Or should I say that AT&T sucks, instead?

Either way, this particular company has done little or nothing to endear me to them or their crooked little nickel and dime pinching policies.

Since I got my RAZR in 2005, we’ve been using Cingular as our cellular provider. We chose their “FamilyTalk 1400″ plan as we were using a fair number of minutes at the time. We were also using the text messaging feature quite a bit. Imagine my surprise when I found out that when Glenna and I sent messages to each-other, we were being charged for two separate messages (one being sent, one being received - even though it was the same message).

In other words, Cingular charged us twice as much to send a text message between two phones within their own network as they did to send (or receive) one out of it - even though the cost is surely negligible to them and we were already paying for each phone.

Upon finding out about this, I explained why I thought this ludicrous and finally got them to agree to cancel out the extra text message costs I had already incurred. In order to maintain my current usage levels I saw that I would have to purchase a $9.95/month add-on to get the number of monthly text messages we would need. So, I asked about the add-on.

It was then explained to me that we would need to purchase two of these add-ons as the benefit could not be shared between phones (even though we were on a FamilyTalk plan, owned by a single customer). My $9.95/month add-on doubled to $19.90/month just because Cingular had some ridiculous artificial restriction in place to soak up money from people who use their phones in a completely normal and expected fashion (”What? Two people on a family plan sending text messages to each-other? That will never happen!”).

Anyhow, as of today I had lived with Cingular’s inflated pricing and annoying restrictions for long enough. Both our phone and text message usage have since dwindled, even more now that Glenna telecommutes from home and we can use traditional instant messaging to communicate. I no longer have much need for anything more than the basic family plan.

Just a bit ago I called Cingular and tried to get my plan dropped to the lowest FamilyTalk plan available and have the text messaging add-ons removed. The billing representative on the other end then told me that the “roll-over” minutes I had earned would be reset, from something like 12,000 to a starting amount of 550. When I asked why, she explained that this was a recent policy change they had made, and that it was largely due to people having high-end plans for a while only to downgrade after they earn a large number of roll-over minutes.

Apparently Cingular has a real problem with pesky customers actually using the services they pay for.

Anyhow, when I explained that I felt Cingular was more or less engaging in a bait and switch scheme, they offered to “allow me” to keep 1,000 of the minutes I had already earned. From my perspective, this seemed like someone stealing your car but patting themselves on the back for having the grace to leave behind the tires.

Granted, this is more a matter of principle than pragmatism. Our usage is so low now that the roll-over minutes I had would likely expire, unused. Even worse, while I did make it known that these experiences would be kept in mind for when my 2 year contract expires later this year, in the back of my mind I knew that all of the wireless carriers suck on a monumental scale. If I left Cingular, who would I go to? Verizon? Back to Sprint?

I have to say, while the inability to install additional software onto an iPhone was already an issue for me, Cingular’s role as the sole wireless provider for the iPhone dampens it even further. I hope Apple realizes that Cingular is hardly capable of providing the sort of customer experience that Apple/Mac customers are used to, and that this can and probably will impact the iPhone’s reception when it is launched in a couple of months.

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Oh, yeah, and I’m hardly the only person who thinks that Cingular sucks. Here’s just a taste:

The Consumerist entries about Cingular
Cingular / AT&T Receive Most Complaints In 2004 Says FCC
Final PUC decision in Cingular customer service case
CingularCucks
FCC Complaint Filed 4/17/02 # 2920496
Cingular tops in customer complaints

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Update (5/7): Not just lame, inept as well. We noticed that Cingular had turned off our ability to send or receive text messages entirely (even though they specifically asked if I wanted to keep that ability, which I did - I just didn’t want to pre-pay for so many in advance). Upon calling them today to get it fixed, I found out that they turns of their own ability to send me messages as well. Oops!