BEFORE THE CALIFORNIA PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION

Investigation on the Commission's Own Motion into the Operations, Practices, and Conduct of Pacific Bell Wireless LLC dba Cingular Wireless, U-3060,

U-4135 and U-4314, and related entities (collectively "Cingular") to determine whether Cingular has violated the laws, rules and regulations of this State in its sale of Cellular Telephone Equipment and Services and its Collection of an Early Termination Fee and other Penalties from Consumers.

Investigation 02-06-003

(Filed June 6, 2002)

TESTIMONY OF JODI BEEBE

CONCERNING CELLULAR TELEPHONE COVERAGE

OF CINGULAR WIRELESS

ON BEHALF OF UTILITY CONSUMERS' ACTION NETWORK

 

October 23, 2002

Cingular Wireless Complaints as Documented by UCAN

 

A. Summary of Testimony

As detailed below, since 2000, UCAN has received an inordinate amount of complaints regarding Cingular service coverage compared to any other cellular provider in the San Diego market. In cataloging the complaints, I have found that:

· The consumers who contacted UCAN often felt misled by the claims of sales representatives about the extent of Cingular's coverage.

· They were also frustrated by "iron-clad" contracts that could not be cancelled despite the misrepresentations about Cingular's service.

· Numerous complaints of network problems including SOS call only messages, an inability to send and receive calls, Dead Zones, delays and additional costs associated with voice mail, and dropped calls, were indicative of service quality problems with a cellular network that was rapidly deteriorating.

· Consumers indicated their frustration not only with the inability to use their cellular phones and service for the reason it was purchased with high termination fees.

· When confronted with the complaints, Cingular and its sales representatives did not place blame on their network and oversubscribed services, but used the opportunity to entice customers to either purchase expensive phone upgrades or extend their contracts for free phones, while promising an improved network in the near future that never materialized.

 

B. Qualifications of Jodi Beebe

I have been employed by UCAN since January, 1999. I have worked for the Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN) for over three and a half years as the director of our consumer hotline, the Fraud Squad, and currently as Associate Director. The majority of my work for UCAN has involved and currently involves direct intervention on behalf of customers with consumer-related complaints. In that capacity, I have directly assisted over 2,000 local consumers with rectifying various consumer complaints, most of which have involved telecommunications and electricity and gas bill intervention.

In most cases, I, one of UCAN's staff, or volunteers, intervene by contacting the company on behalf of the consumer. We generally use company contacts or "designated liaisons" that UCAN has developed over our years of working for consumers. In this way, we are able to hear the company's side of the matter and, hopefully, find some reasonable resolution of the matter.

I am intimately familiar with our database. I helped to design and maintain the complaint database that we use in our office for tracking and documenting consumer complaints. I also train new employees and volunteers who work with the database and who assist consumers who contact our agency with resolving disputes.

 

C. How UCAN Receives Consumer Complaints

UCAN accepts complaints from consumers in two basic ways. First, UCAN has an online complaint form that can be accessed through our website- www.ucan.org. The customer is asked to enter basic information, such as the company that they are complaining about, basic contact information and their account number. Then the consumer enters a narrative of the problem they are having and what has been done to address the problem to date,. A UCAN staff member will then review this e-mail, electronically copy the information directly into our complaint tracking database (see attached) and follow up with the consumer and company as necessary to resolve the problem.

Second, UCAN receives phone calls from customers. These calls are received by UCAN staff members and trained volunteers. The information about the customer and the customer's narrative complaint are entered into the complaint database. Additional complaints might be received by direct e-mails to UCAN staff, voice-mail messages personal visits and fax. UCAN also receives referrals from local organizations such as the San Diego County Small Claims Court advisor in Chula Vista, Legal Aid, Senior Legal Services, Chicano Federation among other local agencies due to our reputation in
Figure 1

 

As shown in Fig. 1, UCAN has been contacted by 198 individuals regarding their Pacific Bell Wireless and Cingular Wireless service since January, 2000. Compared to other cellular providers offering service in the San Diego area, UCAN has received over one-third (23%) more complaints from individuals about Cingular's service than its closest contender, MCI-Worldcom Wireless, which were predominantly billing-related, and almost three times as many complaints as third place Sprint. UCAN has received more complaints about Cingular than its four main competitors (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and Nextel) combined.

