I have never asked for a credit from Cingualr or for a damn thing free, the only thing I have ever asked was for the reps who answer the phone to know what the hell they are talking about.

And all we want is a customer that doesn't think they are always right. You can't seriously tellus you've NEVER asked for credit, I think every one of our customers has asked us for money at one time or another.

Well I have not EVER asked, for anything other than what I was told I would get for the amount I paid. Cingular has never over charged me so I have never had a reason to ask for credit or money or anything free. 😉

Ive never asked for credit, Ive been offered it but I turned it down cause my satisfaction cant be bought with money or extra minutes, only good customer service which at the time was OK, I wouldnt really call it bad. Thanks.

We can put you on a 1 year with no signature, all we need is a verbal agreement or if you pay us you agree to a 1 year. I'm not saying every rep is super smart but we are alot smarter than most customers.

please read all of this.
I have been reading some of you post here and I don't think you really understand what happened. So let me break it down for you one more time, I have been with Cingular on a family talk plan for one year and I have one year left, I have two lines. I went into a Cingular corprate store and said I want to add a third line but DO NOT want to have to sign a contract for it and I have my own phone I just need to buy the sim for $24.99 I said ok she looked up my account went and got the new sim and I gave her the money she put the sim in my phone I called one of my other lines to see if it worked and it did, so I left. I NEVER signed anything and I DID NOT get Cingular when I placed my first call from the new line as...
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1 year YES 2 year NO do I need to spell it out a little more for you?

You can say what you want but if I cancel this line before two years and they charge me for it and I dispute it and we go to court the judge will want some sort of proof that Cinguar had a contract with me and when they say we do not have a copy of the contract with his signature on it and we do not have a recording of were he agreed to this or any proof at all. what do you think will happen?

blah, blah, blah. another customer talking about taking the company to court over something. i hope you do take them to court and i hope that your court costs far outweigh your ETF.

#1: It will probably be an arbitrator, not a judge.
#2: He might revert back to the original contract you signed when you established the primary account a year ago. You might want to look through that and see if there is anything stupid in it related to Cingular policies if you decide to manipulate your account(s)...

Well, as far as number 1 goes, Cingular has already broken the contract, so I would be able to take it to a judge.

And number 2, you're probably right, there probably is something in the original contract reguarding such a transaction. I could be wrong though, and so could Cingular. I remember a while back when I was having trouble with my minutes, the guy said maybe I'm overcharged because of calls started before the free time and lasting until after 9. At that point, I learned I could make a call at 859, talk till 4 am, and be charged all those minutes. Maybe it's a good thing that my phone can't hold onto a call longer than about 45 min. Either way, I told him I had never heard of such a thing and it sounded rediculious. He said ...
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davidg4781 said:
wrong though, and so could Cingular. I remember a while back when I was having trouble with my minutes, the guy said maybe I'm overcharged because of calls started before the free time and lasting until after 9. At that point, I learned I could make a call at 859, talk till 4 am, and be charged all those minutes. Maybe it's a good thing that my phone can't hold onto a call longer than about 45 min. Either way, I told him I had never heard of such a thing and it sounded rediculious. He said it was in my T&C, so I correct by the company?

No not with Cingular at least not on the former ATTWS side once your unlimited time starts your billing switches to that. How ever there are some com...
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With Cingular, that's what they said. In that month that I was charged for all of my NW minutes, I had maybe 2 minutes that would be affected by such a policy, so I really didn't care. And I did not receive the paper stating that. When I asked him where it was, he said it was on page 6 or something. So, I turned to page six, and it was telling me how to put the battery in my phone. I read him the whole paper I received and there was nothing in there about calls starting before 9pm.

I kinda have bad news. I don't agree with it but the terms and conditions for the cell phone (should have gotten them in the welcome kit but i don't remember as i don't work there anymore) state that if you use the phone or pay the bill then you agree to the terms and conditions (they don't say anything about having to read them). And one of the terms is that you agree to a one year contract when activating a new line of service (hence a new number). With a one year contract no signature is needed and you using that phone is your agreement to the contract. I don't like it and you don't like it but it has held up in court. The terms and conditions are so iron tight they can do just about anything they want to you and owe you very little....
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They are not iron tight. I just told you that it didn't mention a thing about starting the call before 9 and being charged for the entire call. Read the posts. Second, if the one year agreement isn't in there, he can't be held liable for it. If he doesn't know about it, and the rep told him that there would be no one year contract, then there is no one year contract. It's not rocket science, it's commone sense.

