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Why Cingular Sucks ASS (iPhone or not)
Yes, this is one of those blog posts where the proprietor rails against some service/product they have recently had a run in with - deal with it. ;)
Cingular blocks access to free conference calling services. I tried calling in to an important conference call today, and was blocked by my mobile phone provider. I called customer no-support and they stated they have had "billing problems" with the number in particular I was calling ((712) 775-7000). They then told me all Cingular phones are blocked/denied from calling that number.
To which I said, you stepped in what? Fuck off. I paid MY bill (for the last 5 years or so, same company) and I am calling from MY phone to another number. You get paid by me, I am your customer, what number I am calling TO should be irrelevant. To which the support rep told me, "well we block 900 and 976 numbers too, I am not saying you call those, but . . ." - what the hell does that have to do with it? You are now blabbering about 976 numbers, and tiptoeing around trying not to offend me? I am trying to call FROM my phone TO a conference call, and now I am 10 minutes late and you are talking about phone porn? Sorry, I don't quite follow. Tell me why I should not throw this goddamn phone out the window and go with another provider, this is stupid . . . silence.
Apparently I am not alone in my frustration: http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/3/11/21412/7322.
Be advised, Cingular sucks and you should consider not using them, and or dropping them if you currently have them - if you ever plan on using a free conference call service (which I did not even know was a "free" one, the number was given to me, by an employer, call this number, ok, whoops - not so fast).
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Consumer group release on number blocking by Cingular
For Immediate Release: Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Contact: Beth McConnell, PennPIRG at 215-732-3747 (o) or 267-918-7207 (c)
AT&T/Cingular blocking its wireless customers from dialing in to free conference call services
PennPIRG calls on AT&T/Cingular to restore service to legitimate phone numbers
PennPIRG has learned that AT&T/Cingular recently began blocking phone numbers on its wireless service used by consumers to access free conference call services, such as those provided by Free Conference Call.com. The telephone giant has argued that calls to free conference call services are resulting in millions of dollars in losses to the company due to re-routing and termination fees, and has sued free conference call services and local phone companies in Iowa over the fees.
“AT&T/Cingular should not hold consumers hostage in their billing dispute with free conference call services. The company is penalizing their customers for using their phones to access a legal service,” said Beth McConnell, PennPIRG Director. “If getting out of a cell phone contract were easy, AT&T/Cingular would never dare take this anti-consumer step.” McConnell also noted that Cingular offers competing conference call services for its cellular customers.
AT&T/Cingular is informing customers who complain that the company made the decision “because of billing issues,” “charges associated with calling certain numbers,” and because Free Conference Call.com numbers are “circumventing their billing practices.”
After receiving a tip from a consumer in Illinois who was blocked from accessing a conference call on his cellular phone, PennPIRG confirmed the practice with several customer service representatives at Cingular/AT&T, as well as with customer service at Free Conference Call.com. PennPIRG also confirmed the blocks by calling several phone numbers used by Free Conference Call.com on a Cingular cellular phone.
According to PennPIRG’s research, AT&T/Cingular had not yet blocked all phone numbers as of Tuesday, March 13th. Customer service representatives informed consumers that AT&T/Cingular was blocking new numbers as they learned of them. As far as PennPIRG has been able to learn, the number-blocking practice began sometime around March 9th, 2007. The consumer group is unaware of any other cellular phone carriers engaging in a similar practice, or if the numbers are also blocked on AT&T’s land line service.
McConnell noted that AT&T’s anti-consumer action in this context has broad implications. “This is an example of what is at stake in the fight for Internet freedom -- a corporation’s financial interests limiting consumer choice and access to legitimate, publicly available services. AT&T, of course, is one of the companies opposed to Internet freedom,” said McConnell.
PennPIRG called on AT&T/Cingular to restore service to legitimate business phone numbers, and called on regulators at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to determine if AT&T/Cingular has violated any laws in blocking phone numbers.
PennPIRG is a citizen-funded non-profit public interest advocacy group. For more information, visit www.pennpirg.org
ATT Cigular is NOT the ONLY bad guy here!
Greed Never Pays
Future Phone/Iowa Telephone Companies Got Too Greedy
As someone who is involved in telecommunications I believe there are two bad guys here.