 

E.
UCAN Dead Zone Project Complaints

Figure 2

In late August 2002, UCAN unveiled its Dead Zone interactive project, which allows cellular customers in the San Diego area to submit the name of their service provider and where they have experienced dead zones in service coverage. Cingular by far ranks first in reported dead zones, as indicated in Fig. 2, with almost two hundred more dead zones reported by Cingular subscribers than Verizon, which ranked second. Over 40% of the total dead zone reports involve Cingular Wireless.

F. Types of Complaints

Since the beginning of 2000, UCAN has been contacted by 128 individuals about a broad spectrum of customer problems, identified in the OII regarding Pacific Bell Wireless and Cingular Wireless service. Since some people identified multiple problems, UCAN has recorded 237 separate instances on seven OII related issues (Shown in Fig. 3 on next page):

 

1) False promises of coverage at the time of sale

2) Busy signals and "SOS only" call limitations

3) Voice mail problems and delays

4) Dropped calls

5) Termination fee issues

6) Phone/ equipment repair problems and;

7) Unfulfilled promises of more towers and increased coverage.

 

G. Service Coverage Problems

We have documented 21 instances where customers expressly asked the Cingular sales representative if a specific address or location would have coverage. After being promised coverage in a specific area, and at times being shown "coverage" maps to support these claims, the customer signed the contract. Soon thereafter, they would learn that there was no signal or coverage at the promised location. Six consumers who contacted UCAN mentioned that they saw an advertisement or spoke to a sales person who presented them with a service coverage map that led them to believe they would have service in specific areas, where later it was found, there was no coverage.

Figure 3

 

Specific examples include the following:

Mr. Z. (#8247) asked about coverage at his wife's workplace-- Dominican University in San Rafael. He saw a coverage map that showed coverage in this area and therefore, he purchased the phone. When his wife went to work a month later, there was no coverage at that location. The phone said "no network" on the display. He was told he could not return the phone without paying a termination fee.

Mrs. B. (#8173) received a verbal promise of coverage in the Palomar Mountain area of San Diego. When she realized there was no coverage there, she was subjected to a "circular referral". That is, Cingular and the store where she purchased the phone each insisted that the other was responsible and neither would resolve the customer's complaint. The threat of a termination fee discouraged the customer from canceling her service even though it was not adequate for her needs.

A similar story is offered by Mrs. A. (#8165) who received both a verbal promise ("Yes, Cingular is the only wireless company with service in those locations") and was shown a coverage map when she asked about coverage in the Mount Laguna and Borrego Springs areas. Based on these promises, she bought two phones. But there was no coverage where it was shown on the map. And when she contacted Cingular on several occasions about the problem, she was told she could not cancel without incurring a termination fee of $300 for the two phones.

Mrs. D (#3863) purchased cell phones with the understanding from the sales representative that service would reach East as far as the San Diego-Imperial County line, to the Colorado River and Southern Nevada, including all of California and Arizona. Unfortunately, the phones did not work in this area, and therefore, she took the phones back for a refund but the agent who sold the service said that they would only credit $150.00 of the $400.00 termination fee.

Another consumer, Mrs. S. (#6665), paid $409.18 to purchase three phones when she was promised that their service would meet her needs in her Arizona home, Fairbanks home, Hawaii & Aspen homes and the schools of her kids. Phones did not work in these areas. When they did work, there was such an echo that Mrs. S. and the others in her family who were on the plan, couldn't hear each other. She tried to return the equipment to the store where she had purchased it, but they refused to take the phones back. In addition, she was charged cancellation fees for the phones.

Mrs. B. (#6731) purchased a cell phone for her son who would be attending college in New York. She went to a kiosk in Parkway Plaza and signed up for a Cingular contract on the basis of information given her by Mobil Systems Wireless salesman David Foster. Mr. Foster told her "Cingular was the only wireless service remaining after the World Trade Center Attack. He told Mrs. B. that all the other cellular companies had been destroyed..." Mrs. B's son went to New York with the phone that had no local service and was constantly on "roam". Mrs. B. subsequently found that Cingular's service is West Coast based and told her son to send the phone home to her. She has attempted to return to phone to Mobil Systems Wireless but they will not let her out of her contract.

