Get out! *boot*
Dec. 3rd, 2003 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikFYI for those who cel-call me:
After being with Cingular since they began (as PacBell wireless, during their first days in the San Diego market) I've finally given them the boot. My old number: (408) 799-0815 is no more. If you don't already have my new number and you want it please ask me. I'll be glad to share.
PacBell Wireless started to go down the tubes under SBC's influence. Things got far worse after they became Cingular. They used to be the only carrier that got it right: you could buy any GSM phone you wanted, usually in a box at someplace simple like a Long's Drugs or even Safeway. You activated it over the air for a simple fee. No contracts; it was all month-to-month. No prime time vs. nights vs. weekends promo BS... it was "you get (X) minutes for ($Y) a month, and any used over that are ($0.Z) per minute." That's it. Simple, easy, sweet. I miss that kind of service. They also happily explored the playground of GSM, trying out all kinds of data and channel services while the rest of the US celphone industry was stuck in a featureless, analog land.
That's all gone now, though. They have the same craptacular 'how badly can we confuse the consumer' pricing, with umpteen little add-on packages, each with their own fee. Mysterious line items on your bill that they won't explain but manage to get an extra $2 here and $5 there. Most disappointing of all though is the lack of innovation or even simple utilization of existing technology. There's so much modern GSM/GPRS systems can do that their system simply doesn't... because they think it might not make them money. That's their SBC-influences talking, loud and clear. They also fall way behind in the data pricing department, refusing to have an affordable unlimited-data plan as is becoming popular on other GSM carriers around the US.
I'd decided to drop Cingular earlier this year. When my office bought me a T-Mo phone with service I held on to the Cingular one in hopes of doing wireless number portability. In the 4 months I've had both services I found that the only people who still had my old cel# were folks I didn't want having it anyways (old business contacts, etc), so instead of porting I decided to simply lose my old number. The kicker that made me finally drop? I'd put my phone on super-sub-minimal service for $19/mo to 'hold' it. On this, the 5th month of holding the number, I got hit with $35 in "extra fees". The bill didn't explain what those fees were. It took a call to a customer service rep to be told that they were "administrative fees" for the phone going unsued (!!). Riiight.
Bye bye, Cingular. May your towers be lightning-struck and your customers follow the golden path of Number Portability to a brighter mobile future.
After being with Cingular since they began (as PacBell wireless, during their first days in the San Diego market) I've finally given them the boot. My old number: (408) 799-0815 is no more. If you don't already have my new number and you want it please ask me. I'll be glad to share.
PacBell Wireless started to go down the tubes under SBC's influence. Things got far worse after they became Cingular. They used to be the only carrier that got it right: you could buy any GSM phone you wanted, usually in a box at someplace simple like a Long's Drugs or even Safeway. You activated it over the air for a simple fee. No contracts; it was all month-to-month. No prime time vs. nights vs. weekends promo BS... it was "you get (X) minutes for ($Y) a month, and any used over that are ($0.Z) per minute." That's it. Simple, easy, sweet. I miss that kind of service. They also happily explored the playground of GSM, trying out all kinds of data and channel services while the rest of the US celphone industry was stuck in a featureless, analog land.
That's all gone now, though. They have the same craptacular 'how badly can we confuse the consumer' pricing, with umpteen little add-on packages, each with their own fee. Mysterious line items on your bill that they won't explain but manage to get an extra $2 here and $5 there. Most disappointing of all though is the lack of innovation or even simple utilization of existing technology. There's so much modern GSM/GPRS systems can do that their system simply doesn't... because they think it might not make them money. That's their SBC-influences talking, loud and clear. They also fall way behind in the data pricing department, refusing to have an affordable unlimited-data plan as is becoming popular on other GSM carriers around the US.
I'd decided to drop Cingular earlier this year. When my office bought me a T-Mo phone with service I held on to the Cingular one in hopes of doing wireless number portability. In the 4 months I've had both services I found that the only people who still had my old cel# were folks I didn't want having it anyways (old business contacts, etc), so instead of porting I decided to simply lose my old number. The kicker that made me finally drop? I'd put my phone on super-sub-minimal service for $19/mo to 'hold' it. On this, the 5th month of holding the number, I got hit with $35 in "extra fees". The bill didn't explain what those fees were. It took a call to a customer service rep to be told that they were "administrative fees" for the phone going unsued (!!). Riiight.
Bye bye, Cingular. May your towers be lightning-struck and your customers follow the golden path of Number Portability to a brighter mobile future.