-ATT/Cingular
-Greedy Local Telephone Companies in Iowa and FuturePhone.
Some background.
All telephone companies in the USA, local and long distance, “hand off” traffic to each other in order to make the phone system work.
When the “hand off” is made, the carrier who is accepting the call is paid, a few pennies per minute to complete the call from the company originating the call.
In some parts of the country, this “fee” (known as a reciprocal compensation) is just a few tenths a penny per minute.
In theory, most companies should pay as much to connect calls, as they get paid to complete calls.
In practice however, some small phone companies earn a few dollars to complete the calls.
In the case of the Iowa companies, more calls were placed TO their ustomers rather than their customers placing calls outside of the local area.
This is totally legal and long ago was sanctioned by the courts and the FCC.
In Iowa, due to the rural nature of the state, the rate the local companies are paid by ATT, MCI and other long distance carriers to accept and complete calls is sometimes as high at 5-cents per minute.
However, the companies named in the lawsuit, decided to ignore the regulated 5-cents per minute fee and charged up to 14-cents per minute.
After several months, ATT, MCI and others became aware of this situation and stopped paying the fees altogether.(Payments stopped in January 2007.
FuturePhone was the main culprit, despite claiming the mantle of “friend of the consumer”The owner gave numerous interviews with newspapers and even appeared on the ABC Evening News and urged callers to essentially beat ATT at their own game (e.g.) “Don’t pay for an international phone call ever again”
ATT naturally looked into FuturePhone and stopped payments to the local Iowa phone companies, which were handling all the incoming calls to FuturePhone.
If FuturePhone had “kept a low profile” ATT would NOT have had a legal case against them.
If the local phone companies had accepted the regulated “connection fee” they were normally paid, they would NOT be in legal hot wate.
FuturePhone and the Iowa phone companies decided to “take a chance” and swing for the fences and earn alot money together. Instead of a home run, they struck out.
Eventually the lawsuits will be settled.
-ATT and others will NOT pay amounts larger than 5-cents per minute to the local Iowa phone companies.
-ATT will NOT pay any money to the Iowa phone companies for any calls made to a FuturePhone Number.
-The local phone companies will agree to abide by the rules in the future, and instead of making millions and millions of dollars on connect fees, they may earn “just a few million”
Capitalism works. Greed never does.
let the courts or regulators fix it -- not cowboy justice
If this is in court already, then that's where it should be fixed. AT&T/Cingular still should not be allowed to block phone numbers that are currently legal, because then what is to stop them from blocking other legal numbers for essentially arbitrary reasons?
This speaks directly to the Net Neutrality issue, because wireless services will increasingly play the role of ISP moving forward, and wireless service is not well regulated for common carriage the way land lines are, and they way broadband services were up until 2005 when the Supreme Court upheld the FCC's jurisdiction to decide to classify broadband as an "information service" rather than a "telecommunications service" -- what poppycock.
Regardless of how others have misbehaved, nothing should give Cingular the right to make their own unilateral cowboy justice here. That's a terrible precedent, and one that needs to be pushed back hard.
Capitalism running wild has even more potential for authoritarianism than socialism, because it's even less accountable to the collective public interest.
1 of the phone companies charge 13 cents not all of them
It typically cost about 5 cents to access Iowa phone companies - Cingular charges 10 cents per minute that is keystone mark-up 100%
It is unfair for hint as if they are losing money - Cingular makes money on all of the Free Conference Call services like freeconferencecall.com.
It is unfair for AT&T to stop paying access because they SAY it is costing them millions - what they didn't say was how much they are charging for access. It is unfair collect and not pay.
It is unfair for AT&T to sue these companie in courts that do not have jurisdiction just to cut off these companies cash flow.
It is unfair for Cingular to block calls - it is illegal.
Why don't they take it infront of the FCC who has decides these issues - probably because they already have and AT&T does not like how they ruled.
So who is next -who does AT&T pick on next - some of these companies have already gone out of business. You can't demonize small companies just because they make profit - what they are doing is perfectly legal and AT&T should not be able to drive them out of business because they disagree with the way the company does business.