When Mr. Raymond Swayngim and his wife (#8012) opened a Cingular account, they were told they would have service in their home when his wife specifically asked this of the sales representative. The sales representative told them that, based on their address, this was possible. When they brought the phones home, they noticed there was no signal and therefore, called Cingular. Cingular told them that they were upgrading the towers in their area, so the Swayngims let the issue go for a few weeks, to give Cingular the benefit of the doubt. Weeks later, however, there was still no signal; so, they called Cingular to repeatedly request to be released from their contract, but were refused every time. When they cancelled service anyway, they were billed $800.00 in termination fees.

Tanya Castaneda (#8022) reported to UCAN that, "I entered into contract for cell phone service with said company [Cingular] in December 2000. I sought service for myself and my elderly mother, who lives in West Covina, CA. I was promised service in West Covina. In short, there was no service in West Covina. I was told that I could not use the phones in the car, in the house, or in certain places on the street and expect service. I was told that I could not remove myself from the service. I was home ill one day and called to discuss the termination and was ultimately told that I didn't know how to use the cellphones and that I could donate the phone I had to a worthy cause but I still had to pay $400.00 dollars each to the company."

The above scenarios are just a few of the representative situations that came to UCAN's attention. All of them have a common denominator: A customer was initially misled at the point of sale about the scope and quality of Cingular's coverage in order to get the customer to sign up for service. When customers confronted the company or a sales representative about the inadequacy of service, a number of techniques were used to "save the customer" including false promises about coverage improvements, deferring blame to authorized agents or Cingular, and the threat of high termination fees that were written into the contracts that discouraged termination.

As demonstrated in the above examples, the service coverage claims were grandiose and extravagant, at times covering high mountainous areas, remote desert locations, and even other states. The high termination fees of anywhere from $150 to $650 for phones that were purchased at Cingular kiosks was a severe penalty for consumers, even though many felt that it was Cingular who had defaulted on their terms of the contract to provide a minimal quality of service and coverage.

Other customers, especially those who used their cell phones for business, had to weigh the prospect of losing their cellular number if they switched providers. Regardless, many customers who were experiencing severe service quality problems, persisted with Cingular service rather than paying mandatory termination fees or losing their number, and held out hope that the cellular towers that they had been promised would be built in the near future, would alleviate their problematic service and restore their faith that the cellular provider would be able to provide a modicum of quality of service that justified their monthly charges. The towers unfortunately never materialized and many paid the termination fees assessed to relieve themselves of the inferior service they experienced after being promised the moon.

 

 

H. Calls not completed- Outgoing and Incoming

As depicted in Fig. 3, the primary complaint received by UCAN was the inability of Cingular customers to place outgoing calls. Many customers stated that not only did they experience an alarming number of Dead Zones as documented in Figure 2, they would often receive a busy signal or display of ‘SOS calls only' instead of being able to place a call on the Cingular system. This is distinct from the "no network" message that indicates the person is out of range of the Cingular towers because it was a direct result of oversubscribed cells rather than not having cellular coverage. This fact is especially well-documented by those who had been PacBell Wireless and Cingular customers over a long period of time since they could attest to the fact that quality of service was deteriorating as more subscribers were added to Cingular's overtaxed network.

Alison Stark for instance (#7222) stated that she had intermittent service because Cingular was upgrading its cell sites, or so she was promised. Though she had complained to Cingular, she was told there is nothing they could do, that service would be intermittent until their tower upgrade was completed in July. Alison was also told that if she had a Nokia phone instead of the Cingular-sponsored phone she had purchased, it could have used a different provider's cell towers if Cingular's were unavailable. Instead, the phone would say SOS calls only and would not allow outgoing calls. She also stated that calls were frequently dropped. When she spoke to customer service about the problem, she indicated that she was considering switching to a different provider and was told that since she had a contract with them, she would just have to "deal with it."

Mr. V. (#7972) has been a Cingular customer for over 1½ years. He states that his cellular phone was restricting him to SOS calls only, most of the time. When he discussed the situation with Cingular, he was told that the problem was with his phone, an Ericsson 28Z model and that he could upgrade to a new phone for free if he agreed to another one-year contract.

