This is why I use those "pay as you go" phones. May cost a tad more per call, but they can only bill you as much as your latest top-up card...

We can only hope this is a cingular incident.

We can only hope this is a cingular incident.

Boooooooo!

Don't underestimate old Floridonian guys and thier ties to Nicaragua.

What sort of L1 sales phone jock thinks a rational person would pay $31,000 just because the bill says so?

Times like this I think companies should be fined, heavily, for having L1 call centres.

Yeah, I can see how calling a 000-000-0000 number 4 times a minute for 35 days is typical. No fraud here.

St_Francis_P: We can only hope this is a cingular incident.

Don't you mean Cingattbellsouthsbcandanyotherformerbabybellcompany incident?

/Asinine, definitely!
//Scary, unfortunately yes.

Well... the company did credit his account in the amount of the charges after being contacted by the Newspaper.

But I guess the headline is correct in that Cingular's initial investigation didn't find fraud, and that's hilarious given that the man's bill included four calls a minute from a country he has never visited, far outside his usual patterns, and to numbers which by in large are no longer in operation.

I guess it's good ammunition for anyone fighting Cingular charges in the future. Pretty well establishes that their fraud analysis is entirely without worth.

evil companies

1. citi
2. at&t
3. wally and exxon can duke it out for this spot

I just want to take this moment to express my deep hatred and contempt for all cellular and home phone companies. They are satan....satan outsourced to India.

I had $1,200 in fraudelent charges on my Cingular account (for 3 phones), and a single phone call took care of it. I think it was an inside job, one of their employees stealing three phones. But of course, they're going to fight harder to collect $31,000!

/cell phones have become a necessary evil
/how did we ever live before them!

Where is the "greedy dumbass" tag?

you can find it on the TotalFark signup page.

Just typical mid-level corporate weenies.
Nothing ever gets done until someone takes ownership.

Debby7813
Peacefully.

Though I've been experimenting with turning off my cell phone for long periods of time (e.g. weeks). I noticed that I get the same amount of attention from other folk as I did before.

/so very hella lonely :-(
//at least my battery lasts forever now

Upon careful analysis of the telephony industry, I suspect that a "ticket tracking system" somewhere is the root cause.

The company canceled his service because he refused to set up a payment plan on the huge bill, even though he insisted on paying his typical fees for the phone, DeSofi said.

Damn, that's a fine, honest old man right there. Between that and his retiring early to take care of his sick wife... hope everything works out for him.

sunlion: Upon careful analysis of the telephony industry, I suspect that a "ticket tracking system" somewhere is the root cause

Actually, Treetop1000 is probably right in this one. No one wanted to take the responsibility for declaring that their company shouldn't collect on a $31,000 bill.

lol, apologies for the cliche, but I did work for Cingular for a while.

It's very hard to prove fraud like this because the usual fraud that Customer Care is educated about is the theft of personal identity to open extraneous accounts and then run up bills.
This one sounds really out of the norm for fraud -- if Cingular found that it was coming from the poor guy's phone #/SIM card/whatever, I can understand how they'd be dubious to refund.
So, I can definitely see that side of it.
Does that mean it's right? No. I think that they're retarded not to see such an odd spike in usage and give the benefit of the doubt.
But it'd be interesting to find out what really happened/is going on with that.

there was a big disturbance in the force up in Canada about a related problem. You can read about it here:

click (no pops)

the long and short of it is that they charged a woman $12,000 when her phone was cloned by teh evil terrorists. Customer Service said she was responsible for the charges and to pay up. The CEO of the company eventually agreed to drop the charges. She refused the offer until he came over for tea so that she could explain how poorly his company is run.

oh Canada ...

First off, if credit card companies will notify their customer if "odd" charges are placed on the card, why can't a cell phone company? Did it *not* seem odd that someone who normally pays $180/month all of a sudden owes $31,000 in charges to numbers that do not normally show up on their statements???

