Wireless Complaint Rankings

Yeah,
I can believe this one.
Since ATTWS became Cingular service levels have dropped every month. The bastards even charge you for incoming text messages, when it was ATT it was incoming free and you had to pay a dime to send a message.

They can't even get billing right for mobile to mobile either.

I think I still have free incoming text messages. I better not tell them

I still want (and will keep) my AT&TWS as long as I can.
It's dirt cheap compared to everything else out there, except possibly T-Mobile.

$39.99 + $9.99 (2nd) = 1000 anytime national, no roaming fees, unlimited n+w, unlimited m2m (including cingular), unlimited inbound mms/sms

I also have $9.99 North America package - which adds Canada as part of my coverage (free roaming, long distance)

Cingular wants at least $10 more per month for less minutes (has rollover), charges on the inbound messages, and does not allow for discounted Canada anything. Their packages would include Mexico, remove m2m, not available for families, and charge $$$

Verizon's packages are pretty much in line with Cingular - more minutes, but no rollover. Main difference - Verizon's Canada package works with family packages. I had bad experience with Verizon's CS, dropped calls and billing in 2001, and don't think I'll be going back anytime soon (until they kiss my a$$)

T-Mobile - same price as what I have, less minutes, in CA/NV, same coverage (same towers!). Again, no family packages for Canada, but T-Mobile will unlock phones (pre-paid International will work for me!).

When my plan is up (Nov 2006 on AT&TWS) I'll re-evaluate.

metropcs, unlimited minutes long distance including, bad thing is its only availible in miami west palm area, if u travel to say orlando the cell wont work. All for 40 a month. no contract either.

Yeah, sign me up.

You can easily unlock your phone yourself for free.

This is exactly why I'm keeping my national calling plan with unlimited night and weekends for $30. Im local in virtually any place where there's service in the US and can call local or LD at no further charge. If you look at their website now, the lowest plan you can get is $40 and theyre really pushing GSM. All I need is a phone that works when I need it, not all this gimmickry like text messaging and internet. Nor do I need a color screen or a camera. A phone is a phone.

If you are still on an AT&T Wireless plan then you get free incoming text messages. If you move over to a Cingular plan you don't. Actually, if you are still on an AT&T Wireless plan little has changed (for the most part) except your Mobile-to-Mobile has increased.

I have to say ATT customer service got better since merging with Cingular, but theirs plans have gotten worse. Almost every month for a year I had to call ATT to get my bill fixed because they kept charging me roaming and supposedly kepted fixing it. Also, I do not understand how a company can downgrade plans while everyone else is upgrading plans. Cingular plans suck, especially for their data plans.

i used verizon cellphone for 4 years.work great for me, every one that has sprint or t-moble gets static or disconnected in malls in attics,sub level under-passes basements ,subway stations (not in tunnle of couse)still works for me.its also used as my house phone also.....guess it like browser wars or OS ....let the flaming begin...

I beleive it. Cingular has horrible customer service. I ordered a GPRS PCMCIA card from them, and they completely lost my web order. When I called in to ask about status, they kept transferring me from place to place. After like the fourth transfer, I dead-ended with the most bizzare message I've ever heard from an automated phone system: "we're sorry, but due to an emergency, the building has been evacuated. Please try your call again later."

Of course, the same hoop-jumping lead to the same message a few days later.

And, their website totally sucks. Its painfully slow and there are so many features that don't work. You'd think a huge technology company like SBC could afford to hire a reasonably competent web design team.

I have Cingular, and like the service. But their web site does suck big time. I'm always amazed that a Fortune-500 sized company can have a web site (a line of business website, no less) that sucks so bad. It's down half the time and the information available is lame. Hmm.. netcraft.com reports their website as Netscape Enterprise on Solaris 8. That might explain a few things.

Cingular sux, thats it.

Wish I could add 100 thumbs up to that post.

Funny this should come up, I called cingular earlier today for being double billed a termination fee and was transfered 3 times, and then told that "somebody will call you tomorrow"

I have never really had a problem with Cingular except one time. It said I was pulling off a Monroeville, AL and thus roaming when I was in MS. I asked how that's possible and they said because you can pull from a tower 100 miles away. I said that was BS since my house is 10 miles from a tower and it gets no signal. They refused to credit my bill until I went call by call and showed them how I was charged for roaming one minute and then three minutes later when I made another call I wasn't charged for roaming. Most of the people at customer service are nice but man they have some really dumb ones too. Not as bad as Sprint though.

I agree that Sprint's customer service sucks donkey balls. It's by far the worst I've dealt with. However, I love my phone and their service has never given me a huge problem.

As for being charged for roaming, I have my phone set to only use Sprint's digital network. That way I know I'll never make a roaming call accidentally and a way to easily prove I couldn't have made a roaming call in a situation like yours.

