While carriers all seem to be
hiking up monthly rates every chance they get, it's unlikely that your
incessant texting will rack up a $31,000 bill. Unfortunately for Oliver DeSofi, he had to deal with just that, as the 77-year old retiree opened his Cingular bill as he always has and found that his bill was about a brand new vehicle or two above the average. The bills contained phone calls from DeSofi's cellphone number from Nicaragua "at a rate of about 166 calls per day for 35 days, and sometimes four per minute, mostly to New Mexico numbers." The poor sap even got his lawyer to contact
Cingular stating that the calls were "impossible" and that the $31,000 bill was bsolutely fraud, but Cingy wouldn't budge. The carrier still insisted that DeSofi set up a payment plan to start hacking away at the ridiculous charges until a newspaper inquiry finally forced the company to "give him the benefit of the doubt" due to how unusual it seemed compared to month's past. Although it doesn't surprise us a bit, Oliver is kicking Cingular/AT&T to the curb, and will probably watch all future bills like a hawk to ensure no similar mishaps start creeping on him.
posted Jan 29th 2007 7:25AM
I had a similar problem last month. For some unknown reason, Cingular removed my Unlimited Data plan right before a business trip. I used a Nokia E62 as a wireless modem for a few days and pulled around 113mb through it. The bill ended up being around $1300. Lucky for me I was able to convince Cingular it was their error and got the data charges removed.
And people think VZW is the 600 lb gorilla...sheesh.
From my experience, VZW will bend over backward for a customer. There is a reason that VZW has the lowest churn numbers. Customer service with VZW is awesome. I know a few people that have been with Cingular and ported their number. Cingular just kept charging them their monthly bill after they ported. They wouldn't refund or drop the charges either. VZW all the way.
~JMD
That is ridiculous. Even if he was running a business from his phone he couldn't rack up that much of a bill. Cingular shouldn't have even tried to fight this one. Bill History is all available to each rep. They should have automatically offered to drop those charges.
My sister and her husband had a very similar experience, where someone in Michigan was making calls out of the country using her phone number. In her case, they had only racked up $300 or so in extra charges before she caught on, then Cingular started trying to collect. Their fraud department refused to accept that the phone had somehow been cloned, also saying that it was impossible for her to have NOT made these calls. After some argument, Cingular waived the charges for that month, but she wound up leaving them and having to pay the early termination fee. They never admitted that they were wrong though.
It would seem Cingular's fraud department needs to be better educated regarding methods for fraud being committed against the customer, not just the customer committing fraud against the company.
I had a $1500 bill when I first went to College in Ohio (my account is in KY), and Cingular dropped it when I switched to a more expensive monthy rate. Cingular was very helpful and it was easy, and we didn't have to pay the bill.
this is a really wierd case. it would have been really easy for Cingular Reps to validate where the calls were made and find fraud, a code defect, or that gramps actually made those calls, which is more than possible.
i don't understand how this could have escalated like this without someone getting involved, and showing him the CDRs which prove (or disprove) the calls came from his phone and his house.
this lack of effort really disappoints me, and defintely violates 3 of the 5 Customer Rules.
oh, by the way, forgot to add that since these were roaming records, then they occurred (supposedly) on some other carrier's network - who did some degree of processing, then were sent to the international roaming clearinghouse, and then on to cingular.
so it might not be a cingular code defect or fraud issue specifically. oh yeah, the carrier still has to pay the roamer clearinghouse (something - perhaps not always the full amount) if it's fraud or not. that's why they get touchy about such things.
I had the same problem with Cingular as Sean talked about above. After closing my account and transferring my number away, they kept charging me. The worst part was, every time I called them they said that they corrected it, and then I would get another bill.
It took many many months to get a credit for the money that I had paid (I had left on auto-withdrawl, so I had no choice). Eventually I got it, but only after hours of the most frustrating customer service I have ever experienced.
I am back on VZW and while they aren't my favorite company in the world, they are a head and shoulders above Cingluar. Oh, and the call quality is better too.
As usual you are only getting one side of this story and reading into it what you want...