My husband and I used to be Cingular customers because he got a discount through his work. We had a family share plan. Our bill was supposed to be around $150 for our minutes and extra "goodies". Then, all of a sudden it doubled! We rarely went over our minutes (and if we did, we had rollover to fall back on). My husband calls to see why our phone bill has gone up. They tell him it was our family plan-they were charging us $75 PER PHONE for the plan when it was supposed to be the $75 for the first phone and $10 for the second phone. They refused to change it. Plus all those times they kept disconnecting our phones even though we paid the bill....We canceled our contract and with went Verizon. Never had a problem since :)

Seems to me that SIM cloning is becoming more prevalent these days. The problem is that the call center front line people really don't know what this is, or that it even exists, and don't know how to deal with it. Since I know it exists, I would simply request to speak to a manager so that I can explain the situation and ask them to please correct the situation. Quite often, these stories end up in the news because someone was being belligerent or obtuse. At least Cingular owned up to it and gave the man a refund AND credit.

My own experience with AT&T wireless (then Cingular, now back to AT&T) has been exemplary. I know I've been very fortunate not to have experiences like the ones that fuel many people's horror stories. I also make sure that I call for service and support during early morning business hours, because that way I am most likely to be talking to someone in the US, rather than overseas.

My most recent experience was renewing my service contract 2 months early so that I could get a new Blackberry Pearl now. I'm on a family plan, and now my wife is entitled to a new discounted handset as well, and can pick one up from a Cingular store (or have them ship it) any time during the next 2 years. Took about 20 minutes over the phone, and they got my data service switched over from MediaNet to Blackberry Personal unlimited. Activated my phone and turned it on when I arrived, and it was good to go.

Cingular sucks...but I digress.

/AT&T too

Cingular's '07 profit strategy:

1. Put routine in computer that simulates 166 calls per day from a country that most Americans never go to.

2. Apply routine to bill of old fart who's probably never been out of the country and let it run for 35 days.

3. Profit!!

3a. Darn you kids at Herald-Tribune, if you hadn't come a-meddling I'd have been rich, I tell you! Rich rich rich!

3b. Scooby-dooby-doooooooo!

Where is the "greedy dumbass" tag?

Where is the 'Florida' tag?

/I thought there were rules...

Join Cingular! The network with the fewest dropped calls!*

*This includes calls made by drug lords who steal your ESN to get in contact with their supplier in Nicaragua

\fark cingular
\\hooray verizon

I guess you can't drop a call if you don't have the signal to make/receive one in the first place.

destrip wins the thread. I lol'd.

Skawt:
At least Cingular owned up to it and gave the man a refund AND credit.


Yeah, it only took the newspaper contacting them. The guy contacts them and explains it is fraud. Cingular says "Too Bad" His lawyer contacts them and tells Cingular it is fraud. "Too Bad, pay it." The newspaper contacts Cingular and all of a sudden it's "We will take care of that charge AND give you a credit!"

Why couldn't Cingular take the same steps when the guy contacted them the first time? Why did Cingular disconnect his service and attempt to collect on a $31k debt? Great company they are.

/Cingular (att now?) customer here

Debby7813 how did we ever live before them!

Say more, talk less.

I can see future historians publishing books on the cellphone transcripts of famous people like they used to for correspondence.

Cingular is awful.

I live in a small town that has a two-word name, let's call it Sound Hill. I called to ask if they provided service in the area, as my current provider, T-Mobile, does not, and I wanted a cell that works here. [As I've since learned? NO cell works here.]

Anyway, the assure me, "yes, we have extensive coverage in Sound Hill," and I sign up. Get the phone, activate it, try it out, and it doesn't work. I call them and tell them I'd like to cancel, as it does not work. First, they say it should, and I explain again, it does not work at all, and to use it, I would have to drive at least 20 minutes in any direction from my house. It's dead. [This is before I realized this is just a dead zone.] They tell me to send it back, so I do, assuming all is well. Then, they send me to collections for $97 in "activation charges." I call and argue for months, with one rep. even saying, "Oh, I am sure they thought you meant Hound Hill, which isn't even an actual city in New York. "Oh, then why did they send the package to Sound Hill?" No answer.

Ultimately, they sent collections to my mother, who lives 3.5 hours from me, on the opposite end of New York, claiming I "signed up using that address" -- which is not true. And I've never lived that address -- she moved long after I was living on my own, nor used it for anything in my life.

Resolution? Unfortunately, my mom paid them the $97, to "save my credit." Bunch of bastards. Rot in hell, Cingular.