Their national plans stink but if you spend most of your time in their areas they have UNBELIVEABLE deals...

Like 50% off your first 6 months of a 2yr deal, with a free camera phone!

We have 2 phones 1500min, unlimted nights, free incoming bout $60/mo with taxes.

Beat that!

Uh clue, the numbers went up because AT&T always sucked. BTW, they also went up when the Ameritech markets in OH, Wi, IN, & MI where merged in the Cingular network.

Whenever a merger happens, you will see an increase of complaints happen, due to people tend to (1) Neglect to read the notices of said merger that have been sent in their billings for the past 6 months, and (2) Never tend to read the T&C on their contract.

Try this sometime, put a whole bunch of meaningless crap on a piece of paper that has the words "I bet you did not even read this", and ask if they noticed anything unusual in it at all. Not to say that TOS is meaningless crap, it is just that people tend to not read it, and just sign the paperwork because they want to get on with their lives.

I dealt with being tethered to a phone when I worked for Cingular, and to this day I do not miss it at all, due to I am happier working for an airline as ground support staff.

How can anyone draw a conclusion when the complaint rate for the worst-rated company in the study is just .03%? That's infitesimally small! I say this study has to missing a huge chunk of customers or data or both.

Heck, ATT/Cingular can now say in their ads that they have an incredible customer satisfaction rate of 99.97%! Hardly likely, but it tells you something about the methodology of the survey data.

hey cingular, can u hear us now? Gooooood.

Hopefully after they see their ratings they will!

and am still trying to get my phone fixed. I have lots of static and cross talk on my month old phone. Me an my wife have the exact same phone so I switch out the sim cards and all the static and cross talk went away. Put my sim card back in my phone and it comes back. My conclusion is the phone is bad. Thier conclusion is they need to send someone to drive around my area and see if it happens to them. I told them with all this money you are spending on engineering to figure this out, you would have been able to give me several of those Razor phones that you have for free and still make money. I am getting some free service out of this goose chase.

I have been an ATT customer for about 2 years now. On both their old school digital/analog network, and now on their GSM national plan network. Only once I was charged for roaming when I was on the verge of the state line and they quickly withdrew the charges. I've called them to add insurance to my phone, then later again to get a replacement. Had the replacement phone within a day. No problems here. My only complaint, on my ATT model t637 phone i have a button that functions as MMode (web service) and on the cingular model it serves as a very functional button to control phone settings.... besides that, I'm quite happy.

I HAD been a very happy ATTW customer for four years until last December when Cingular started giving me grief about a charge that was not mine.

I got so fed-up with their stupid CSRs that I switched to Verizon and have been pretty much happy. It was two months after I switched that someone from Cingular called to tell me that they had found the mistake and wanted to offer me the opportunity to come back.

Well with a big s*it eating gring on my face I said hell no, I'm in bed with your competitor now. I was a very happy ATTW customer but Cingular just f*cked it all up.

But don't get me wrong, Verizon is not without its faults. Since I switched I have had calls just get snatched up by the cellphone faries on many occasions.

But as far as im concerned nothing beats ATT's GSM network. I always got very clear calls and never had a dropped call but since switching to Verizon calls seem choppy and I occasionally majically loose calls but the service is otherwise good.

Go figure... Cingular stinks! Customer service as well as their Cellular service sucks! Been even worse since the merger.. Glad I ditched them when I did

Cingular not only treats their customers bad they treat their employees like dirt. No wonder their customers are getting poor customer service. I think the customers and the employees should all leave Cingular! They are so worried about being number one, that they have forgotten who got them there! We can complain here all we want but, as long as Cingular holds their coveted number one position (that they bought with Daddies (SBC') money) they will not change anything! We are all paying Cingular to treat us poorly!!

Anytime a subject like this comes up you will always get a long list of people with complaints. I guess it's just human nature. I'm sure that if you asked there could also be a long list of people complaining about Verizon or any other carrier. Of course, some complaints are justified but on the other hand some people are never satisfied no matter what you do.

I guess that's why I could never work in customer service.

I've been with Cingular since well before the merger with AT&T and they have always been very good in the Philadelphia region. Prior to them, I had AT&T wireless which truly sucked. It would not surprise me if most of the complaints are former AT&T wireless victims.

I've been with them for seven years and have no complaints. My only grief now is that they sold out to Cingular. My plan with AT&T is 1050 National minutes, 7PM nights and weekends, unlimited mobile to mobile, unlimited nights and weekends and unlimited incoming text messages for $39.99. You can't beat that! By the way, to the previous poster, I have been to King of Prussia (love the mall there) many times with my phone and have had ZERO problems with my service.

The whole thing is that Cingular has a huge number of customers compared to the others so of course the rate is going to look higher.. Duh. Give Cingular 6 months to a year and see what happens then.. You can't just flip a switch and magically make all the sites work as one network and all the customers dump into one pool.. It just doesn't happen like that, I can assure you they are looking out for the customer experience!!!

