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A Tale Of Cingular Ineffectiveness

My story just scratches at the surface, but I'll share it anyway. My wife and I are divorcing, a profoundly sad occurrence that doesn't need to be made worse by the companies with which I do business, but in my case, that's exactly what Cingular is doing. I called AT&T a few weeks ago to try to split our account up, explaining that we had separated and thus didn't want to be sharing service. I figured this was a no-brainer that would go smoothly, but I was mistaken. At first, it proceeded as I expected. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with a rep, and when the call ended, my understanding was that everything was all ready to go, and that all that needed to happen was for my wife to call and give her blessing to the splitting of the account.

Well, the next day, she calls me to report that the interaction didn't go as planned, and that I needed to call them again. To my horror, the first agent I talked with told me there was no record of my having called the day before, so I had to start all over. Only this time I'm informed that everything I was told the day before--that the split was no problem and that my calling plan and promotions would stay the same--was completely erroneous.

Now, it turned out, if I split the account, the numbers would both have to switch to different plans, and because that was like creating new accounts, I'd no longer get my AT&T promotions, which Cingular is not honoring. That meant no more free nights and weekends, an especially important consideration given that I'd moved and chosen to no longer have wire line at home. So essentially, if I wanted to split up the account, creating two primary numbers (translation: more revenue for Cingular), I'd be paying much more for much less.

I was outraged, and demanded to speak to a supervisor. Alas, none was available (which I increasingly think to be a fabricated customer-service tactic), and the rep said he'd fill out a form that would alert the supervisor to call me back as soon as possible.

Fast-forward a week, no call from the supervisor. I'm so surprised. So I call back again. I have to tell my story again, and this time I'm told a good solution would be for me to trade in my hardware and become a full-fledged Cingular customer, which at this point I want like a hole in the head. I'm also told that even though I've had my phone for longer than the contract I agreed to, when I bought my wife a new phone last fall, it not only renewed her contract, it also locked me in until October 2006. Outrageous, I say. So one more time, it comes down to my wanting to talk with a supervisor. Again, the supervisor is not available, but I'm told that she'll call me back as soon as her current call ends, within 20 minutes.

Fast-forward another two weeks, to today, and still no call. It's almost laughable. I'm half afraid to call and find out what new way logic will be mangled this time. And I haven't even gotten to the hardware problem I've been having in which the phone is in a constant state of searching for one network or the other, often meaning I don't get alerted to incoming calls (or voice mails) for days. In trying to tackle this problem, a rep actually told me at one point, "Sir, I see the problem. You have so many towers around where you live now, and you're getting too good of a signal."

If you can still read amid the snorts and guffaws, you'll be further amazed to know that my story is nothing compared to the experience of an analyst friend of mine who, in a 24-hour period after her AT&T Wireless device failed during a business trip in Texas earlier this month, spent six hours on 11 calls trying to figure out how to replace the device without having to end up with a Dallas number.

Naturally, after combining this tale with my struggles with Cingular, the journalist in me wanted to find out what the big-picture problem was. So I called Cingular and talked briefly with one of the company's top PR spokesmen, who called my evidence "anecdotal" and asked me where I wanted to go with this. "Nobody thought for a second that putting two giant companies together was going to happen overnight," he said. And that would be a fair thing to point out, except that this merger was announced 15 months ago, and thus far it appears that the integration of their customer-service systems--AT&T uses software from Siebel Systems, while Cingular relies on Amdocs' Clarify application--is nowhere near completion. The AT&T Wireless Web site may be gone, and AT&T Wireless customers may now be getting bills that say Cingular on them, making it look on the surface like it's one company. But under the surface, they're a muddled, unintegrated mess that's trying to strong-arm subscribers into becoming Cingular customers.

So here I am, an unhappy customer who just wants to get out of my service so I can switch to another provider, yet I'm saddled with a contract I didn't know I renewed, stuck with equipment that isn't working, and unable to separate my bill from my ex-wife's because if I do, we'll both get less for more. I think it's high time that I be added to the growing list of consumers who don't like how mergers work out for them.

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