I don't normally do this, but recently I had a customer service experience so bad that it warrants a little public outcry. If anything, maybe someone searching on cingular sucks or suncom sucks in the future will see this entry near the top of the list.

My wife and I had been loyal AT&T Wireless/Cingular customers for the last 4 years since we've been living in North Carolina. The reception was decent and the customer service was hit or miss, but overall we couldn't complain too much (the bar was low considering how bad cell phone companies suck in general). Then came the SunCom/Cingular deal this past summer. SunCom was going to take over Cingular's customers in North Carolina and Cingular was going to take over SunCom's customers in Virginia. The result was a qualified disaster. SunCom lost over 60,000 customers and had over 250 complaints with the NC Attorney General because of outages and poor service.

It all started on a Thursday in late July. My wife's phone stopped picking up a signal. After a few hours of this, I called Cingular. They told me that the SunCom/Cingular switchover was going to happen over the weekend and that I should have received two letters informing us of this. We never received a single letter about it. It didn't matter anyway because we were without service on Thursday, so the weekend hadn't even started.

Four days later and after numerous calls to Cingular and SunCom, we finally picked up a signal again.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of our problems. Here is a list of the issues we were to experience over the next 5 months:

- Caller ID didn't work on the phone. The phone would just show "Incoming call".
- When we called someone from the phone, our Caller ID info was incorrect (so people often wouldn't pick up our call).
- People would tell us that they left us a vmail, but we never received it.
- We stopped receiving vmail notification on the cell phone, which we found out the hard way.
- Reception went from bearable to very poor. Many times we'd have to call someone back in the hope of reducing the static.

To top it off, we'd call SunCom to tell them about the problems and they'd blame it on Cingular. Then we'd call Cingular and guess what? They'd blame it on SunCom. They were pointing fingers at each other and neither would address our problems. We logged several cases that went unresolved. When we powered on the phone it would show as being connected to SunCom, but our bill always said Cingular.

In October, we decided something had to change. Fortunately our contract was about to run up so we wouldn't have to worry about some ridiculous early termination fee. The only reason we considered staying with Cingular/SunCom is the package we had through my employer was really good. She called both companies to give them one last chance to resolve things. SunCom said they couldn't do anything and that it was a Cingular problem. She called Cingular and told them that unless the cases are resolved within a month that she was going to terminate her contract and not pay the last bill. They told her they understood and would work to resolve her problems.

We gave them two months, but in early December nothing had been resolved. We decided to switch to Sprint. Got a new phone and new service. Reception was great. Caller ID actually worked. Vmail notification actually worked. My wife called Cingular and told them to discontinue the service and that she wouldn't be paying the final bill as indicated before.

A couple of weeks ago we received a "final bill" from them. I called them this time to let them know the story and tell them we settled all this in December. What followed was truly the worst customer service experience I've ever had, which is saying a lot between all the bad customer service experiences I've had with cable companies, home builders, and home owners associations.

I called Cingular and a guy took my call. He didn't sound very enthusiastic and kept saying "sir" in a condescending way that people forced to say the word typically use. I told him the short version of the above story. His first question was "You received service for the last month, correct?" At this point I got an inclination that this wasn't going to go as smoothly as my wife's previous call. I told him that my wife had terminated the contract the previous month, told the rep we wouldn't be paying the bill, and the rep indicated to her that the matter was taken care of. This guy repeated: "You received service." We went back and forth for a few minutes and eventually I gave him the long story. I asked, "So if we receive horrible service, experienced all the problems we did, and logged cases that went unresolved, are we still suppose to be charged in full?" Even the cable company has given me credit in the past when I informed them of a prolonged outage or spotty service. He replied, "Well sir, you used 358 minutes so you used the service." Considering we typically use closer to 900 minutes a month, 358 is an indication that we tried to avoid using the phone. So I retorted, "But caller ID didn't work, we didn't receive vmail, and the reception was bad." He then told me that caller ID was programmed on the phone and that it wasn't their problem. I told him we didn't change anything and all of a sudden it stopped working (in both directions) and somehow that was our fault? Same thing with vmail notification. He told me that those services are "courtesy" only and not something they actually bill for. They only charge for access to the network. Once you are on the network, it is out of their hands. "Wow," I said. Caller ID and vmail notification is part of the cost of doing business in the cell phone business so they can't just say the quality of those services don't matter because they aren't directly billing for them. I started to get a little hot at this point. I told him that I wanted him to repeat what he just said because I was going to write it down. This is when the call took a very negative turn.

The rep's voice stiffened up and said, "Sir, are you recording this?". I came back with: "What if I am?" I told him that, "When I first called, the automated voice said that the conversation may be recorded." So I was going to do the same. He said, "Do not record this." I said that they didn't give me the choice to not be recorded when I first got on. He said, "If you record this without my consent we can press charges." In a split second I thought: did this guy just threaten me? I know this customer support lackey didn't just threaten to get the authorities involved. I asked him if he knew how bad this sounded. They are so embarrassed of how poorly they are treating us that they'd go so far to threaten us to not repeat it. I told him that it was obvious that he wasn't going to assist me with the matter, so I was going to the Attorney General and get in line with the rest of the unhappy customers. He shot back with, "I hope you aren't recor"...click. I had heard enough of this guy so I hung up.

What is so sad about this whole matter is that the rep even told me that he knew about North Carolina customers having problems over the last few months due to the SunCom deal. He blamed it all on SunCom and said they started the migration too early. Cingular wasn't ready he said. So he knew that my service was bad, knew we had logged several cases that went unresolved, and still had no issue with charging us in full and even threaten me if I dare to publicly question what they told me.

As someone looking to start my own business, it amazes me that a company would treat customers like this.

UPDATE (3/25/2006): The NC Attorney General contacted Cingular who then contacted me. The Cingular guy (Mark Kendle) said that according to their records I made only 4 calls to customer support in the last year (which was obviously not true) and he can't imagine one of their customer support reps threatening me. After going back and forth for a bit, I asked if he was going to do anything about my complaint and he said no. In the end, this guy from the Office of the President for Cingular was just as condescending and useless as the other Cingular people I spoke to. The Attorney General sent a copy of the letter that Cingular sent them. It mentions the "4 calls" I made to their customer support and the "unsubstantiated" accusation that someone threatened me. The request for reimbursement for my final bill was denied and they consider the matter now closed. What a joke.