Amber and Curtis Carder (#8032) also described their frustration with the over-taxed cells. "My husband and I signed up with Cingular wireless in Oct of 2001. We were ok with the service at first. They told us that: "My dad and my sister have Cingular also and that is why we decided to go with them. My husband and I rarely see each other during the week and so this is our primary source of communication. We did notice a lot of dropped calls in the beginning but we just thought we had hit bad areas. Well with this phone everywhere can be a bad area. We constantly get busy signals and half the time our calls aren't even put through. Our calls are always being dropped in areas they once had worked in. We used to text message each other until that stopped working and we were still getting charged for the messages. In all honesty this phone is a real pain in the rear."

Kelly Kauffman (#8038) has been a longtime Cingular customer. Near December of 2001, he noticed that service was getting worse. He would get the SOS only warning, and "system busy" messages. He stated that he cannot get calls through to other Cingular customers. He noticed these problems everywhere- but especially in UCSD area where he works. The declaration he has provided to UCAN has been submitted to the Commission. In it, Mr. Kauffman provides greater detail about his coverage problems.

Mrs. A. (#8059) has been a long time Pacific Bell Wireless/Cingular customer -- for 5 years or so according to her file. She is disabled and needs to get and make calls to medical professionals often. Around Oct, 2001 she noticed serious service problems develop. She began to notice that those calls she had been expecting would not come through. She would also get the system busy signal, and she could not call out. When she would call Cingular and complain, they would consistently tell her that they were building towers in her area.

The experience of these Cingular customers with SOS calls and network busy messages was indicative of a cellular infrastructure that was increasingly pushed beyond its capacity as additional customers were signed on. The testaments of long-standing Cingular subscribers shows the deterioration that existing customers felt as service quality seriously eroded from previous standards and new subscribers, without the benefit of experiencing a functional network, found themselves subscribed to a substandard service.

Several customers commented that when they noted they were unable to place outgoing calls, friends and family would later indicate that they were unable to place a call that would be received by the Cingular subscriber. This was a particularly serious problem for people on the Cingular Mobile to Mobile family talk plans, since people on both sides of the call relied on the Cingular system. Many customers of Cingular's Family Plan lamented the worthlessness of the service since they were unable to call one another and utilize the mobile to mobile minutes that were the primary incentive for subscribing initially.

These are not just minor inconveniences. These capacity bottlenecks caused real problems for customers. For example Nichole Schuler (#8145) was stuck in traffic on a major freeway- the I-15. She was going to be late to pick her daughter up from day care because of the traffic. She tried to call her husband and have him do the pick up. Instead, she consistently got the "system busy" message and could not complete the call. She finally arrived late to get her daughter and had to pay a $100 fine to the day care agency. Cingular sent her a bill in May for charges even though she canceled in April 2002 when her one year contract was up.

Similarly, Susan Colunga (#8050) contacted the UCAN office via email on Monday July 25th at 5:10 pm. At the time, she was in Chula Vista and could not get through because, according to the message she received, "All circuits were busy." She says that attempting to place a call through Cingular's over-subscribed network happens almost every day around the same time. She works in Chula Vista and lives in the mid-city area and has the same problem in both places.

Japji Khalsa (#7519) states that his dispute arises from bad service that he's been experiencing for the last year. He experiences dropped calls, and "All circuits are busy" announcements in addition to the fact that his business customers are not being sent to his voice mail to leave a message. Most often, the "All circuits are busy" notice happens at peak times as people get off of work from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm and sometimes even later into the evening. Due to these service problems, he estimates he's lost thousands of dollars of business.

Gabriela Mora (#8036) was promised better phone coverage and in the meantime, claims that she was "bribed" with free minutes. She states that her calls are dropped and it's impossible to make a call anytime between 4pm to 7 pm because all circuits are busy.

The reports to UCAN about the clogging of Cingular's network during high peak hours such as rush hour again suggests a substantial problem with too many customers attempting to access the same network simultaneously. Unfortunately, when this occurs, all customers are affected as the quality of cellular service plummets. While the complaints received are anecdotal, our experience at UCAN is that a high volume of anecdotal problems often correlates with real, verifiable problems that affects the entire subscriber base.