But they do not have 4x the number of customers as #2 Verizon, yet have 4x the complaints.

As a current ATTWS/Cingular customer, I agree, customer service is poor. I don't know if it is as bad as the Sprint service I had before this, but it is not good. Looks like it is on to T-Mobile/Verizon. I was thinking about Nextel before they were purchased by Sprint.

TheGhost

But keep in mind that Cingular just absorbed the worst cell provider in the country, AT&T wireless. I believe this is skewing the statistics. It would be interesting to see if the stats were broken up between Cingular customers and ex-AT&T Wireless customers.

I'm in the same boat. Went from AT&T TDMA to Cingular GSM. I don't know about customer service since I don't call it, but I'm very happy with the phone service. Fewer dropped calls, better coverage, better phones. I can now get calls in my basement, whereas before I may as well have been in the center of the earth.

I could have written that myself. It's so true. I also was on AT&T TDMA and thought it sucked. Most likely it was my phone (which had batteries that only last 9 months). When using it I was told that it sounded like I was calling from inside a barrel. After the merger I got a new phone and was ported over to the GSM Cingular network.

Service and pricing are awesome. Customer service is so so. They sent me a promo for a free ringtone but I couldn't get it to work. I spent close to 1/2 hour on the phone with C/S and finally it worked. I don't like being charged for incoming text messages but almost never use them anyway so it's not too big of an issue for me.

I also had to call them because my phone was going to voicemail too quickly. They had it set for 15 seconds of ringing. Customer Service was able to increase it to 30 seconds. Much better and this particular agent really seemed like she knew what she was doing. Too bad they are not all like that.

All in all I am very pleased with Cingular service. They have the best prices for the way I use my phone and absolutely no roaming or long distance charges for calls anywhere in the USA. Only T-Mobile was cheaper but their coverage area is piss poor compared to Cingular.

Verizon got the least for a national carrier, but overall, US Cellular got fewer complaints than any carrier, period. I have had no problems myself with Cingular or T-Mobile, and Verizon has been good as well, though Verizon's coverage stinks up here in Mendocino County in NW California.

I prefer my prepaid Virgin Mobile.. great response from customer service whether email or live.. pricing great for the amount I actually use the phone, which is less than 100 minutes a month (incoming text free, .10 to send, .25 to send a picture, .25/min first 10mins of day, .10/min after). I looked into Cingular prepaid (which they now offer since they bought ATTWS), and it was higher than Virgin.

Personally, people need to lay off the heavy cell usage. These people I see wearing bluetooth headsets 24/7 are really starting to annoy me. So are those that have to get on their cell phone on planes the instant the attendant says you can use your phone again, so they can tell someone "Hey we just landed"...

I only use mine when a landline is not readily available, which is rare. I don't find the need to call everyone I know while I'm driving my car so I can say "Hey wassup"...

/rant over

That's fine, but don't expect the rest of us to do what you do

Cingular has to be one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. I have been battling them for months now over a bunch of bogus charges. 3 letters, 24 phone calls, 1 BBB complaint and Cingular's only response is pay it or we'll turn you over to collections.
BTW, I work for SBC and would never wish Cingular upon my worst enemy. When my friends and family ask, I advise them stay far away from Cingular.
T-Mobile has been great, but has poor coverage outside the metro area.

Sounds like what happened to me AFTER I cancelled my plan (within 3 days of purchase!) with Verizon (had to wait 2+ hours to get signed up for a new phone and contract renewal, then 2+ hours to cancel 3 days later!). The store lost my paper work, and I started getting billed. I had my copy, we ended up going in circles between CS and the local corporate store. It did end up going to collections, and after we threatened to call the better business bureau with our copy of the signed paper work, collections stopped calling. No apologies, no explanation - NOTHING.

I hope nobody ever has to put up with that kind of BS. I went in to a Verizon store last year (waiting for car to be repaired), and after they tried to sell me a plan (my AT&TWS was to expire), I told them of my issues from before. All I got was 'That was because the store was new'.

I would totally understand if anyone had bad experiences like that with any carrier, that they would NEVER go back.

I HATE VERIZON TOO!

Verizon is the worse company that I saw in all my life. I moved and had to wait for a tech during three days, 8am to 7pm. Nobody came.

After three days, when finally a guy came, he tested interior/exterior and left, saying my phone would be working in some hours. It was a friday and my phone had no dial tone.

Hours? After 48 hours, nothing happened.

I called them on monday morning and had to wait for a tech one more day. Nobody came. I called them several times and they told me a lot of lies ("he is almost there", "your doorman didn't autorized his enter", "he cannot go today", "the traffic is terrible" etc.).