First part the T&C say and i quote "Calls that begin in one rate period and end in another rate period may be billed in their entirety at the rates for the period in which the call began" under the catigory AIRTIME AND OTHER MEASURED USAGE. And the part about the contract is under activation of service states that you are bound to a one year contract unless you sign a longer one. Unfortunatly i don't have access to my nicely formated T&C from when i was working there. Fortunatly i don't work for cingular anymore but i do know that thier T&C are very iron tight and very difficult to dispute.

You're half right. For a contract with terms that last over one year, it MUST be in writing and signed by the party in which enforcement is sought (the customer, or maybe Cingular). That signature though can be written, a recording, activation of the phone BY THE CUSTOMER, usage of the phone, or even a letterhead on the contract. For anything less than one year, it does not have to be in writing, but, it is highly advisable. Now, there are requirements for a contract. They are:

1. Agreement
2. Consideration
3. Capacity
4. Form
5. Legality
6. Genuiness

The "agreement" that stephen5688 talked about, if he didn't miss anything, would not meet all 6 requirements since there was not an agreement as to the length of the contract. ...
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Finally someone with some who is not an idiot.

stephen5688 said:
please read all of this.
I have been reading some of you post here and I don't think you really understand what happened. So let me break it down for you one more time, I have been with Cingular on a family talk plan for one year and I have one year left, I have two lines. I went into a Cingular corprate store and said I want to add a third line but DO NOT want to have to sign a contract for it and I have my own phone I just need to buy the sim for $24.99 I said ok she looked up my account went and got the new sim and I gave her the money she put the sim in my phone I called one of my other lines to see if it worked and it did, so I left. I NEVER signed anything and I DID NOT get Cingular when I pla

...
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Ok...read your T's & C's. A contract is not based on just the price of the phone. I don't care if you walked into a store with your own equipment and only needed a sim card. Your contract is also tied to the promotions on your account. So if you would like a phone with no nights and weekends and no mobile to mobile minutes, we can do THAT for you without a contract. A one year contract is automatic, and as far as I can tell, doesn't even really require verbal agreement, because to activate your phone, you have to agree to the T's & C's. So sit down, shut up, and stop your whining. How appropriate that your posted this in response to a thread about stupid customers. Looks like you definitly fit in the category. And do you really thin...
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You, my friend, are either misinformed, or an idiot. Whenever you puchase something, a contract is made. When you buy a gophone, a contract is made. When you puchase a snickers bar, a contract is made. You are agreeing to pay Wal-Mart $0.39 in exchange for 1 snicker bar.

That said, sure, it could have been in his T&C that he had to agree to stay with Cingular for a period of one year (and it would require a verbal agreement, at the least, you cannot enter into a contract without the other party agreeing to or knowing about it) in exchange for certain promotions. But what if it didn't? What if the T&C didn't mention anything about it? Mine didn't mention anything about starting a call at 8:59 pm and being charged daytime minutes e...
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I dis not receive any T&C to read to agree to. when I sarted service with Cingular a year ago I did it through Bellsouth over the phone. The first call I made it did go to Cingualr and I did have to agree to what it said to activate the line, but it was just one line not a family plan, as for the second line, that phone was my girlfriends line in her name and we called Cingular and asked could it be changed over to me and I go to a family plan and yes I know that they are to do a credit check to see if I can have another line. Well guess what they did not they just said ok sure and the next month she got her final bill and then I was on a family plan with her old phone as the second line, as for the third line the one that is in question I w...
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Well, that is the craziest thing I have ever heard of, to think you can add a line of service and not sign a contract for that line. This is nothing new and nothing is hidden, if the rep told you it was posible, then I am sorry they lied, but you should know that a contract is required.

Maybe he even thought that a contract would be required, but if an authorized agent of Cingular Wireless (which the "rep" would qualify as) told him it wouldn't be necessary, then, guess what? It's his lucky day.

You know how many people would try that excuse??? I didn't agree to a contract!!! Let me out of it!!! LMAO Yeah, let's let every customer out of contract while we are at it. We'll throw all of our policies out the window. FREE CAMERA BLUETOOTH PDA PHONES FOR EVERYBODY!!!! FREE ACCESSORIES!!!! FREE ACTIVATION!!!! THREE FREE MONTHS OF SERVICE!!!! AND NO CONTRACT!!!!! Sheesh...money grubbing whining little weasels. He agreed to a VERBAL CONTRACT by activating his phone. END OF STORY.

