Take a look if you are with Cingular. If you are attached to your old cell phone that still works great, be prepared to pay a fee for it.

Pretty much forces you to upgrade :rolleyes:


https://www.telecomcareers.net/Resources/News/index.htm

Well, I, for one, do not care for all the bells and whistles on my phone. All I basically want it to do is be able to connect to someone else, and be inteligible. Don't need a camera, or internet access, or tv access!

I was forced into an upgrade a couple of years ago.

I was perfectly happy with my old phone. It worked lots better than the one I have now. I was forced to upgrade because I changed my plan. Here I am, offering them more money per month by increasing my plan.

What do they respond with? Lock me into another 2 year contract and tell me, if I change the plan I have to upgrade phone.

Now they penalize their customers for not upgrading. $5 bucks a month. That's gonna add up quick. When you are FINALLY forced to upgrade, they will get you for another contract :read:

These cell phone companies are something else :bang:

I just got done reading that Richard. Seems like they're going to get your money one way or the other.

I will admit that when I did upgrade my phone, I had to sign another 2 year contract, but, in reality, I need the phone, so I was kinda "playing along" with the game plan, so to speak. We got rid of our house phone, so me and the wife both have cell phones on a family plan. Works out pretty much ok, but, like I said, I just want a basic phone. But nowadays, it seems as though you have to get all the bells & whistles, too.

That's the sort of thing that happens when a company doesn't care a lot about customer satisfaction. Do they have a monopoly in the cellular world too?

Their claim "Least dropped calls" is a joke too. If they are the best I'd hate to see the worse.

These guys also sell phones to people in remote areas and tell them they do have signal out there, which they do, but it's on someone else's towers. So if they use the phone very much at all Cingular will discontinue the service for that person. It's all legal and in the small print so there's nothing these people can do legally.

I use Cingular because they have the best coverage in the areas I travel to but that's the only reason.

Same here Bobby. I have to have the coverage they provide. I could go with a company that is cheaper, but I would still come out on the losing end because the coverage isn't there with the other providers.

I was with AT&T when Cingular bought them out...shortly after that..I suddenly started getting worse reception on my cell phone which was already mediocre to begin with. I contacted Cingular and they denied they had anything to do with it and that it must be my phone...which I knew wasn't the case. I called them back weeks later stating I still basically wasn't 'buying that' and I wanted to speak to a 'higher up' ...finally I got him to confess that they were indeed phasing out the AT&T network.
Pretty sneaky. I'm now with T-mobile. It felt good to cancel Cingular after their shenagins...hopefully alot of other AT&T customers left them as well.

As of yet they haven't contacted me on a upgrade. I really don't want all that crap on my cell, I just want to be able to send and rec calls,

Same here.

A phone is a phone not a video player or camera or mp3 player.

I have to defend cingular here. I switched from att years ago because of their policy on upgrades and so on. I went cingular and I have to tell you that every place I have been with the exception of a few cement basements and man holes I had a good signal. Now this upgrade problem has followed into cingular so we shall see how long it takes for them to come at me.

I will say this also. It cost more to maintain the old network and users than it does the new one. I know we all had the original analog cells that had bad signal, well by the time they upgraded the coverage the new tdma and cdma came out and they had the same issue then about upgrading and contracts. Its really just a big loop we are caught in.

Cingular was a joint venture between AT&T and Bell South. That is one of the reasons the "new" AT&T bought Bell South, I think shortly after the inks dry you'll see the Cingular name change to AT&T again.

I will have to concur with you Bill.

Did I miss something? Please tell me that the "new AT&t" didn't buy BellSouth. This would be the beginning of the end.

Sure, AT&T and BellSouth bought Cellular One and changed the name to Cingular a few years ago, but I pray that is as close that the companies really are.

Yes Ed, it's just going through the process now, but the experts expect it to go through by years end. Here's a link to one article.
https://att.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=7659

When the smoke & dust settles, it looks like we will have a "mini Ma Bell" in our midst.

I doubt we will see AT&T acquire Verizon or Qwest any time soon. But AT&T could make a bid for some of the states that Verizon wants to unload, such as Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

I don't think big V wants out of Maine soon they have been buying most the smaller LEC, between them, fairpoint and mid maine what used to be about 20 LECs is down to 3

I'd say that TDS is the largest of the ILECs in Maine. But, it is true that Verizon wants out of Maine. Every time I call Verizon to install or disconnect trunks, I ask if there is anything new to report.

The response I usually get is "You know more about this than we do".