Futurephone may be greedy
Futurephone may be greedy and reprehensible, but you are missing the fact that as a consumer paying Cingular for service, I do not give a shit. I pay Cingular, and expect service. If they have battles down the line with other companies they hand off to, that is a sad and unfortunate story, but it should not affect my service. To clarify, obviously it could affect my service in the long run, more expensive rates for me, etc, but blocking a particular number is not the way to address it. Instead, they should treat their own customers in a better manner, and pursue legal efforts and so on to go after companies that they feel are abusing them (which they are?). Instead, they are also taking their problems out on me.
I had no idea FuturePhone, or FreeConferenceCall, was even involved. What I got was "you can't call that number from the PHONE we are providing you - because of our own internal squabbles."
Not everything is fair, I am sure Cingular has never done an underhanded or "greedy" thing either, right? But either way they should not be dicking over the customers.
I am going to vote with my dollars and look towards another provider.
at & t overcharges
I signed up for a new account with Cingular and bought a Treo 750. It was junk. When I called to cancel the account they offerred me a 8525 for $150. They forgot to mention it was a refurb, which they now confirm. It was bad so I sent it back and they sent me a new one. Charged me $410 for it. Said I should have been told I was going to pay more. Now they won't adjust my bill. All I want to do is pay them $4000 over the next year or two and have service,,, not be mislead by these crooks. Stay away from them. I should stayed at Altell :(
AT&T your small customers are in control!
During AT&T's merge, my account was badly handled. Representatives saw the issue, but assured me each subsequent bill would reflect correction. Each new bill still showed an outstanding balance. By the third bill, I was cut-off. The third call to AT&T, a new representative told me that this was not uncommon, and due to the high $$ amount the bill will eventually be corrected, but required the adjustment department to sign-off. Well needless to say the bill never became corrected. It took another few months, and more calls to try to convince them of their error. Now, almost two years later my data is archived and no one wants to assist. Matter of fact, they show no record of any communication that I have had over the last two years, but they do show I owe almost one grand. How convenient! I now have $1000 bad debt on my credit with At&T, and only owe 357.00. After a total of 15 years with Bell South, I moved on. What AT&T doesn't know is that I have a Master degree in Telecommunications. As they submit their bids, I'll reply "sorry AT&T, we don't show any communication from you at all." or better yet, we decided to re-evaluate our $50 million telcomm contract and we've gone with another vendor. (Sweet!)
Confrence calling block
It not that they blocked you from calling them its actually that they have they do not have an agreement with the place that you are calling yet.
No it is that they block it.
No it is that they block it. And they tell you they are "blocking" it when you call for support. It used to work from a Cingular phone.
Why I think Cingular/AT&T SUCKS
I have a go phone. I have no problems with my plan. Works well for me since I am a very light cell user. My problem with AT&T is this: Last week my son went on a vacation to Florida with his girlfriend. I wanted to make sure that he and I had enough money in our accounts. I went online and added my checking account for payment. I went through the process and added 25 to my account and then I gave my son a "gift" of 25 using the same account. This is NOT a hard process, simply click on the checking account and put in a check number and that is about it. He received the 25 on his phone and we thought everything was okay. Yesterday he discovers that the 25 was taken out of his account. He called them and they said the check was returned for "insufficent funds". BS! I called my bank and they said the check was not sent through for payment. So I called AT&T and we went through 3 hours of crap. It went from my bank being at fault to my fault. It was never their fault! I had to call my bank three times and get them to fax AT&T the info on the check. The bank said that when AT&T submitted my check they put the check # in front of my account # so the check was not honored. AT&T says that I entered the info wrong and it was my fault. I know how to enter the routing number and account number! Finally we asked to speak to a supervisor who finally said she would take the 26.50 off my son's phone and unblock his account but she still said it was my fault. I asked her how did MY check go through for my account and it didn't for my son's? Her reply was that the bank would let the first check go through with the wrong number but not the second one. BS! If your bank gets a check with the wrong number they would not honor the check at all! I entered the routing and account number twice, wouldn't I have caught it if I was STUPID enough to put a check number in front? There was a glitch in their program and they wanted to blame me. I just have to say that the six DIFFERENT people we talked to were indifferent, rude and just plain a**holes to deal with. Nobody wanted to help, they gave us a reference # and two gave their numbers and when we asked to speak to them we were told we couldn't and we had to explain our issue over and over again. One BITCH would not wait for a few minutes so that I could call my bank and ask them for help with this issue. She said "I can't wait on this line for you to call your bank" At the end of my conversation with the bitch I said "When my money is gone off my phone so I am I. I really appreciate the Customer Service that we have been given. Cingular/AT&T SUCKS! Thank you for your help!" and I hung up.