Well, sir, that's not the customer's problem. The Statute of Frauds states that a signature is required from which enforcement is sought. Cingular's seeking enfrocement from the customer, you've got to have the customer's signature. Simple as that. You don't have it, you're out of luck. It's really not that difficult to understand. If it's less than one year, a verbal contract will suffice. If the terms are more than a year, a written one is required. Now, if he didn't know he was agreeing to a one year contract, there's the agreement requirement of a contract that's missing there.

Now, since no one apparently reads my posts about contract law, or either everyone's such and idiot that can't understand it, he is agreeing to a con...
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Accually that is not true. Verbal agreements are binding up to one years time. Your right he could argue the agreement he made was for month to month (but verbal agreements are very difficult to prove when disputed). How ever he did agree to the terms and conditions of service which states he agrees to them by using the phone or paying his bill weither or not he has them or reads them because they can be accessed online or by calling and having them sent out (which is considered accessalble to anyone). It also states that he agrees to a one year contract by activating a line of service. And the last thing it state is that he has 30 days to dispute anything on the T&C.

oh okay well then my guess is that you're probably just one of those customers that hears whatever they want to hear REGARDLESS of whats being said to them. All I ever see you do on these threads is argue, which has lead me to this conclusion

😲 go smurfy!

well i really dont like it when I am told one thing and than that not the way it is and I dont think that anyone likes that. 🙄

Maybe you should come be a rep, I'm sure you'd be super rep that knows everything and is never wrong.

Well I was a damn fine one when I worked for Verizon 😉

Just because some reps give you wrong information does not mean every single reps out there does not know anything at all. some reps just want to make money any way possible, just like some customers wants free service for they are toooo mentally challenged to follow directions to fix their voice mail issues. its customers like you makes reps dosent want to help a customer at all.

I actually even had the call where why does my phone shut off every time I answer it. I press the press while ringing button every time. this was back in the TDMA days the lovely PWR button. If you not sure what I mean many people pressed the power button to answer their phone. So stephen5688 I really do not think this tread is about you man. it is for some of the types I described in my past two posts on this. Oh and yes I really did have the PWR call before this was a few years ago now

i had cust argue with me for 30 freakin minutes that Alaska was NOT part of the US. The guy wanted an international roaming plan to go there.

That's ok one day i had an argument with a woman that Canada was the 55 state and part of the US. I still can't fingure out what 51 - 54 are. I figure mexico, Cuba (mabye). I can't figue out the other two though.

akwash79 said:
wtf is wrong with you? Thinking you can add a line with NO contract. you must be injecting crack directly to your brain.

We know this, but apparently Steven did not know this. He stated in his original post which had nothing to do with this topic that he said to the dealer he did not want a contract. The dealer should have advised him that this cannot be done and to get on the family talk plan requires a contract. but if he provided his own phone a two year contract should not have been required. My response to his original post was based on the Old ATT wireless side of the service which says on family plans everyone requires to be on the same contract start and end date. How ever reps fro...
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I just thought it was common knowledge that to start or add on service with postpaid wireless you have to have a contract. I knew this when I was 17(im 26 now). I dont know what you consider common knowledge about cell phones but I thought credit check and contract were the most basic things that everyone(who has had some exposure to wireless phones and service) should know. If he didn't already have service I could understand. But for already having service and a contract, cmon man. I guess you don't consider the fact that phones have power off buttons as common knowledge either.

akwash79 said:
already having service and a contract, cmon man. I guess you don't consider the fact that phones have power off buttons as common knowledge either.