 

I. Voice Mail Service

When customers were unable to send and receive calls, they would rely on Cingular's voice mail service to take messages from those who were attempting to contact them. However, many customers noted that at times, calls to their number were not picked up by voice mail, that some calls terminated in a busy signal, causing friends and family to try their number repeatedly. When voice mail did pick up, oftentimes it would take from 0.5 to 2.0 hours for the message to appear in the Cingular customer's voice mail box, causing delays in communications especially for those Cingular customers who used their phones for business.

Customers also complained that paying for callers to leave a message due to incoming call charges plus using additional minutes to access voice mail and then to contact the person back, rather than being able to immediately answer the call, cost them more phone minutes than if Cingular's service were able to provide a network connection directly.

Ian Langmore (#7629) for instance notes the problems with receiving voice mail messages: "Cingular wireless is no longer able to provide the most basic services commonly regarded as being part of cellular phone service. Between the hours of 6 and 11 pm, the system is usually busy. This means that in order to make an outgoing call I must make about five attempts. In order for someone to make an incoming call, they must do the same. Of course they simply end up leaving a message, which I won't get notification of for a while, sometimes this while is up to a half hour!" More details of his experienced are included in the declaration he is presenting to the Commission in this proceeding.

Mary Jo Ferriera (#8029) reiterates Ian's statements. "My fiance and I left Cingular service a few months ago because it was so bad. Dropped calls constantly. People telling me they couldn't get thru even to leave a message. Everytime I called out, I got a busy signal. My phone wouldn't even ring sometimes and go straight into voicemail so I had to call voicemail first to get the message (using minutes) then call the person back (using minutes). So it's like a hidden trap to use more minutes. I'm amazed at their stupid commercials and the millions of dollars spent on that instead of upgrading their service."

Mr. P. (#8034) was also having problems receiving voice mail messages in a timely manner. "The service for my cell phone is not reliable. I make calls to other Cingular cell phones, only to be given the answering service to leave a message, when the phone didn't even ring. People call me and get the answering service when my phone is on and not busy. They leave a message and I get it 1 to 2 HOURS later. This is too much time when I need the message immediately."

When Cingular customers experienced real-time problems with sending and receiving calls, many felt that they could rely on the safety net of the voice mail service include with their phone to fill the gaps. Unfortunately, Cingular's voice mail service was also problematic. Not only were some incoming calls unable to gain access to the voice mail of an account, but messages that were left, were often delayed long periods of time before the customer was notified. In addition, this more complicated way of using a cell phone to communicate increased the volume of incoming and outgoing calls to consumers.

 

J. Dropped Calls

The second-ranked complaint from Cingular customers was the number of calls that were suddenly dropped in the middle of a conversation. One couple on Cingular's Family Plan noted that they tested Cingular's service by sitting next to one another on their couch, only to have their call to one another dropped. This indicates that dropped calls were not due to movement from one cell to another but by congestion at cell towers. This problem, coupled with the inability to receive incoming and outgoing calls was by far the most exasperating experiences of Cingular customers.

As an example, Mr. J. (#6855) has had Cingular service for about two years. About 50% of the calls made from his home get dropped from the network. Don Tyssee (#7979) echoes this complaint. "Since I have gotten the phone, I have constant problems with no service or minimum service to the point that it is useless to have. In addition to that I have numerous dropped calls. When at home I have no service at all, which does not allow me to use the off peak minutes to my advantage."

Mrs. H. (#8021) has similar problems. "Terrible service, cannot even receive calls within my home, dropped calls, and outage of service all the time." And Mr. W. (7967) concurred with the sentiments of other Cingular customers when he states that he had "very poor reception. No wireless signal at either my home (Rancho Penasquitos) or work (UCSD). Frequent dropped calls."

Much like the inability to place calls due to lack of network coverage or oversubscribed cells, having a call dropped in the middle of a conversation was another problem among the menu of possible service quality issues experienced by Cingular customers that added to their frustration with the cellular service. Though customers expected some modest degree of dropped calls, especially while they were mobile, the customers who called UCAN did not have any expectation or forewarning of the degree of dropped calls that would occur and were particularly surprised by the interruptions even when stationary.