A few years back I ordered Cingular through Bellsouth. When I got the phone I discovered that I couldn’t get a signal from my house so I immediately canceled and did everything they said to do to return it. To make a long hellish story short, for the next six months I kept getting billed for a cell phone that I had returned a day after I’d gotten it. Bellsouth refused to help me, saying that I had to deal with Cingular, and Cingular was automated so I could not speak to a real person. The billing finally stopped only after I threatened, via e-mail, to go to my local TV news station.

Colbert on Cingular/AT&T youtube link (pops)

To be perfectly candid, Cingular makes the majority of it's profit from company accounts, so individuals get jerked around. but if it's your employer's phone and a bill dispute? credit 4 srs.

Cingular hasn't been too awfully bad for me over the last few years. Better than the old AT&T at least. But now that AT&T is buying them back, I'm inclined to go elsewhere. AT&T is Teh Suk. Overbilling, double billing, deceit and deception by the 'customer service' people when describing features and services, the whole nine yards. The entire company reeks of fraud and deceit. I'm ready to switch to Verizon (similar Evil, different name tag).

ShikouMori: To be perfectly candid, Cingular makes the majority of it's profit from company accounts, so individuals get jerked around. but if it's your employer's phone and a bill dispute? credit 4 srs

Oh, so they're the Bank of America of phones. This all now makes sense to me.

The Iconoclast: Our stories, although you told your more succinctly, are similar. I wonder how many people they screw over in areas they don't provide service.

Candygram4Mongo

This is why I use those "pay as you go" phones. May cost a tad more per call, but they can only bill you as much as your latest top-up card...

That and there are several other advantages.

Excuse to not have to listen to you talk about work for 30 minutes when you are on your lunch break. (Some Co-workers spend their entire break with that dammed thing strapped to their head.) IM is fine to discuss those things because I can be doing other stuff at the same time and ignore you if needed without you noticing.

Use it as a pager. I can see who you are by caller ID and then call you via land line since 95% of the time I am within reach of one, thus saving minutes. If I am not near a land line I can either take the call or make a note to call you back. If it is urgent, the people who know my number know to let the phone ring until it hits voicemail then I call them back. If non urgent, let it ring once or twice. If I don't know who you are via caller ID I don't need to talk to you that badly. Call home and leave a message on the answering machine.

I have IM running almost all the time. Most people use that andyway.

About the only time I would really NEED it is if I got my car stuck out in the middle of nowhere or I was at the firing range. (Really funny to listen to their reaction when there is gunfire in the background on my end.)

Cheap as heck, about $9 per month for service assuming I don't need more minutes. (I don't) A cell phone is for MY convenience, not yours.

Here's my strategy on cell phones.... unless my employer provides the phone and pays for the service, I refuse to have one. It's just not worth the hassle to me personally. I have made this very clear to my past three employers over the last 12 years, and each has responded with "Oh, no problem, we'll get you a phone through the company." No bills, no hassles, no overages. Simple as that.

serpent_sky: The Iconoclast: Our stories, although you told your more succinctly, are similar. I wonder how many people they screw over in areas they don't provide service.

Out of curiosity, do your areas come up in their street-level coverage maps?

http://www.cingular.com/coverageviewer/

Just curious if you were dealing with idiots, or if their maps are inaccurate.

drusyllamanson

The same thing happened to my sister a couple of months ago. It took three phone calls for her to straighten things out.


/is a US Cellular customer
//was thinking of switching to Cingular
///re-thinking that plan now

This is part of what I think is wrong with how business is conducted in the US today. Companies want all of the rights of people when it comes to claiming damages, but when it comes to the responsibilities of people, if they fark up... almsot all the time, they don't take responsible business, instead claiming that it's their nebulous and hyper-complex structure that is to blame for all errors, because it's not like they are people after all. This kind of dichotomy, where any organization gets rights, without commensurate responsibilities, is part of what is crushing an otherwise able blue-collar middle class.

zipoff:

Don't mistake my meaning; I am perfectly aware that there are plenty of people that have left Cingular, and for good reason. I'm just not one of them - YET. If Cingular pulled a similar stunt with me, I'd be going to the newspapers too. I just think that a lot of these incidents are blown out of proportion most of the time, usually because one side or the other became irritated and rude towards the other side.

