are you entitled to a rebate when your cell service is down?

[johnf]

My cell phone service (Cingular) was out all weekend. There was nothing wrong with my phone, and it was fully charged. I was able to re-check old voice messages, but that was it. I've seen nothing in the news about any cell phone service being down, and I traveled all about trying to get a signal, and couldn't. I called my carrier and was told there were no service problems in my area over the weekend, and the problem must have been my phone. Well, seeing that my phone is working just fine now, without my having done anything to fix anything, I don't think that the problem was, in fact, my phone. I do a lot of business on the weekends, and rely on my phone like it's a fifth limb. Also for business reasons, I couldn't stay at home beside the landline all day. It turned out that I didn't miss anything terribly important, but it's the principle involved here that gets me: aren't I entitled to some sort of rebate on my phone bill? Is there anything I can do here?

[bjl584]

You will most likely get some discount if you call their customer service dept. Afterall, you are paying X amount per month to have use of their network for the entire month. If you are unable to use it for a period of time, then you should be entitled to some form of a discount. The worst that can happen is that they'll say no.

[tinapbeana]

i would call and ask.

with that said, if you pay $XX.XX per month for YYY number of minutes rather than unlimited service , it is very likely you will hear something along the lines of "those minutes area available for you to use throughout the month, so you still have the opportunity to utilize in full the services for which you paid" AKA: no credit for you. if instead you pay for unlimited us, chances are you can get a proration of your plan fee...

[Ima saver]

I really doubt you will get a rebate. When our cable goes out, we don't get anything off of the bill.

[Drumm]

I too doubt that you'll get a rebate but you might as well try. What you really need is a backup, and since you can't be around your landline, it would be cheaper to have like a Onesuite account than to pay for pay phone charges the next time your cell service is down.

[Hez]

It never hurts to ask! I've never had to ask for a cell rebate, but my family has succeeded in getting a cable rebate when our tv/internet was out for a few days.

[th_tan]

I doubt it. Just like cable service, unless its not working for a set period of time if stated in your contract, you won't get a rebate. Somecases anywheres from 24-72 hours.

[scfr]

Our cell service was out for 3-4 days after a storm last December, and we did get a credit for the service. [For the cable too.] However, the big difference was that our carrier was well aware of the outage and did not dispute the fact at all.
Never hurts to ask tho.

[thebetterlifenow]

I doubt it. Do the math too. Even if you did get a refund for those two days, it would only be 2 or 3 dollars.