 

K. Terminating Contracts

Customer frustration with not being able to use their phone for communicating especially from their home or other frequented location, left many customers feeling that Cingular had not kept their part of the contract that had been signed-namely to provide service. Some customers realized that frequented areas did not have a signal within a day or two of signing their contract; and therefore, attempted to terminate service within a few days after signing, having used a minimum of minutes from their plan. However, such customers were often told that they could not cancel service, that they would either have to fulfill their term of the contract signed, which was up to two years in some instances, or face a steep termination fee. Other customers, who had had intermittent service for a few months, also attempted to cancel service and faced the same recurring monthly charges for a service that did not work or a termination fee.

To make the situation more exasperating for many customers, Cingular service was oftentimes peddled through cellular kiosks such as Allstate Cellular, the Mobile Solution, PCS SmartMart, and Mobile Systems Wireless (a.k.a. M S Wireless) that many thought were direct Cingular stores. When consumers attempted to cancel service that had been signed through kiosk sales representatives, their termination fees would increase dramatically, having incurred an additional $400 termination fee per phone to the kiosk vendor directly in addition to Cingular's termination fee for service.

For instance, in July of 2000, a consumer purchased a cell phone that did not work in her home; so, she called Cingular, which gave her a new phone that still did not work in her area. She was told that she had to pay $150.00 to cancel her contract. Amber and Curtis Carder (#8032) also state, "One reason we haven't stopped our service is because we had called the customer service line to cancel and were told that it would be $150.00 each phone to cancel. To us this makes no sense because the phones are on one contract. They were both purchased on one contract in my husband's name. We don't have $300.00 to waste on a piece of garbage phone that doesn't even work."

Mr. B. (#8088) has disputed $400 in charges for termination by the Mobile Solution. He cancelled the phone within two weeks due to poor service quality, but the Mobile Solution will not waive the fee.

Lastly, Mrs. R. (#8019) and her family had purchased eight phones on Cingular's Family Plan. When all of her family, who live in the South Bay of San Diego were coverage was sparse, had difficulty communicating with one another and using Cingular's service in general, they faced $3,600 worth of termination fees from the kiosk vendor, the Mobile Solution, in addition to cancellation fees from Cingular totaling an additional $1,200.

As discussed above, the termination fees assessed by not only by Cingular, but authorized agents of retail kiosks, was a huge financial setback to those customers who were fed up with poor service and opted to cancel their contracts. The fact that consumers were willing to pay such high fees is a testament to the aggravation they experienced with Cingular's service. Other consumers, however, were unwilling to pay such high upfront costs to terminate a service that was not meeting their needs and instead, waited out their contracts for a service many deemed "worthless".

The iron-clad contracts signed by the customer's own handwritten signature with high penalties for canceling early was used as a tool to keep customers subscribed to Cingular's service. Though such contracts in normal situations with standard cellular service would not have to be canceled, the severe problems that customers were experiencing were not a valid enough reason, according to Cingular and their authorized sales outlets, to have those contracts canceled with no penalties.

 

L. Trade in Phone-New Contract Required

Customers who attempted to cancel service would often visit the location from which they had purchased the phone. Sales representatives, rather than addressing the problem of poor coverage and oversubscribed services, would often trade out the phone the customer had, blaming service problems on the model of the customer's phone rather than on Cingular's lacking cellular infrastructure. At the same time, sales representatives advised customers to upgrade their contracts for more minutes per month, which would result in initiating a new one-year or two-year contract for inferior wireless service. Or conversely, customers were promised a free upgraded phone that would solve their problems with Cingular's poor service rather than having to pay out of pocket, if they signed up for a new contract. This customer not only had to pay to upgrade her phone, she was also placed on a new contract simultaneously.

Toya Reece's (#7999) phone for instance, would not work in her home or office forcing her to go outside to get it to work. She had a phone that was older and was finally told that the phone was the problem and that she should replace it and had to pay for the upgrade. In addition, she had to sign a new contract with the new phone.

Mr. V's (#7972) phone was restricting him to SOS calls only most of the time. Cingular blamed his problem on his phone and told him he could upgrade his phone for free if he agreed to another one-year contact.

