Is Cingular Wireless your choice? My bitter experience with Cingular/AT&T.

I bought an AT&T cell phone with a national plan last October. The billing statements were fine for the first seven months, except that I was charged one minute of international call for $4.41 on one of the monthly statements, because I was very busy at that time I just ignored it and even did not argue with AT&T and paid in full as shown on the statement.

However, on the June statement (AT&T already merged to Cingular), I was charged 32 minutes of one international call for $141.12. Since I always used the calling card for phone calls to China (and never made international calls directly), I felt that the company somehow made the mistake on my statement possibly due to technical problems and called them but was told it was valid, the reason being that international service could be activated while using a calling card for international calls. But why was only one call charged while I made more than 10 calls in that month? And why was there an overlapping time during the first 3 minutes which both domestic and international calls were shown. I still paid in full according to the service agreement (which indicates that a customer should pay in full even if there is a dispute, and then write to them about the dispute). Then I wrote a letter to appeal the dispute in mid-July, but it seemed they just ignored it because I still haven’t received their response after three months! I called again and was told that they had received the letter and did not intend to respond without giving any reason. What the hell! They asked me to write and explain the situation, and should they have the responsibility to write me back and give their determination on it? I felt I was robbed. It seemed that they did not care after they received all the money. Then one very basic question was: do they really respect their customers, or just care about the money?

With that still being unsolved, then on the August statement, I was again charged with another international call for 21 minutes and $92.61! The reason I was told was a different one that the domestic line dropped while making the call using a calling card, and if I removed the international call function from the service list, it wouldn’t happen again. (But at the first time, I was told even if the international call function was cancelled, it would still be activated while using a calling card because the calling card can override it!) Why did they give different reasons at different times? (I actually made another call to them between the above two calls and was told that somebody might have stolen and used it for that international call? Come on!) I really doubt the qualifications of those customer representatives, and they just gave whatever reason popped out of their mind, every time a different one!

So this time I learned from the lesson of the previous one and just paid the regular monthly charge and withheld the amount for the non-existent international call. I was afraid that if I had paid in full again they wouldn’t treat me as they should. Furthermore, it was the same type of dispute that was still unsolved yet.

Besides all the ‘amazing’ made-up reasons they gave to me, I was more bothered by the ‘no-reply’ to my letter and no official determination from them since July! I feel like I am fighting more for respect, far beyond the money itself (I am not the one who cares too much about money in general and I have a perfect financial record). After the first incident, I’ve heard from my friends that AT&T had a notorious history of overcharging or wrong-charging, but never thought it would be such a disgusting experience. A lot of my friends use calling cards to make international calls very often and they have never had such a problem. But none of them uses AT&T/Cingular service, maybe that’s the origin of my problem and it’s the only reason that I can come up with right now.
Does anybody else have a similar experience?

So, do you think AT&T/Cingular is your choice of your next cell phone? I guess you can judge by yourself now.