing his notes while I type mine! OK, Barry came back to say that the notes he's going through DO say "zero, zero, zero all the way through" (as in, I should owe nothing when it's all done). BUT, it seems that nobody actually got it done, or at least not completely done, to make sure it's really ZERO. Barry was much friendlier once he went back and read alllll the notes of phone calls I've had with them, and he was appropriately apologetic about that. I said I assumed it had to do with the merger of AT&T Wireless and Cingular billing systems...He laughed and said "ok, well go with THAT"....then he said no, not really. That isn't the problem here. It's just "driver error" or "user error" - people just didn't get it done. OK! It's all done!....silence! Barry had to yell for boss to come back. Yes, the boss sat nearby and actually fixed it all right now, so it's a ZERO balance. OK, he can't generate a bill or anything like that to send me, but he did suggest calling back in 5 minutes and asking a representative "what is the balance on my account?" Barry was much friendlier once he went back and read alllll the notes of phone calls I've had with them, and he was appropriately apologetic about that. Barry actually told me that we were on the phone for about one half-hour shortly before the conversation ended.