Mrs. H. (#8352) was given similar advice. She purchased a phone from Cingular on November 30, 2001 and did not use it for about the first 6 months. When she tried to use it, the phone said SOS calls only. She called Cingular about her poor service in May, 2002 and was told she could get a replacement phone, but she would have to sign a new 2-year contract, though she was already on a 2-year contract.

By placing blame on equipment rather than Cingular's network, Cingular's sales representatives were able to deflect attention away from the real problem and gain additional sales by getting unwitting consumers to purchase an upgraded phone. Customers reported that the sales pitch was that the upgraded phone would supposedly resolve the problems the customers were experiencing. Based upon our experience, we found that this "customers saving" technique also provided a sales representative the perfect opportunity to trade the customer a free upgraded phone for an extended service contract. However, many times upgrading their phones did not solve the problems that customers were experiencing because they were not equipment-related.

 

M. Defective Phones

UCAN has documented 21 instances in which problems with receiving, placing and dropping calls, were blamed on defective phones. Many customers upgraded their phones, sometimes with additional costs for replacement as instructed by sales representatives, as a solution to network infrastructure problems. At times, customers traded in their phones several times in hopes that it was the hardware that was the source of their lack of service.

For instance, one consumer (#1152) took the phones to Europe for business and had asked PacBell if they could still be used there. He was told that he would only need to remove the chip from the PacBell phones and put it into the European phones, but he had problems. Many of his calls did not go through completely, and he was billed for those calls. His total bill is $5,000 because he kept attempting to put the calls through. He also talked to a sales representative for PacBell Wireless who said it should be fine if he changes the chip. PacBell says the Swiss Network is to blame.

In another instance, Mr. P. (#8034) stated, "I have gone to the Cingular store in Fallbrook and inquired on why I am having problems. They simply tell me that I may have a bad phone and it needs to be sent in and checked. However, I am convinced that it is not the phone because this problem was immediately after I contracted with Cingular with 2 NEW phones."

Mr. K. (#7959) notes he cancelled his Cingular subscription with six months left on his two-year contract because his phone kept cutting out. He took it into the kiosk where he had purchased it and was told it was a bad phone because of its interior antenna. When the kiosk would not provide him with replacement phone to address the dropped calls and calls not coming through that he was experiencing, he was billed for a $150 termination fee which he is refusing to pay."

Mrs. P. (#8045) was told by Cingular customer service representatives that their poor service coverage was because their "phones must be broken."

Numerous customers stated that sales representatives and customer service representatives advised them to remove and replace the battery for the phone as a solution to service quality issues.

For instance, Mrs. C. (#8031) notes, "I complained because my girlfriends were trying to contact me through my cell phone and they got a recording saying not in service. I don't know how many other people were trying to call me and got that message. When I called Cingular Wireless, they told me it had something to do with my battery pack. That if I disconnect it and put it back on it and should work fine. I don't know if this is still happening. There's no way of knowing until someone tells me that they can't get a hold of me."

Alison Stark (#7222) was given similar advice. "Mid-February we began noticing the message ‘SOS calls only' on the phone every now and then. Concerned that they might not have received my payment, I called and was told that they had received the payment and there was no order for suspension of service. The woman I spoke to told me too that the company was upgrading their cell sites and some phones were "confused" by it. She suggested removing the battery and replacing it to "shock" the phone into finding a cell site. I thanked her for her help and tried it the next time I got the SOS. It didn't work for long. It would correct the problem for maybe a minute and then it would be SOS again. We were resigned to deal with it but it became more frequent and the night my husband was late coming home and I could not reach him and he couldn't call to tell me he was alright I had had enough."

Allison Brandt (#8316) was told to do the same. When she upgraded to Cingular's Nationwide plan prior to vacationing in Florida and was unable to get a signal, "I called again on Wednesday, 8 August, and spoke with a different technical support representative. She seemed surprised at what I had been told, and could not find any reason why my phone would not be working. She had me "hard shock" my phone several times by removing the battery and replacing it. None of this seemed to help my phone. She suggested that perhaps my parents' house was in a "dead spot", but indicated that I absolutely should have coverage through Voicestream in the area in which I was located."

