Ask any current customer to tell you about problems they've had with Cingular and the subject of billing methods, whether erroneous or unethical, is sure to come up. Cingular is notoriously known by its customers to charge for calls never received, dropped, or never made. While many of these charges can be reversed, the hassle of dealing with customer service reps., as mentioned before, is almost not worth the time or energy. And unless you can validate your claim with something more than "But I'm positive I never made that call to Bangladesh!" be prepared for a long fight.
Cingular also charges calls from THE MOMENT you press the send button. That means if you call a friend who is not home and doesn't have an answering machine, you will be charged. If you dial the wrong number, press send, and catch your mistake before it even starts to ring, you will be charged. You get the idea. The most recent endeavor by Cingular to shake down its customers is an adjustment to the way they bill people who participate in the "Unlimited Nights and Weekends" offer. Starting October 1st, any calls made during peak hours (7:00 am to 7:59 pm) will be charged as such for the duration of the call. For example, if you were to place a call at 7:59 pm and talked until 8:30 pm you would be charged for 31 minutes of peak airtime, even though 8:00 pm is supposed to be when the "Unlimited" talk time kicks in. Once again, feel free to call customer service to dispute the charge, and I'm sure one of their representatives will be more than happy to tell you that the rule is stated in your contract and there is NOTHING you can do about it.
