Cingular Makes Customer Service Push; admits lagging Sprint and Verizonin terms of 3G deployment.

"http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/hEHIQU5VIUTQ40/Cingular-Makes-Customer-Service-Push.xhtml"

Cingular cancelled me once I was able to use their phones at home. No
amount of phony customer service will help.
"SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
news:45060c5c$0$96146$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net...
> "http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/hEHIQU5VIUTQ40/Cingular-Makes-Customer-Service-Push.xhtml"

In article <nKpNg.34423$ry2.5341@bignews3.bellsouth.net>, SteveC wrote:
> Cingular cancelled me once I was able to use their phones at home. No
> amount of phony customer service will help.

Why did they cancel you?


--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

>From the article....

"Q: What causes churn [unhappy customers]?

A: There's a variety of things. It could be just a better rate plan
that someone else is offering. It could be that someone else is
offering a phone that they think is really cool that you don't have. It
could be customers who felt like they had a billing problem, and they
decided they wanted to churn off.

A lot of it is network perception as well. Our research has pretty much
shown us that the quality of the network is probably at the top of the
list, at least the perception of the quality of the network.

You ask your friends and family, 'Hey, I'm thinking about going from
Verizon to Cingular, what do you think?' ... If they say network is the
biggest thing, we want them to think about us...."


It seems to me Cingular's biggest failure is customer service. They
strive to provide a strong network, and here they seem to boast about
that bring their #1 priority. I believe it's their only priority. They
don't want to provide support for the devices they sell (and treat like
their equipment), they don't even have a clue about how to get their
rate plans correct for data service. They have an array of support
departments that do not communicate with each other. They have clerks
in their retail stores who are confused, provide false information and
are often over ignorant about the companies products and services.
Which indicates a lack of proper training and poor management from the
top down.

Cingular wants to do the same thing that all cell providers do, they
want to "bait and hook" new customers with new phones to get them under
contract, then as long as their network is strong they feel they are
doing their job... Screw post-sales customer care, you got a problem
with one of "their" phones, good luck getting explaination. Sure,
they've locked the phone on their network, they've gone in and made it
so you can't load anything they haven't approved.... but forget about
getting support on a device. Learn to read the manual.... Often even
Cingular branded product manuals provide misleading or false
information and customer service doesn't have any information (see
sections in Cingular 8125 and 2125 User Guides on "how to use the
device as a modem").

A a user, frustration peaks when you need a specific feature on your
handset and you have nowhere to turn because it's Cingular branded and
Cingular is failing to provide any level of support for that device,
it's in that moment you realize the true beast that is Cingular (and
the cellular industry in this country in general).

- They hook you into a contract
- They take your money for service
- They set you up with a device they are unable to support, even when
it has their name of it and is their brand.
- They are confused by their own service plans (speaking of data plans
specificly) and are unsure which devices qualify for which plans.

In my experience Cingular isn't unlike the rest.... but their customer
service is by far the worst I have experience with any industry. No
organization, they just plan suck.








SMS wrote:
> "http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/hEHIQU5VIUTQ40/Cingular-Makes-Customer-Service-Push.xhtml"

Jeremy.Deats@gmail.com wrote:
>>From the article....
>
> "Q: What causes churn [unhappy customers]?
>
> A: There's a variety of things. It could be just a better rate plan
> that someone else is offering. It could be that someone else is
> offering a phone that they think is really cool that you don't have. It
> could be customers who felt like they had a billing problem, and they
> decided they wanted to churn off.
>
> A lot of it is network perception as well. Our research has pretty much
> shown us that the quality of the network is probably at the top of the
> list, at least the perception of the quality of the network.
>
> You ask your friends and family, 'Hey, I'm thinking about going from
> Verizon to Cingular, what do you think?' ... If they say network is the
> biggest thing, we want them to think about us...."
>
>
> It seems to me Cingular's biggest failure is customer service. They
> strive to provide a strong network, and here they seem to boast about
> that bring their #1 priority. I believe it's their only priority. They
> don't want to provide support for the devices they sell (and treat like
> their equipment), they don't even have a clue about how to get their
> rate plans correct for data service. They have an array of support
> departments that do not communicate with each other. They have clerks
> in their retail stores who are confused, provide false information and
> are often over ignorant about the companies products and services.
> Which indicates a lack of proper training and poor management from the
> top down.
>
> Cingular wants to do the same thing that all cell providers do, they
> want to "bait and hook" new customers with new phones to get them under
> contract, then as long as their network is strong they feel they are
> doing their job... Screw post-sales customer care, you got a problem
> with one of "their" phones, good luck getting explaination. Sure,
> they've locked the phone on their network, they've gone in and made it
> so you can't load anything they haven't approved.... but forget about
> getting support on a device. Learn to read the manual.... Often even
> Cingular branded product manuals provide misleading or false
> information and customer service doesn't have any information (see
> sections in Cingular 8125 and 2125 User Guides on "how to use the
> device as a modem").
>
> A a user, frustration peaks when you need a specific feature on your
> handset and you have nowhere to turn because it's Cingular branded and
> Cingular is failing to provide any level of support for that device,
> it's in that moment you realize the true beast that is Cingular (and
> the cellular industry in this country in general).
>
> - They hook you into a contract
> - They take your money for service
> - They set you up with a device they are unable to support, even when
> it has their name of it and is their brand.
> - They are confused by their own service plans (speaking of data plans
> specificly) and are unsure which devices qualify for which plans.
>
> In my experience Cingular isn't unlike the rest.... but their customer
> service is by far the worst I have experience with any industry. No
> organization, they just plan suck.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> SMS wrote:
>> "http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/hEHIQU5VIUTQ40/Cingular-Makes-Customer-Service-Push.xhtml"
>
I'm on verizon so I don't want this to sound like I'm not a verizon
hater. Verizon does the same thing with there phones. (Bluetooth) Is
there biggie here. Then there was the time they did a flash upgrade to
my phone but did not inform me that the flash also took away my mp3
playback. And another is a town approx 15 miles away has no coverage,
*611 tells me to go back where the no service is and update my phone.
Hello, How can I update my phone when there is no service ?

There C/S sucks. Yeah, there quick to help, but when they find out there
not helping they tell you things like take the phone in to have it
serviced. Case in point. Told to take it in and get the fw upgraded.
Tech says to come back in about an hour. come back. Nothing done. Why ?
The unlock code was changed and he did not know how to bypass it. The
lady behind the counter said he did not need the code. She then showed
me how to get by it. And she was not a tech.

My last problem was how I got charged for 4 calls to 411 and at the same
time a call was placed to 411 there was a overlap of another call being
placed. That took me about a week to get correct.

10/22/06 is my renew date. Can't wait to say cya after 12 yrs.
The one that was the kicker was asking them when I was due for my
contract. She gave me the date, I was told if I got out early it was
going to be 175.00 But at 45.00 with tax X 3 months left = 135.00 she
said I could not pay the 135.00 to get out early. Figure that one out.

For the past month and until this expires I just make calls to my home
ph and use 995 mins out of my 1000 min plan during am peak mins just to
use up my mins.

Today I stopped by a Verizon store to see if they could do anything about
the battery life on my Razr V3M. I've seen it run down completely in as
little as four hours of doing nothing. I went to a store with on-site
technicians, so I would get someone qualified to deal with the problem. He
went through the usual stuff - told me how using the camera, using
Bluetooth, setting it to Vibrate, can run down the battery, and I explained
to him again, that it was doing NOTHING - just sitting there in standby.
Then he explained that the Razrs have a very short battery life and that if
I'm in an area with weak service or no service, four hours is actually
pretty good. I pointed out to him that almost everywhere I go, I get a weak
signal, and he said there was nothing he could do about it other than to
swap for another model, which would help but not much. I pointed out that
when I had a V3 with Cingular, I could talk for hours in a weak signal area
and the battery meter never budged. He said that's just the way CDMA works -
all their phones are that way.

But then I've had an interesting CS experience with Cingular as well. A
month and a half after cancelling the service on my old TDMA AT&T phones, I
got a letter from Cingular telling me they're going to start charging me an
extra $4.95 per month per phone to recoup the cost of keeping the TDMA
equipment going when so few people are using it.

"SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
news:45060c5c$0$96146$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net...
> "http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/hEHIQU5VIUTQ40/Cingular-Makes-Customer-Service-Push.xhtml"

Well I can tell you that the so called coverage map the article mentions
being listed on their site is not worth the colors it is printed with. Over
the years I have been with Verizon, Alltel and then SunCom (which
unfortunately merged with Cingular). Since the SunCom/Cingular switch I have
experience the worst service (both coverage and customer) I have ever
experienced.

Looking at this coverage map it shows my Home in the 'Good' area and my work
in their 'Best', yet I regularly suffer dropped calls from both. This was
originally happening on our 4 Moto V180's and their (Cingulars) first
response was ... "well we are just taking over the area nad need to get
towers switched". After a year + of this it became ... "Because all your
family members have the same handsets, that is probably the issue". New SIM
cards were sent and that did nothing. Supervisors and a Customer Retention
specialist (Linda Harrison and Susan Wright) got involved to say well we
think the Razr would solve your problem and we can go ahead and let you
upgrade to those for only $49 each. The catch was I would also have to give
up my UNPLAN (that is good til March 07) and sign up for a 2 year extension
on any other plan. Well considering that is what anyone off the street could
get I passed and they said they would see what else could be done and call
back. They never did and have never returned my calls (or emails) to them.

Billing problems has been a whole other nightmare with the constant excuse
that "our system was not designed for your type of unlimited plan". Well
after almost 2 years, you think they could have made the adjustments.
Instead I get to call each month for needed credits and adjustments.

About those V180's , we have since purchased (out of pocket) 3 unlocked
Razr's and while they did not fix the constant dropped call issue here in
Virginia Beach, they did add the option of moving on to a different carrier
in March when my Cingular contarct finally expires. Anyone has to offer
better customer support than what I have experienced with them.

In article <340Og.138407$LF4.106178@dukeread05>, PC Medic wrote:
> Looking at this coverage map it shows my Home in the 'Good' area and my work
> in their 'Best', yet I regularly suffer dropped calls from both. This was
> originally happening on our 4 Moto V180's and their (Cingulars) first
> response was ... "well we are just taking over the area nad need to get
> towers switched".

The phone is a piece of shit. Friend had one on T-Mobile and that version had
firmware problems. I had it's successor, the V188, on T-Mobile and it
is just as bad.

> After a year + of this it became ... "Because all your
> family members have the same handsets, that is probably the issue".

Yes, but only because you had the same buggy model That's a stupid thing
for CS to say...


--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

Jeremy.Deats@gmail.com wrote:

> It seems to me Cingular's biggest failure is customer service. They
> strive to provide a strong network, and here they seem to boast about
> that bring their #1 priority. I believe it's their only priority.


Funny, I thought their priority was to blitz people with marketing that
uses dubious data from a research firm that won't even stand by the
results, in order to make people THINK they have the best network, when
in fact they've done nothing out of the ordinary to make it so.


--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

In article <12giibo33kodoe2@corp.supernews.com>,
Isaiah Beard <sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com> wrote:

> Jeremy.Deats@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > It seems to me Cingular's biggest failure is customer service. They
> > strive to provide a strong network, and here they seem to boast about
> > that bring their #1 priority. I believe it's their only priority.
>
>
> Funny, I thought their priority was to blitz people with marketing that
> uses dubious data from a research firm that won't even stand by the
> results, in order to make people THINK they have the best network, when
> in fact they've done nothing out of the ordinary to make it so.

And years after "adopting" the Cellular Industry code, they still don't
have decent coverage maps.

They all definitely got their couple of demographics they go after
differently. The younger demo, definitely with the blingy phones. The
older demo, rate plans and reliability of service. It's great to have
an awesome phone loaded with cool features, but what good is it if you
can't make or hold onto a call in your home area or when you travel?
It amounts to really nice, shiny phone book if you have no reception,
that's what.

The customer service issue is a very big one too. It's basically hit
or miss, for the most part I've been lucky, but on that one day where I
get a real jerk, that frustrates me to no end...and the next time
anything goes wrong with my service whatsoever, I'm thinking of every
excuse in the book why I want a new service provider. Not to be
discriminatory, but it would also be nice if the rep you talk to on the
phone spoke decent English, and that's all I'll say about that.

In store reps? Well, from what I've seen they're robots and less than
knowledgable robots to say the least. There's nothing like taking a
number, just like the deli counter, and waiting in line for 20 minutes,
half an hour (and that's if you're lucky), only to deal with someone who
could care less about you. That's been my experience with in-store
reps, at just about any corporate cell phone place.

The other issue is ETFs, I believe the companies will be addressing
that issue differently in the future as well.


--
dude222
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