Over the past few weeks, our family has noticed that the quality of service we are receiving from Cingular continues to drop off. After spending 49 minutes on the phone with “customer no service”, I thought I’d share the experience.
I have a DATA account with Cingular. This option allows me to use my cell phone as a GPRS modem. When connected to my laptop, I get around 155kbs cellular data connection to the Internet. It is a great resource when I am on the road, allowing my to check email from anywhere I can get a decent connection.
Last week, I wasn’t able to connect. The Motorola software kept popping up an error about makign sure I was subscribed to the proper service. Well, let me tell you, at $59 a month, I’m sure I’m subscribed. Calls to technical support resulted in a bunch of “we don’t knows”.
So today, I need to get a hold of Lisa, my wife. She is having lunch with Caleb at school and I didn’t want to disturb her. So I went to the Cingular website to send her a text message. The form kicks back an error that the number I entered (her cell phone number) was invalid. I try to send her one from my cell phone. The message never leaves the outbox.
Ok, enough is enough. I call customer service.
After waiting on hold, I get a level 1 customer service representative. She asks my name and DOB. She asks why I didn’t choose one of the options in the system but chose to wait for her. I reply that I had a number of issues that didn’t all fall into the same categories.
- Unable to send text messages to wife’s phone
- My $59 data options were not working
- CallerId continues to come up as “Wireless caller”
- Deleted voicemails continue to return to my new messages queue
- Delays of up to 2 hours for wife to be notified of missed calls and new voicemails.
- I am unable to call my daughter’s phone
Unable to Send text messages to wife’s phone
The representative tried multiple times to send a message but received the same errors that I had experienced. She entered a ticket and moved it on up the line.
Delay’s in delivery of notifications of missed calls and new voicemails
The official answer I received was that “network congestion” can affect the delivery. Network congestion? Cingular has a cold? Come on. This is a blow off answer.
CallerId continues to come up as “Wireless caller”
This particular problem was one of the lesser on the list. But she must have thought it would be easier to solve my minor issues, make my partially happy, then delay resolution of the larger items. Whatever the case may have been, this particular issue was what encouraged me to ask for a supervisor.
Forty five days or so ago, I called Cingular to ask when our caller id was showing up as a generic “wireless caller” when we called other phones, both cell and land lines. I was told that a flag in our account has been changed and the rep at that time made the change, or so I was told, to have each of our three names show up on the appropriate calls.
The level 1 representative today tells me there has been a policy change based upon a new requirement from the FCC that all CallerID information must match the person whose social the carrier has on file. Ok, that might be, but I’v not been notified of such a change. Yes you were, on a bill, the representative tells me. It was on page 3. I get an official notification of service change on page three of my bill? If it was so official, why wasn’t the previous representative privy to the change? Ok, not a problem. I ask for them to send me a copy of the new policy referencing the FCC rule. They can’t do that. It is not their problem if a customer chooses not to read all the information in the billing envelopes. By this time, the representative is rather hostile, not only in tone, but in her words. I ask for a supervisor. “Gladly” she says.
The supervisor has no problem resending my a copy of the bill that contained the notifications. She documents the remainder of the issues and transfers me to level 2 customer support.
The timer on my phone now reads forty three minutes. A gentleman takes the call. He asks for the number in question. He asks for my name. He then asks for the last four digits of the social on the account. Wait, I’m not the primary account holder. My authentication is based upon DOB.
“I’m sorry sir, we have a new policy….”