 

N. Increasing Tower Capacity

When customers called Cingular or visited the point of sale to discuss terminating their service contract, they were often placated to stay with Cingular when they were told that the company was aggressively installing additional towers in the very near future to meet growing customer demand. In fact, many customers were told that new towers were slated to be erected in those locations, such as their home or workplace, where they were experiencing a lack of coverage. UCAN has documented 18 instances in which customers were promised that their service quality problems would be resolved in the near term once new towers were erected in those areas where they did not have coverage. However, in not one of those 18 instances did coverage ever improve. In fact, when a UCAN advocate contacted Cingular to address a consumer's problem (#6402), he was told that Cingular was apparently working on getting new cell towers in San Diego, and many customers were suffering because the free nights and weekends policy was overloading the current system.

Alison Stark (#7222) stated that she experienced, "Intermittent service because of Cingular upgrading cell sites. Have complained and was told there is nothing they can do. Service will be intermittent until upgrade completed in July. Was told if we had a Nokia phone instead of the Cingular sponsored phone the phone would use a different cell companies cell if Cingular was unavailable instead phone just says SOS calls only and won't allow calls, also drops calls frequently. Asked to speak to Customer Service Supervisor, and was told I would receive a call. No call yet (approx one week ago). The service woman I talked to informed me that it is a problem all over San Diego and that they have had an unusually large number of complaints."

Virginia and Dave Vogel (#7518) stated, " [Cingular] promised that I'd see real improvements in service after Jan 1st [2002] as they were investing some huge sum of money in adding more towers, or something like that, that would boost coverage. I asked if that didn't mean that they'd essentially sold a rather non-existent service since one doesn't invest huge sums in an infrastructure that's functioning as planned. I've noticed no improvement in service."

Japji Khalsa (#7519) stated, "I began voicing my complaints to Cingular about a year ago. I was told... 'Oh, please. Stay with us... we're doing a 600 million dollar upgrade. Service will be better within a couple of months.' "

A business woman, Maxine Zuiebeck (#7982), told us, "I recently re-signed with Cingular based on the representative's assurances that service would improve. After listening to your story on the news, I realize that I was lied to about improved service. Since I am in real estate and count heavily on my cell phone for my business, is there any way I can get out of the contract at this point. I probably have about a year + left on it. I discussed this with the salesman in the Del Mar Highlands store who assured me that service would be improved."

Verna and Doug Craig (#8011) bought Cingular's service near January, 2002,. She lives in Spring Valley and service does not work at home; she gets a message of "SOS only" all the time. Cingular keeps telling her they are putting up new towers one of which would be going up in her area.

Renee Hall's (#8035) situation is common. "We are having a lot of problems with our service. Constant busy signals, system busy, dropped calls, and bad connections. We would like to cancel this service, but we are told that there is no "grace" period and we will have to pay a large sum of money if we cancel our contract early. We have complained several times to our local service center in Clairemont area (Clairemont Square) of San Diego. And we always get the same answer...'We are currently upgrading the areas, and that is why you are having these problems!' "

In sum, it would appear that a common "customer save" strategy used by the Cingular representatives was to resort to a promise of a system upgrade. However, while the suggestions were always that the upgrades would be imminent and usually exactly where the customer was personally experiencing service problems, all of the customers that called UCAN found that the upgrades never occurred.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. Summary of Testimony............................................................................................................................................ 2

B. Qualifications of Jodi Beebe.............................................................................................................................. 2

C. How UCAN Receives Consumer Complaints................................................................................................ 3

D. Cingular Complaints Received by UCAN...................................................................................................... 4

e. ucan dead zone project complaints.....................................................................5

F. Types of Complaints................................................................................................................................................. 6

G. Service Coverage Problems................................................................................................................................ 6

H. Calls not completed- Outgoing and Incoming................................................................................... 10

I. Voice Mail Service.................................................................................................................................................... 14

J. Dropped Calls............................................................................................................................................................ 15

K. Terminating Contracts....................................................................................................................................... 16

L. Trade in Phone-New Contract Required................................................................................................ 18

M. Defective Phones....................................................................................................................................................... 19

N. Increasing Tower Capacity............................................................................................................................... 21