Cingular

When I ordered my new phone back in March and switched to Cingular, I selected the 900 minutes/mo plan. I figured that was a nice safe number, since I usually average around 600, but can burst up to close to 1000 some months, depending on what I’m doing, like travel. I just realized a few days ago that I hadn’t been paying attention to my actual bills, and they seemed a little high. When I read them in greater detail, I discovered I had been placed on a 450 min/mo plan, and had been paying overages every month since, again, I was averaging around 600 minutes per month, and the extra minutes were being billed at 45¢/min.

Ouch.

Well, I called up Cingular, and told the first rep I talked to about my concern about the wrong calling plan. They escalated me very quickly, and I got a very helpful customer service rep who, after confirming that I hadn’t been the one to originally talk to them and agree to the wrong plan (someone at the 3rd party phone sales company apparently agreed to the wrong plan on my behalf, sullying an otherwise pleasant buying experience from TreoCentral) immediately changed my plan retroactive to the start of this billing cycle. Once I faxed her a copy of the email receipt I got when I originally ordered (they can’t receive external emails, she said), she went back, retroactively changed my plan to the one I ordered, and credited the minute overages I had paid back to my account.

Thank you, Cingular, and CustServRep Petra Youngblood in particular, for giving me such great service, and being so helpful, even though you could have very well said, “Well, you’ve already paid us— tough noogies.” Petra was also very helpful in getting me a different data plan for my Treo, so I wouldn’t go over-budget on data downloads as well. A great customer service experience like this makes me feel like I really made the right decision switching away from Sprint-Hell.