Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Cingular steals from its customers

That's what it looks like to me and tell me if you don't think so, too, after reading this. The company that advertises itself as "having the fewest dropped calls"--marketing students, pay attention, that's how you turn a negative into a "selling point," ranking that tag line right up there with the one that says, "we're no worse than the others"--takes away rollover minutes when you reduce your plan.

Rollover minutes used to be something that differentiated Cingular from its competitors. It's not just a nice concept, it's an honest one. Say my wireless plan gives me 1,300 minutes a month, but I only use 1,250. Then Cingular would let me keep the 50 minutes I didn't use. Of course, that's only fair since I did already pay for them, making them mine. Over time, you can accumulate a nice little balance. In my case, I collected approximately 2,600 minutes.

But then say your circumstances change where you don't need 1,300 minutes a month anymore and you want to reduce the number of minutes of your plan to say 900 and tap into your rollover minutes account. Cingular used to let you do that, but then changed its policy. If you reduce your plan like I wanted to do from 1,300 to 900, Cingular would have taken 700 of my rollover minutes to start my new plan at 900, even though I've already paid for those minutes.

And they can do that just because no one stops them.

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