Cingular Cell improprieties

Cingular Cell improprieties

Below please find letter I sent to Cingular. Thank you for you attention to this matter. Chuck B 949-412-70ss March 1, 2005 I was a customer of Cingular Cellular for four or five years. I had one of my grandson’s on my plan and added another grandson sometime in 2003. I never changed nor renewed my contract; therefore the conditions of our initial contract continued. Sometime about November or December 2004 our second grandson lost his phone. I called Cingular to discontinue the service on this lost phone and Cingular told me it would cost $150.00 to discontinue the service. I opted to pay the monthly charge even though the service was not being used to avoid this charge of $150. My grandson went to the Cingular store in Ladera Ranch, California to buy a new phone. He lives in Orange County and I am in Riverside County; so he called me from the Cingular store to get the password to my account as Cingular needed that information to get him a new phone. I gave him the password to access the account for this purpose of getting a new phone and this purpose only. When my bill came for December 2004 the total amount was $431.53. It is usually about $122 a month. I called Cingular and they told me the boys had used up all the minutes and I was being charged for overage. I wasn’t sure how this happened as my plan was for 1000 minutes- nights and weekend free and the boys used their phones a lot but stayed within the guideline of my plan.

I talked to the boys about their usage and they assured me they would stay within the plans conditions. What I didn’t realize at the time, Cingular had changed our plan based on the fact that our grandson got a new phone. I am the only person on the plan authorized to make changes and I in no way authorized a change in my plan. My grandson did not have the authority to change my plan but Cingular arbitrarily changed my plan it based on his visit to acquire a new phone. I was never notified and was not even aware of the change until I received two months of excessive billings. In January I received my bill and now the bill was $478.68. Again I called Cingular; spent 2 hours on the phone with them trying to get through to them that our plan had not changed and these charges were bogus. By now I decided I had no choice but to take the boys off my plan and get their own phones. Cingular told me it would cost $150 each to discontinue their phones. One of the boys had his phone about as long as I was with Cingular and we had not renewed or updated our plan so I was not under any contract with Cingular. The other boy had been on my plan for about 2 years—we had not changed our plan from the original and were not under contract. When the recent bill came in I was charged a termination fee of $150 for the second grandson’s phone. He had been on our plan since we originally took out the service years ago On this billing for $478 I was a charged $150 for discontinuing the second grandson’s phone and was told with my second call to Cingular that there would be a second charge of $150 on the next bill for taking the other grandson off our plan. Thoughly disgusted with Cingular for their unethical practices I cancelled the service and elected to go with Verizon. I know there is legislation that prohibits these unethical $150 charges for discontinuing. Please let me know what I should do to get these charged reversed and have a corrected billing sent to me. Sincerely, Chuck B Menifee, CA 92584 REs 951-246-77ss &#160 Attn: Cingular Accounting Dept. I am not paying the 2 termination fees in the amount of $300.00. They are unfounded and unethical. I have made a report to the FCC on your unethical practices. If you choose to persue these charges I will see you in small claims court.

Annette Click this link to e-mail the above consumer: Email User Consumer