Cingular Counts Double

I've balanced my checkbook ever since I've had a bank account. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure why I've spent so many hours balancing everything to the penny.  I've certainly never found a mistake. It's not that I don't trust my bank, it's just what I was taught to do.

I almost never check my cell phone bill. Who has ever heard of balancing your cell phone bill? Recently I learned that my carrier, Cingular, has an ability to check your balance of minutes by dialing *MIN#.  This is handy for making sure that I don't cross over on my 500 minutes a month plan into that evil land of 40 cents a minute phone calls.

Last month was a tough one and I was cutting things close. I was safe. I checked again in a day or two and was told I had used 35 minutes. No way! Not possible.  I decided to dig a bit deeper and so I went onto Cingular's web site to look at my account detail.

There was the 35 minutes and by clicking on "detail" I saw the calls I had made (received) this month. I carefully added up my minutes, not with my computer but with my fingers.  They added up to 12 minutes (I may have had to use a toe or two).  I called to ask what's up.

A nice young man named Kyler answered the phone. Kyler was eager to help (he must have been knew). I was interested in his name and I wanted to ask what it was like being a Kyler.  Seemed like a good boy's name and we know how tough those are to pick, but now I'm hopelessly off track.

Kyler listened patiently to my explanation.  He said he only saw 12 minutes and that he couldn't see what I was seeing with his system. He kept looking for new screens and new views into my account and finally confirmed he saw what I saw.

Kyler put an "all knowing" tone in his voice and explained to me that when we talk for a portion of a minute, that Cingular rounds up. So that if I talk for one minute and one second, it counts as two minutes.  But Kyler was the one off track here.  Nope, this couldn't not be explained using the standard "round up" discussion he had been trained in.  Kyler was going to have to go off script.

"You have to understand that these things are managed by computers," Kyler went on to explain in an authoritative voice. "You can't expect them to be perfect every time."  Machines don't make mistakes I explained--they may fail but they don't shave minutes unless they are programmed to do so. I also explained to Kyler that my bank has never made a mistake and that if Cingular can't count minutes then what good are they? They have to be good at two things...connecting phone calls and counting minutes. Kyler was silent, apparently an indication that I made a good point.

While chatting with Kyler, I noticed a problem with last month's bill. There was a pattern that made no sense. I saw a string of minutes for "incoming" calls that we exactly three hours apart. The pattern was broken up by an 18 minute call that appeared twice. Once at 4:30 and once at 1:30.  Since I was in an East Coast time zone and I was sure I wasn't on the phone at 1:30 local time, I was convinced that I was being charged double.

Poor Kyler. His youthful exuberance was wiped out for the day.  No one problem he could see but couldn't explain.  I had just found a second. Kyler promised he would report my account. When I asked about what type of follow up I should expect, Kyler couldn't make any promises. "Would you tolerate that if you were the customer?" I asked Kyler. Clearly not well versed in corporate double speak, Kyler confirmed that his response wasn't good enough.  He committed to solving the problem and that one way or another he would get back to me.

By the call's end Kyler was on my side. He promised to get back to me in 24 hours.  That was pretty impressive. Clearly he wasn't sure how he would proceed. Kyler was impressing me.

Cingular's best representative, Kyler, did call back in 24 hours. What's more he acknowledged that his company was responsible for not one but two mistakes. They had been reported and I was being credited with 100 minutes for my trouble.

There are many ugly stories about cell phone companies and how they treat their customers, thankfully Kyler hasn't had that training yet and I, for one, am very pleased with my Cingular service.

October 7, 2005