In the meantime, I have had several issues occur over the years that were dealt with calmly and agreeably whenever I've called. It could have a lot to do with the fact that I've been a cellular customer starting with AT&T back in the mid 90s, and that kind of long-term membership is nearly unheard of when it comes to wireless.

Retarted.

Morans.

etc

Anyone catch this?

"His wife's voice computer, needed to make telephone calls because of her multiple sclerosis, was set up on one of the lines."

Hmmm... Sounds like he has a dialer trojan on that computer making the calls. Meaning that Cingular was right, the calls did legitimately come from his line. No fraud found.

Of course it also means that he's right and that he didn't make the calls. He's just a dumbass for not checking the computer first.

Sounds like he has a dialer trojan on that computer making the calls. Meaning that Cingular was right, the calls did legitimately come from his line. No fraud found.

Sounds like fraud to me, if he didn't authorized the calls to be made.

Cingular did this to me as well, but not for $31,000!

I wanted to get rid of my Sprint phone. It didn't get reception where I had moved to at the time, Cingular did. I went down and signed up and wanted to port my number; the store rep said it couldn't be done until I paid my last Sprint bill; he offered to give me a temporary number until i could port my old one. I got a $59 a month plan, +$10 for a second phone for my (now ex) girlfriend. Seemed simple enough?

I paid the Sprint bill and went to the Cingular booth. They told me that in order to port the new number I'd need a new SIM card, but at that particular store they didn't have any (it was a mall kiosk), so would have to travel to the actual store a few miles down the road to get one. I go to the store, after 30 minutes, talk to a rep. He says they have SIM cards but it'll cost me $30 to get one and they can't program it there, I must bring it back to the Cingular booth in the mall. I insist I was told I could get the card for free for the number port and they told me my account would be credited.

Then I drive back to the mall and have the guy program the new number. After almost an hour of waiting, the port worked and the number was active. Finally.

Then I got the bill!

A bill for 3 FULL PRICE plans, one for the temp number, one for the ported number, and one for the second line which was supposed to be $9 extra. Not only that, it was the second month I had the phones, and the month rollover had happened 2 DAYS after I got the phones, for which I was charged full price x3! So, that's already $531 for almost a month and a half of service!

Also, something crazy like $150 porting fee (ALL the reps had told me this would be free because of the deal I was signing up with), $37 service charge for the SIM card (instead of a credit, and I had paid CASH for the SIM card), plus a metric assload of hidden fees. Top it all off with $15 "late charges" (on the first bill mailed tome, you see) and this quickly is out of control. I called the 611 line from the phone (customer service quickline), but was indefinitely put on hold after describing to a rep what the problem was on 3 SEPERATE OCCATIONS.

The worst part is the bills showed no minute overages and no extra charges except for one game download and yes, I legitimately did that and was billed correctly for it. $5.

I just let the plan cancel and I never spoke with Cingular again. I might actually owe them $50-$100, but they can go suck my ass.

Between their ridiculous billing mistakes and their god damn GSM phones (Everyone else seems to be using 3G CDMA)that make everything with a speaker make that annoying buzzing sound when they broadcast, I really think Cingular should die a quick death. Now.


Apple's biggest mistake with the iPhone: Cingular.

jordan_lund: Sounds like he has a dialer trojan on that computer making the calls. Meaning that Cingular was right, the calls did legitimately come from his line. No fraud found.

No, his wife can't physically handle the phone, so she needs to talk to have it dial numbers. It's not a PC, it's like one of these http://www.lxe.com/us/products/voice.aspx?id=1285

/No poppy

What kind of fraud relies on short, frequent calls to long-distance and disconnected numbers?

GizmoToy: Out of curiosity, do your areas come up in their street-level coverage maps?

http://www.cingular.com/coverageviewer/

Just curious if you were dealing with idiots, or if their maps are inaccurate.

I just checked, and they actually do show me as no coverage, directy where I live. However, looking at the map, they claim "moderate coverage" over parts that are still solidly the dead zone in this area.

Heh I've never had a problem with cingular except when my phone was stolen and they forgot to cancel the sim when I reported it.

They ended up giving me free text messages and a few hundred bucket minutes for the inconvenience of having to call back and have stuff dropped off my bill.

I personally ike gsm ... I can travel to most parts of the world and keep the same number^^