Cingular has become terrible

I've been a customer of Cingular since before they were Cingular. I joined the BellSouth cell service way back in the mid 90's when cell phones were still called car phones and my first phone was so big it needed a bag to carry it. Even now, I have 4 lines with many expanded features and spend nearly $200 per month. I'm ready to pack it in and get rid of Cingular for a number of reasons but this voice mail thing really torques my screws.

Recently, our local network was "upgraded" here is south central Kentucky and along with that "upgrade" came a new voicemail service. Since the change over I no longer receive the name with the caller ID and my phone reports "unknown caller" even from known numbers. I know it's not my phone because it used to work before the upgrade.

But this voicemail is so bad I'm tempted to turn it off. I may even make a new message to "please don't leave me a message on the cell phone because Cingular has screwed it all up."

So what's the big deal? For starters, I don't get a date and time of when the call came in. That is irritating beyond words suitable for all audiences. But then, when I do listen to it, I press 7 to delete and then, it's stored automatically to a "deleted messages store" and I have to press 19, listen again and press 7 again to delete it. It really is frustrating to the point of abandoning my long term account with Cingular.

I did try to contact them but the waits on their customer service number are so long that I usually get another call before someone comes on the line. Going to the Cingular office on Scottsville Road in Bowling Green is not an option because they will leave you standing there for literally hours. I even logged onto the website and the technician told me that I needed to call or come into the office.

So hopefully, there are enough people out there making waves and expressing themselves. I'll send this to their customer service address but simply wanted to share with the world my personal opinion and frustration with Cingular.