I have never dealt with such jerks in all my life! I answer the phone at my job and people call in mad all the time, they are hot and pissed that their a/c isn't working and if I treated them the way I was treated by AT&T we wouldn't have any customers left at all! So long and kiss my ass AT&T!!!!!!!
Although my problem was not
Although my problem was not similar to yours, I just got off the phone with AT&T about my bill and got the same frustration. I switched my regular phone over to a PDA 3 months ago. When I signed up at the counter, I particular asked to be put on a plan that will allow me accessing internet as well as at least 100 text messages (as I don't do them alot but when I do, I do not want to be charged $.15 per message). That plan costs me $29.99/month --- alot but I thought that is not bad. I got 3 other phones on the account. All told, my bill is about $187/month! Well, I noticed that I am being charged for IM on the PDA. When I called in today and asked how come I am being charged for the IM? They said that I am paying $29.99/month for 20MB of internet access (I know that! and I also know I used no more than 4MB a month most!). IM is a separate deal and that I should never listened to the sale people at AT&T. I should call in Customer Care as they will be more honest and will help me with the right package. So, this guy offered to "give me" $4.95 as credit for three months to cover my future IM just to see how much I like it and if I do, then I can sign up and pay yet another $4.99/month for IM. When asked is there any package that will allow less than 20MB of internet access and maybe 100 IM, he said there is none! Contrary to the guy that I just talked to 10 minutes ago who said he can have me on a plan that will cost $19.99 with lesser MB for internet and more IM. This makes me feel like it depends on which person you talk to. I told him that last year, when I asked them about buying unlimited IM for my daughter's phone; they said they only had certain plans and that it is not unlimited. Within a month later, when I talked to another CSR, the person was surprised that I did not know better to sign up for unlimited! It feels like they all working for a different company. I am checking with Verizon tomorrow as I think I cannot do worse than paying $187/month for basic phone for 3 phones and 1 PDA.
I used to spend 18 years in hi-tech - in communication industry so I know MB and usage and how to read my bills. It just feels like they are deceitful and as I "reward" them with more business, I am being punished by having to pay more each month just because they simply don't have plans that will work for you....
Never been so mad in my life....
AT&T Sucks! They are nothing
AT&T Sucks! They are nothing but profit mongers that want to suck your wallet for all its worth. I have an Apple iPhone on a GoPhone pre-paid plan. I originally thought I would need a larger plan than the entry level, so I mistakenly went on their website and increased my plan to the big $69.99 plan. What a big mistake! I also made the mistake of setting up automatic payment. Their website is specifically geared towards the escalation of your obligations and does not allow you to decrease your plan (you must call them to do that). Also, you cannot drop automatic payment through their website, again you MUST call them to do that (and jump through a lot of hoops). I was a total idiot and allowed my account to accumulate to over $300 before I finally got off my butt, called them, and got my plan reduced. Now, I am going to lose about $60 because AT&T says they will no longer allow a balance of more than $250, so anything that you accumulate above $250, you lose. I cannot simply drop my monthly payment and have payments taken from my balance, they will not do that. If I drop the monthly payment, I will lose the entire $300+. This whole thing is a scam beyond belief. I am now starting a class action lawsuit campaign as I believe AT&T is in violation of some fundamental FTC (Federal Trade Commission) regulations with this practice. For anyone out there considering AT&T, any plan, Don't, JUST DON'T DO IT!!! Trust me, you will be much happier anywhere else other than AT&T. Quit feeding these sharks!!! AT&T is just a thieving profiteer! Terrible service and even worse consumer traps!
Hmmmm...i jus called it and
Hmmmm...i jus called it and had no problems with it...maybe they "unblocked" it