Well with the PoWeR button it is in the owners manual on what the button is. when you purchase a product it advises you to read your owners manual first. if every time you changed the channel on your TV and it powered off would you call your cable company? You purchased a electronic devise reading the owners manual would clear tell you what each button is. Now service with a contract yes we know how that works, but the customer thought the contract was tied only to the device, it can be a number of other things, but many misconceptions is that co...
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I'm not really sure how a contract would fall under common knowledge, there are many plans with many service providors (lacking promotions of course) that if you sign on to them, and pay full price for a phone, or provide your own phone you do not need a contract. before the merger with cingular, the former att wireless customers had the ability to do this, and perhaps they are mistaken now that they can't, but its up to us as employees to educate the customers on what options they have, not to ridicule them, get them on 2 yr contracts, then tell them they lack common sense. there are a lot of customers with ridiculous requests out there, but I really don't think this is one. He just wanted a YES or NO answer- not to be misinformed.

the former att wireless customers had the ability to do this

I worked in blue NAS for over a year and I never knew of a customer who could start postpaid service without a contract. No major service provider that I know of has ever allowed this(at least since 96). The sales rep was definately wrong in telling him that he could. Ridiculous request? I haven't heard this requested in all my time working for AT&T and Cingular activations. If I got a caller requesting such, I would think it was ridiculous as most activation reps would(to a lesser extent of some other requests though).

Ok, REGARDLESS of how "rediculous" this request is and how it shouldn't be possible, and how this customer is lacking common sense for asking it, a simple "no sir , that isn't possible" would have sufficed im sure. not everyone is as educated as we'd like them to be and that is why we're here.

Thank you. 😁

I didn't know that I would have to sign a one year contract to be able to get service with Cingular, even if I provided my own phone. Now I do. Maybe he didn't. Actually, even if you get a prepaid service, you are still signing a contract, it's just not a one year contract.

Do you have mobile to mobile on that line? Night and Weekend minutes?? Then yes, they can prove you do. You have to have a contract to have those promotions.

How would he know he has to have a contract on those promotions if the rep told him he didn't have to have one to be added to the line? Don't be an idiot. This is really getting aggrivating, reading all the Cingular peeps saying "you should've known all the innerworkings of Cingular and that because you should have known, we're going to go ahead and hold you to a one or two year contract that you had no knowledge of ever agreeing to." I hope it's just the employees on here that think that way, and not the company in general. If so, it's just a matter of time before you screw with the wrong customer and he does take Cingular to court. Can you say punitive damages? In my opinion, I would guess punitive damages over $1 Million would be aw...
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Yeah...and when have you ever heard of ONE INDIVIDUAL taking a cell phone company to court and winning??? Only in certain cases are companies taken to court, and that's usually as the result of class-action lawsuits.

And I didn't say he should know. READ MY POST, I said if he has those promotions on his account, CINGULAR CAN PROVE HE HAS A CONTRACT. Also, in case you didn't realize, by activating your phone, you are agreeing to the t's and c's.

also by continuing to use the phone and paying the bill after he has "found out" that he is under contract, he has inadvertently agreed. even if he "didnt know originally", i am sure it is documented that he has called in to dispute the contract and was advised that the contract is still active on the account. he had a better shot if he had returned the equipment and never paid the bill for that line. 😲

So, using your wonderful logic, if you contract me to paint your bedroom, and I go out and buy enough paint to put 4 layers on your house, I can then be entitled to paint your house and force you to pay? When you take me to court, all I have to do is say, "Your honor, I have proof that I was supposed to pain all of his house. See, look at all this paint. There's my proof that we had a contract to paint his entire house." You know, I would not only get laughed at, but probably fined for making a mockery of the legal system.

And as far as people sueing. There's Kinkel v. Cingular Wireless, Kinkel won. Probably a few have tried, and Cingular settled out of court.

It says in all wireless service contracts thay the company can extend your contract at any point. They just can not change your plan without your permission.

Can you provide me with a link to this information? And, quite honestly, I doubt that will hold up in court, unless some consideration is given to the customer for extending their contract. Let's use some logic for example. Let's say I hire you to mow my lawn once a month for 6 months. If I throw in this dumb little clause into the contract, I can force you to mow my lawn for ever. All I have to do is extend the length another 6 months at the beginning of the 5th month of the contract. It's dumb, and if Cingular's doing that crap, it's either very well hidden or people are complete morons.

I think you got that confused. It says that they can change your rateplan at anytime however if it is for the worse than you have 15 days to dispute the contract and get out of it. But the company CAN lower your priceplan or give you more minutes and you are still bound to the contract. I know my T&C's very well from when i was working there but i have never seen this clause.

We can't change anything without the customers consent or authorization.

Maybe i'm getting confused with the AWS T&C. Those ones we could change anything we wanted as long as the customer was notified within 30 days of the change and the cust had 15 days from behing notified to dispute the contract (which was really fun because they had to dispute it BEFORE the change happened and showed up on the bill).