the Cingular "Family SURPRISE Plan"

Drew wrote:
>
> ATTENTION PARENTS
>
> When you sign up for Cingulars "family plan" do this:
>
> Tell the person selling you the package to set:
>
> Text Messaging to OFF
> Internet Access to OFF
>
> Then add a parental password.
>
> Don't be surprised if your bills are much higher that the $59.95 plan for 2
> or 3 month until you can figure out all the surprises.

Probably, good advice.

A major problem, with most of the carriers, is that many of the Salespeople,
and CS Reps, don't fully understand the plans. You'll ask a question, they'll
answer it, but it's really up to the customer to go home and figure out whether
the supplied information is correct.

Notan

---

› See More: the Cingular "Family SURPRISE Plan"

More info.

Let me tell you, it is hard to get information about your bill. Some
customer service reps didn't know what the charges were far. I still think
there are options turned on by default that I don't know about yet - and
they don't either. I looked at the bill more again and found that there were
more download charges but there were also more ringtones download. So on
average the $1.99 quoted price is doubled by the download charge.

That's how most of these charges are slipping through the cracks.

This little oversight of setting the internet downloading to on and not
telling parents that it's on ... well I'm tired of writting about it.

Onward...

The last company that treated me like this was AT&T back in 1976 - never
used them again.
Nor did my company, family or friends.



"Rod" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news[email protected]...
>
> "Notan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > Joseph wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:26:27 -0500, "Drew" <[email protected]>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > >Did you know that when you sign up for the family plan that your son
or
> > > >daughter can download a ring tone that cost $1.99 + $8.81 = $10.80!?
> > > >That's $10.80 for a single ring tone. I call that hidden cost. I'm
> renaming
> > > >the "Family Plan" to the "Family SURPRISE Plan". The more ring tones
> the
> > > >more the surprise.
> > >
> > > Did you or your daughter *really* think that downloading the ring tone
> > > was free? If you didn't think it was free did you bother to find out
> > > how much it was going to cost? There's no excuse for not using common
> > > sense. Does she also know that if you call directory assistance 411
> > > you're also going to pay for that privilege each time also? Maybe you
> > > need to have your daughter learn how to be responsible for phone
> > > charges. Better yet take that phone away and give her a prepaid phone
> > > and she'll quickly learn the value of a buck.
> >
> > Did you read one of Drew's earlier posts?
> >
> > "The $8.81 was for downloading the ring tone."
> > "The $1.99 was for buying the ring tone."
> >
> > I can understand the $1.99, but $8.81 for downloading?
> >
> > Notan
>
> kilobyte charges.
>
>

clifto wrote:
> Steve Sobol wrote:
>
>>Plausible, yes. Sprint charges $0.01 per KByte transferred via PCS Vision if
>>you don't pay for an unlimited package. For a ringtone that is 50K in size,
>>that'd be $5.00, for example.
>
>
> At one cent per K, 50K should be 50 cents.

That's right. Sorry, I moved the decimal point too far to the right.


--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: [email protected] Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

Steve Sobol wrote:
> clifto wrote:
>> Steve Sobol wrote:
>>>Plausible, yes. Sprint charges $0.01 per KByte transferred via PCS Vision if
>>>you don't pay for an unlimited package. For a ringtone that is 50K in size,
>>>that'd be $5.00, for example.
>>
>> At one cent per K, 50K should be 50 cents.
>
> That's right. Sorry, I moved the decimal point too far to the right.

That's NEVER happened to meeeeee.

--
If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.

Somewhere around Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:05:09 -0700, while reading
alt.cellular, I think I thought I saw this post from Joseph
<[email protected]>:

>>I can understand the $1.99, but $8.81 for downloading?
>
>It doesn't matter. Before you do something that will likely incur a
>charge you find out how much that charge is unless you don't care
>about the charge where evidently she did care about it. I suppose
>it's the same way as some people just don't care when they call a 900
>number even though it may cost them $10 to do it. There's something
>called responsibility for your own actions. "I didn't know" is no
>excuse.

Let me guess - you don't have children? If you do, I feel sorry for them;
it's pretty natural for kids to be somewhat trusting that they aren't going
to get tricked or fooled by a company like Cingular. Unfortunately, it's
not the case, and believe me, Cingular knew they were tricking the kids by
enticing them into downloading something that was a lot more expensive than
they expected. The kids will learn what a ripoff companies like that are,
but they aren't born that way, thank goodness.

I would write a nice letter, without name calling (save that for later),
saying how you never expected a nice, reputable company like Cingular to rip
off young kids. Send a copy to the president of the company. You may even
get some free ringtones out of them - just pay the download charges :-)

--
Marty - public.forums (at) gmail (dot) com
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...
well, I have others." - Groucho Marx

Marty wrote:

>>It doesn't matter. Before you do something that will likely incur a
>>charge you find out how much that charge is unless you don't care
>>about the charge where evidently she did care about it. I suppose
>>it's the same way as some people just don't care when they call a 900
>>number even though it may cost them $10 to do it. There's something
>>called responsibility for your own actions. "I didn't know" is no
>>excuse.
>
>
> Let me guess - you don't have children? If you do, I feel sorry for them;
> it's pretty natural for kids to be somewhat trusting that they aren't going
> to get tricked or fooled by a company like Cingular. Unfortunately, it's
> not the case, and believe me, Cingular knew they were tricking the kids by
> enticing them into downloading something that was a lot more expensive than
> they expected. The kids will learn what a ripoff companies like that are,
> but they aren't born that way, thank goodness.

That's a cop-out. I DO have kids. If I, the parent, am paying a cell phone
bill for the kids, it's my responsibility to make sure they don't incur
extra charges - by turning off extra services if necessary.



--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: [email protected] Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

"Drew" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:AM_Ve.2186$%[email protected]...

> My daughter has to pay for the ring tones out of her allowance and will be
> broke of the next couple of months.

Kid obviously needs some discipline and outlining of the "rules: for cell
phone use. She can easily cause bankruptcy very quickly if not properly
instructed.

A cell phone just makes it easy to spend money.

"Drew" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:YW_Ve.2256$%[email protected]...
> The $8.81 was for downloading the ring tone.
> The $1.99 was for buying the ring tone.

Data Airtime is expensive.