Cingular tops the charts… in complaints

Looks like after the merger with AT&T Wireless, Cingular is #1 in quite a few areas. According to Consumer Reports, Cingular blows by all other wireless providers in number of complaints per million customers; almost twice as many complaints as Sprint and a staggering four times as many as Verizon.

It’s not hard to figure out why. AT&T already had a bunch of problems – I didn’t know of a single AT&T customer who was completely satisfied – and after the merger, Cingular’s been implementing a bunch of rules that make the experience even worse. I’m one of the pre-merger AT&T subscribers and every time I think about my experience, I get annoyed.

Want to add a line? Change your plan? Get features like rollover? Too bad. You have to buy a new phone and sign a new contract. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my current account and my Audiovox SMT5600; I just got in less than 6 months ago! First off, Cingular should be able to change my account features without having to issue me a new SIM card. Secondly, even if they insist on issuing a new SIM card, at least let me keep my phone. Lastly, if you insist on issuing me a new SIM card and a new phone, you’d better not charge me for any of this unnecessary swapping.

Of course, there aren’t any better options really. All the cool phones are GSM nowadays and T-Mobile’s network is the same or worse than Cingular’s in most areas. I guess we can only hope that one day, wireless service in the US will be better. In the meantime, we’ll be stuck choosing between the lesser of multiple evils. (Is it just me or does it seem like we’re always choosing between the lesser of evils? )