If you use Cingular and have not been screwed yet, you will be soon

[Jim]

A couple of things to mention about Cingular after being on the phone with them for almost 3 hours yesterday.

First, let me take you back a year when AT&T really merged with Cingular. On that day, the reception we received was like waking up Christmas morning. Spots were we never had coverage now worked.

Take it to about the last week of this January. All of a sudden, my phone, my wife's phone and 3 of my children's phones stopped working very well. Either the calls just didn't go through or, they dropped. Notice, the middle of January was when the AT&T/Cingular merge was all over the news, commercials...etc. Coincidence????

I called Cingular support and was told that AT&T flooded Cingular's network and everything would be worked out soon. After 2 more weeks, I called again. Cingular's CS actually mentioned during conversation that as long as they leave Verizon alone, it's ok that they are working toward a monopoly. Anyway, he also told me that they had to upgrade our sim cards and within 24 hours we should see everything back to normal. Nothing improved...

Yesterday, being a little more pushy than usual, I spoke to a supervisor. It seems that while Cingular was just Cingular, they were allowed and did lease space on other carriers towers. As part of the merge, part of the deal is that they can no longer lease space and the other providers really have no intention of helping AT&T putting them out of business. This is not happening all at once. Slowly but surely, cell towers that once worked with Cingular will stop working. If you are in or around a major city, this probably won't be a problem. If not, you will probably have this happen to you.

Next, have you gotten text spam on your Cingular phone? If you don't have text messaging enabled on your account, you have the privilege of paying $.10 for each and every text spam you get. If you have text messaging enabled, the spam is counted as one of your messages on your plan. It is only free if the title of the spam is "Cingular Free". Cingular is in court with one spammer at a time but, will it stop? Is there anything you can do with email spam? The answer to both is no. I told the supervisor the only answer will be for Cingular to offer unlimited free text messaging to everyone. Imagine having to pay $.10 for every email spam you receive. The Cingular spammers can send for free. Just go to Cingular, put in the number and spam away. I'm sure there is a simple piece of software that will just put in random Cingular numbers and send to mass numbers at a time.

Anyway, I am now looking for another service that uses the same sim cards where we actually get service.