Cingular Wireless

I got a cell phone from Cingular in March 2004. I was very happy with the phone and service for quite some time. I was so happy that when I started having trouble with my first phone, I decided to upgrade my phone and stay with Cingular in February 2006. But all that has changed and when my present contract expires, I will go to another carrier. It started last September (2006). I was having trouble with my phone cutting out at certain points in my home. I went to the local store and the associate changed out the SIM card for a new card. A few weeks later, when I went to pay my bill - which I normally do from my phone - I discovered that the service numbers that had been on my phone were no longer there. (When I bought the phone, these numbers were already loaded on the phone. I did not have to put them on the phone.) I also was not able to copy numbers either to the phone or to the SIM card. I went back to the local store and an associated determined that the problem was with the phone. Since the phone was still under warranty, she had me call and order a new phone. The new phone arrived about 10 days later and when I switched the phones, I still had the problem. I spent many hours on the phone talking to the Cingular 1-800 number, including a supervisor and technical support and was finally told to take the phone to the local store and have them run my SIM card through a SIM reader they had there. When I went to the store and told the people there what was needed, they told me that this would not fix the problem. And the manager of that particular store said she would solve the problem for me and started putting the service numbers in the phone by hand. I tried several times to explain to them that I could do that myself. What I wanted was a phone that had the capabilities that I had originally paid for. But no one could ever figure out how to get the phone back to how it originally came to me.

At the same time, I was told that when I switched phones, I would have to rebuy the "extras" I had already purchased for the phone. This wasn't much, but when you added up the charges for a few ringtones and a couple of games and then the data usage of re-downloading them on to my phone, the cost was going to be somewhere around $50.

I finally gave up in despair and sent the new phone back to the company and kept my old phone because the new phone wasn't going to solve all of the problem and was going to cost a bit of money to get back to where my phone was. It just wasn't worth it. I spent about 3 days either going to the local store after work or spending hours on the phone with the 800 number and got no resolution to the situation. As far as anyone could figure out, the problem occurred when the new SIM card was inserted but since she had thrown out the old card, I just have to live with the problem. I got no service for my money.

Also, when I first got a Cingular phone any Cingular store one would go into was filled with people waiting to talk to an associated. But now when I go in to a store, the place is almost deserted. So, I do not think I am the only one unhappy with the cellular provider.