Next day, I called again, asking for a solution because I HAVE TO WORK and I cannot live at home waiting for a tech all my life.

They told: "You have to ask for a new visit. But we only have time next week".

I canceled my account FOREVER. Verizon is dead for me, thanks GOD!!!

You know what I do when I can't get customer service?

I walk into a Cingular corporate retail store (not a franchise) and have them resolve it.

Oh, doth they protest, "we are retail sales, we don't do customer service" (if they only knew what they were saying!)

I simply ask them to look at the bill in question, "does it say, Cingular?" "Yes" they say. "what does the sign say outside?" I ask. "Cingular" they say. "As an employee aren't you held accountable for the way each customer is treated?". "Yes" they say.

Soon they are calling customer service on the phone to get it resolved. The last issue I took into a retail store took a week for them to resolve. (They tried to assess an early termination fee when my dad died) If anything it gives them a full feel for how their customers are being treated.

I've been there once (not with Cingular though).
NEVER go to a kiosk, especially if they are 3rd party.

They write their own contracts - forget about 30 day return policy, in fact, forget about returning to the kiosk peroid. They only SELL, they can not service your account.

I've been to 'The Mobile Solutions' where I purchased a Verizon phone - only to find out it was registered to someone else, and would not function! I had to return to the kiosk to have them fix it. I ended up waiting almost 3 months for my 'free car charger and hands free kit'. I called Verizon for it, but since this is a separate company, they could care less! The kiosk never wanted to see me again, unless I was purchasing something.

Cingular is the worst? Thanks to CU for validating what millions of people already know.

I went with Virgin mobile 6 months ago. I'm not a heavy user so I'm saving a lot of $$$. Plus, their reps are great to deal with.

My service with AT&T has certainly been variable.

Here in Easton, PA (where I use it primarily at college) the service is terrible. Echoing and dropouts seem to comprise the majority of my problems during all phone calls. At the same time, geographical limitations (hills) might have something to do with this. I use SkypeOut at my computer for most of my calls.

On the flip side, my service at my house in St. Louis, MO (West County region) is perfect -- and by perfect, I mean absolutely perfect. I've gone into the farthest regions of my basement and had no problems whatsoever. Also, in Eagle, CO (where my parents live) - my service is very decent.

I'll stick with AT&T/Cingular for a bit to give them a chance to improve. If they don't, and I find myself sticking around the Lehigh Valley region, I'll switch to Verizon - which seems to have very good service around these parts.

My two cents...

I've got Cingular, have had it for almost a year now. Call quality is great. Basically, if you're in coverage, its golden. If you're out of coverage, well, thats not so much their fault now, is it? Nope. OH GOD YES some of their CSRs are dumbasses. I signed up for a 3 day trial of MOBITV (huge waste of money at this point, they should call it mobislideshow) and cancelled after the first day. Well, tried to. Called their C/S, they said go to www.cingular.com/db, which handles premium content. Problem with that is is my direct bill page has hated me since the day i signed up. Tried to refund, only to get REFUND DENIED stamped on immediately, even after reminding them it was a free trial. Called 4 times, got 4 different stories; call this number (was a disconnected toll free #) go to the DB website, contact mobitv, etc...finally called an overnight tech, explained what was going on, and he credited me 10 for mobitv and 15 for having to call in so many times. Cingular DOES have 24Hr customer service, which is quite nice. Their RMA department does assume, though, that you're trying to fcuk them out of stuff. Had to swap out my phone, and they claimed I messed it up because I reflashed the phone software myself...not the case, and after escalating the call, got my new phone delivered Next day air for FREE.

I'm a Sprint PCS data tech. WE have the worst customer support i've ever seen. Slamming, cramming, outright LIES, hangups, blowoffs, etc...I see it HOURLY.

I got Sprint way back when they were starting up, and dumped them after a year for that very reason. I went to AT&T and have had them for 6 years (TDMA service) and I have NEVER had a problem, other than I live near the Canadian border and my phone kept locking onto canadian cells (with ROAM on the display). It turned out that this was just the programming in my phone which I'd had for 5 years. When I replaced it with a Motorola, this problem stopped. I have used this phone on a national plan and I have never had a problem, even when using analog out in the boonies of OHIO and it has saved my ass a number of times with breakdowns, an accident, etc. Since Cingular took them over, I have noticed no changes in my service, nor any problems.

It may well be that Cingular has the worst CS record, but then, 288 complaint problems per MILLION is miniscule. It could well be it is worse, since many will not bother to complain, or take the time. However Celular networks are monsterously complicated things and problems are inevitable. Myself, I dont blame the grunt sitting there at the terminal for dismal pay, unless they are just plain stupid or lazy. They have to deal with all kinds of customers during their shift and they have no real authority. I dont envy them their job at all, especially in todays world of clueless whiners who are just plain stupid or lazy.