Cingular Wireless/ Cell Phone Service

CINGULAR WIRELESS

Kathleen L. Dowling

Senior Vice President

Customer Service

PO Box 755

Atwater, CA

RE: Dispute of Charges

Dear Kathleen L. Dowling,

My name is Ann Marie Hernandez and I have been a customer of Cingular Wireless for a year now. I have been loyal to Cingular, referred friends and family to Cingular, and always paid the bill on time without going over the allotted minutes. Unfortunately, I am ready to cancel my contract prematurely and have filed complaints with the appropriate authorities. I have experienced the worst customer service from Cingular customer service representatives, supervisors, and managers. These include instances of submitting incorrect paperwork, being rude over the phone, and not returning calls despite making commitments to call me back at a certain date and time. My cell phone has been malfunctioning for several months now without my knowledge. After several weeks and many hours discussing with customer service, billing, and the tech dept. it was determined that my cell phone was either making and/or receiving data calls from a “WWINDOW” which has now been determined to be a service no longer provided by Cingular (and one I never requested) which allowed the customer to either fax and/or connect to the internet. In addition, I made at least 4 phone calls to Customer Service to try to remedy this problem, but was never given a solution. In fact, I had to do the research myself over the internet to figure out what WWINDOW was. I them had to go to the message boards to ask other customers for help. Then, I decided to contact the technical dept. to ask for their assistance. Each time I called I requested something be changed on my phone to see if this would interrupt the process including changing phone numbers, SIM cards, and restoring my phone to factory settings. After looking at past billing statements, it seems that me cell phone has either been accepting and/or receiving calls from “WWINDOW” for several months without my knowledge or authorization every few minutes. This has added up to several hundred phone calls being made per week, occurring at set intervals, for less than a minute without actually connecting to anything. I was unaware of this until I returned from a trip oversees to Ukraine and received a bill for $1,750.00 for charges that were incurred due to roaming while my phone was malfunctioning without my knowledge or authorization. I contacted Cingular immediately and was told that this may be a case of Fraud by a supervisor named Michael Carpenter. He informed me that he dealt with a similar case the day before and submitting a claim to the fraud department. When Mr. Carpenter did not return my call as promised, I contacted Cingular and found out the claim was rejected because according to the fraud dept. I was using my phone as a fax machine or to “tether.” I understand that submitting this to the Fraud Dept. was not the right thing to do since it was a technical issue and not a fraud issue, but that is not for me to decide, but for your customer service agent to decide. Instead, Mr. Carpenter incorrectly submitted a billing ticket to eh fraud dept only for it to be rejected. Once again, I contacted Cingular to refute these charges because I have never used my phone for anything other than text messages and cell phone calls. In addition, I never used by phone to call from Ukraine because I did not think I had the capability to make international calls. The representative I spoke with filed another claim because it was clear to him that it was a problem with the phone, was caused by a service Cingular no longer provides, and a service I never requested. Also, the phone never actually connected to anything. In addition, the repetitive nature of the problem and sheer number of calls made it clear that it was a problem on behalf of the phone. This ticket was also denied without anyone calling to let me know as they promised they would. This was the second major mistake. The individual who looked over and eventually denied this billing ticket is obviously incompetent and jumped to the conclusion that I incurred these charges purposefully. I know this is true because every customer service agent, supervisor, and manager I have spoken with has agreed that these charges were not intentional and the result of a technical difficulty. I then contacted the billing dept. on 2.14.07 to try to understand why these billing tickets are denied. Here I spoke with a Michael Bundy who submitted another ticket and promised to return my call today 2/21/07 between 8:00 and 8:30 am and of course no one called. I contacted Cingular and was told a ticket was submitted yesterday and they would get back to me on 3/12. Why has no one returned my phone calls? Why was the ticket submitted yesterday and not when it was scheduled? Why do I now have to wait until 3/12 to know what is going on? This has been going on for over 2 months now. In addition, I had to actively seek help to remedy the problem on my own without suggestions by customer service. I had to request a new phone number (old number was 317-332-2684), new SIM card, and eventually reset my phone to factory settings in order for the phone to stop making/accepting these calls. I am beginning to get the impression that Cingular’s position is that the customer is guilty until proven innocent. Each of the representative and supervisors I have spoken to has agreed that these charges should be removed as they were not intentional and due to a malfunction of my phone. The names are Michael Carpenter, John Little, Ed Ironside, and Michael Bundy. Nevertheless, the tickets are either denied or not submitted as promised. I have filed a complaint with the FCC and BBB because following Cingular’s procedures has not worked for me and I feel that a third party needed to be notified. In fact, I have received such consistently terrible service and have pretty much been called a liar that I wonder if my account has been flagged somehow where the customer service agents are told not to return my phone calls even though they promise to do so, reject any billing tickets, and not take the time to assist me and truly look at the nature of the problem. Certain Customer service agents told me that the second billing ticket was rejected because the individual who looked it over obviously did not investigate it thoroughly as it is clear that the phone is malfunctioning several hundred times a day, using a service Cingular has not provided for some time, and never actually connecting to anything. I was confident that the first supervisor I spoke to knew what he was doing when submitting a claim to the fraud dept. I felt the same way with the second billing ticket, but it seems like someone dropped the ball there as well. Needless to say, I don’t have any faith that this third ticket will turn out any different. I hope that you will be able to help me as I know that Cingular values their customers. I would like the charges incurred while roaming in Ukraine removed from my account and any minutes used up by the phone calls credited to my plan. Unfortunately, this experience has tainted my perception of Cingular and I will be breaking my contract prematurely if this matter is not fixed immediately and will seek legal action should this not be solved to my complete satisfaction.

I’m requesting a settlement for my time and trouble to resolve my bill and retain my service including complete removal of all charges incurred while in Ukraine and credit of minutes used while phone was malfunctioning.

Facts: