Cingular Billing Secrets! (A must-read for customers)

Anyway you look at it... Cingular Sucks bigtime! Iwas a customer for 13 days and cancelled all four lines. Customer service was the worst I have experienced with any company. Your original post simply confirms by decision. You'll obviously go far with Cingular... LOL

One important question: My parents provide my cell phone to me free. (I'm 27.) Do text messages sent to and from my phone appear on their bills?

Yes they do. If you want them off, you can call in to have detailed billing removed.

Gak! Thanks very much.

Every provider sucks if you don't ask questions before signing up. I work for Cingular, and I really do empathize with people who have not been given the info they should have. My recommendation? Never get service in a store - no matter who you meet, in any store reps have quotas at least - even if they're not on commission. call in, and before you tell someone who you are, guage the rep - do they "hem" and "haw"? or do they sound like they've taken 10,000 calls, and just want to do the job right? get one of those, and they'll hook you up with a phone, a plan, and the truth about your service. again - i can't stress this enough - please do not approach reps who work for commission! there are good ones out there - in fact there are store reps who should be telling phone agents what to do - but there are too many store reps that are only there for a short while, and for commission will sell you down the river!

J44xm - the text messages you send and recieve only appear as charges on the bill. If you're concerned about the message content, you're fine. The message itself does NOT appear - nor does customer care have any way to view a text message. Like a call, all we do is provide the means and charge for it. The bill only shows where each messange comes from and goes to. mr_incredible is right though. if you don't even want the to/from detail on the bill, we (cust care) can set that up.

You know, as a current Cingular customer and a past CSR Supervisor for another company, it's not *always* reading/understanding the bill that's a problem for a lot of customers. It's the mismatch between information provided by the sales office and what the CSRs say on the phone.

That first bill with a new carrier is generally a big shock because the sales teams often have a knack for saying 'yes yes yes' to a customer's questions, when the answers should really be more thorough than that. It really helps customer understanding if a sales agent actually goes over the basic Terms & Conditions of the new agreement and the length of each promotion. My previous company had a checklist that each rep and customer had to initial at the end of the transaction, indicating that promos, contracts, phone, plan, etc. were reviewed and understood. Yes, it takes a little time to do this, but it saves SO MUCH by reducing customer contacts to the center.

These issues are not limited, however, to Cingular. Because most companies pay sales reps on commission schedules, the sales teams tend to rush through a transaction to get to the next, leading to a higher commission payout.

With the company I worked for previously, we had these same issues time and again. Sales folks generally aren't put through as rigorous of training as CSRs and simply don't know which issues are the biggest call generators. In the end, the lack of training just ends up in a waste of customers' time and money and higher costs for the company in call-handling and credits.

One really great thing we did was have the sales leads and managers from each local store spend 2 days working as CSRs in the call center. It was a HUGE eye opener for the types of questions that came in and helped them understand what gaps were present in the sales process.

Another gripe: CSRs who don't note accounts when customers call!

Agreed but I know alot of customers just call in without reviewing bill and say why is my bill so high this month.... "did you not review the page that says summary of charges?!" Agreed its aggrivating when CSR's dont properly memo account, unfortunately there is always going to be lazy people out there working in the cell phone industry

me not lazy

Cingular Billing Secrets! (A must-read for customers)

Similar Topics

Carriers Talk

Manufacturers Talk

Mobiledia Community