cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

I enrolled in autopay, and apparently it takes 30 DAYS before autopay works. This makes 0 sense, other than to [censored] over the consumer. And I'm glad they put this in some long terms and conditions file to make sure I wouldn't notice. Then I couldn't even use my phone while on vacation. Luckily I had a laptop to pay my bill online so I could use my phone again.

EVERYTHING ABOUT CURRENT CELL PHONE COMPANIES are downright abusive. I cannot wait until the google phone comes out. This will level the playing field so our cell phone services won't be downright abusive.

Also, if you are wondering why there hasn't been a phone company out that doesn't blatantly try to screw the consumer in every way conceivable, it's b/c the phone companies have govt ties preventing competition, simply b/c the govt tried to break up the "monopolies" but in actuality, made things much much worse.

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

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Also, if you are wondering why there hasn't been a phone company out that doesn't blatantly try to screw the consumer in every way conceivable, it's b/c the phone companies have govt ties preventing competition, simply b/c the govt tried to break up the "monopolies" but in actuality, made things much much worse.

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I'm pretty ignorant on the subject. But I'm assuming the government ties you're talking about involves the bandwidth distribution, yes? If so, I'm not sure I see a solution to that problem that doesn't involve some kind of regulatory agency.

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

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Also, if you are wondering why there hasn't been a phone company out that doesn't blatantly try to screw the consumer in every way conceivable, it's b/c the phone companies have govt ties preventing competition, simply b/c the govt tried to break up the "monopolies" but in actuality, made things much much worse.

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Interesting. Could you elaborate?

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

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Also, if you are wondering why there hasn't been a phone company out that doesn't blatantly try to screw the consumer in every way conceivable, it's b/c the phone companies have govt ties preventing competition, simply b/c the govt tried to break up the "monopolies" but in actuality, made things much much worse.

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Interesting. Could you elaborate?

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alot of towns have agreements with the phone companies to NOT install free wifi for example.

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

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Also, if you are wondering why there hasn't been a phone company out that doesn't blatantly try to screw the consumer in every way conceivable, it's b/c the phone companies have govt ties preventing competition, simply b/c the govt tried to break up the "monopolies" but in actuality, made things much much worse.

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Doesn't it have more to do with the fact that a large percentage of cell-phone users are locked into long-term contracts?

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

cz,

It sounds like you're confusing abusive and incompetent.

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

lol @ you getting your phone shut off because of not realizing that autopay wouldn't be instant and thinking that cingular wants this to happen. yeah, they're just out to f*ck you man. why would they want you to keep spending money or something?

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

wtf why would anybody do autopay on something like a cell phone? I know it's convenient if you're too forgetful to pay your bill once a month (i can pay mine by text messaging from my handset), but haven't you seen times where the phone company screws up and you end up with an $800 bill?

I know people aren't cloning cell phones like back in the good old days, but there are still times that I've had to fight with my cell company over charges (when, for example, my phone included roaming in every state except for oregon)

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

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cz,

It sounds like you're confusing abusive and incompetent.

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I bought a new phone when they switched from AT&T wireless to Cingular (a few years ago) and they had to port my number even though I was still a cingular customer. They screwed it up, lost the number I've had for 8 years. It took me a month and probably about 20 hours on the phone with 15 different people to get it fixed. They also reassigned my number to someone else during that time by mistake.

But I was five days late on a bill after never being late on a bill before and some rude collections bitch called me TWICE threatening me.

Sure that's incompetent, but I think it's fair to call them abusive when looking at their CS + collections practices.

Re: cingular/cell phone companies scum of the earth
 

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EVERYTHING ABOUT CURRENT CELL PHONE COMPANIES are downright abusive. I cannot wait until the google phone comes out. This will level the playing field so our cell phone services won't be downright abusive.

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Google phone has absolutely nothing to do with what you're complaining about.

It's like saying "wow I can't wait for the new Honda to come out so that Hertz can't dick me over any more." And even that analogy isn't apt since Google is just going to be licensing an operating system to a bunch of handset manufacturers.