Lately I’ve been talking about buying two Treo 650s for my wife and me. We chose Cingular as our carrier and purchased the handsets from Amazon.com to take advantage of a very nice rebate offer.
I started two new accounts for us, to separate the business use of my phone from Kathleen’s use, which is mainly personal. Up to now, I have been a T-Mobile USA customer for the last three years, but also an AT&T Wireless customer since I was the registered account holder for Kathleen’s phone. We are planning to cancel our old accounts when we have completed the transition to the new Treos.
The other day I received the two Treos and successfully worked through the setup process for my phone. Kathleen has been working late at the hospital this week, so we used her first free evening last night to do the setup process for her phone.
It didn’t work out too well.
There was nothing wrong with the Treo itself. It charged properly, found the Cingular network, and allowed us to place a call. The problem began during that call. A recording said that the phone call had been redirected for non-payment of our wireless phone bill.
I called Cingular Customer Service and used the automated system to verify that the bill for this phone was $0. I got a customer service agent on the phone. He confirmed that the phone was restricted for non-payment but didn’t know why. He put me on hold while he looked into the problem.
When he came back, he said that AT&T Wireless collections had put a hold on this account due to non-payment of an account with them. This turned out to have to do with my wife’s old phone. I got a bill from Cingular yesterday, saying that we owed $197.80. This included $138.69 for charges from the February bill (which had been an AT&T Wireless / Cingular bill) and $59.11 for the current bill (which was only labeled Cingular).
I told the Cingular representative that I wrote the check for the February bill on March 23 and mailed it at the post office that afternoon. That was nine days ago. All the other checks I wrote that day have cleared.
The Cingular representative told me that he couldn’t do anything to release my wife’s new Treo from the restrictions. For that I would have to talk to an AT&T Wireless collections agent.
The AT&T Wireless collections agent took the incredible position that I had to pay the current bill (that I received one day ago) before he would release the account from restriction. I had to spend 15 minutes on the phone with this annoying person before he could process a credit card payment for $61 and change.
Kathleen and I have been AT&T Wireless customers for at least five years, and we’ve only had one instance where our payment was late during that period. We even owned the stock for a while, until it was clear that owning it was a poor investment choice. The AT&T Wireless collections department apparently has policies written as if every customer is trying to get rid of their AT&T Wireless service and stick the company with the last bill.
We paid our March bill over the phone but the AT&T Wireless collections agent could not immediately release the phone from restriction. I cancelled my wife’s old AT&T Wireless account immediately although we would have been willing to pay another month so we could tell people who called her old phone that she had changed to a new phone with a new number.
I have no idea why Kathleen’s new phone is restricted and my new phone is not. One thing I am sure of, however, is that there’s a reason why Cingular was able to acquire AT&T Wireless so inexpensively relative to the value of their assets– AT&T Wireless has poked many of its best customers in the eye rather than shaking their hands and saying, “Thanks for your business.”
This is why the last vestiges of their failed company must die.
I wish Cingular the best of luck integrating the remaining AT&T Wireless customers. The conversion will finally be done on April 26 when attwireless.com goes away. I will do my best to forget AT&T Wireless ever had anything to do with Cingular.