Ah, the Cingular saga.
I’ve been fighting with Cingular for about a month. The story is really very simple, but I’ve told it so many times to so many customer “service” reps that it’s grating and annoying.
Basically, I migrated over from AT&T Wireless to Cingular in early December. It seemed like a good idea at the time — I wanted a new phone which Cingular offered, and since B was on Cingular, calls to and from him would be free. Add in the combined AT&T and Cingular networks, and I was hopeful for better reception.
Dashed hopes.
In places where I used to get full signal, I now get little or none. I complained, to no avail. CSRs would either tell me I was mistaken, or they would “accidentally” hang up on me when putting me on hold. One CSR actually sent a software update to my phone, but it did no good. It turns out that none of the people I talked to ever logged the problem or entered any information in the notes on my account, so each and every time I called I had to start from the beginning.
I did lots of research online, finding that there are many, many people having reception problems with the “new” Cingular. Basically, the problem is this: even though AT&T and Cingular are now one company, the phones still see them as separate. Thus, if there is even one milliwatt of signal detected from a Cingular tower, the phone will not switch over to an AT&T tower — even if the AT&T signal is stronger. So, there are a lot of people walking around getting signals so weak as to make it impossible to actually place a call.
My phone was not switching over to AT&T at all, ever. So, I went to the Cingular store to ask them to fix it. What I wanted was a fix that would let me change the network manually — most phones have this option in the settings, but Cingular locks it out on their phones.
The rep at the store once again reprogrammed my SIM, but I wasn’t satisfied — that had been done before. I told him I wanted the network block removed. He got on the phone with support, and turned the phone over to me. I told her I wanted one simple thing from her: her number. I’d been hung up on too many times and never got a call back; she told me that in the call center, they don’t have any direct dial numbers. That’s the problem, I said — I talk to someone different every time and have to start again. She told me that she would call me. Sounds good to me, I said. Here’s my number.
She never called.
My phone is working a bit better since the second reprogramming; although the signal strength is still horrible, it at least will now switch to a stronger tower if you let it sit for a minute or three. Of course, you end up losing the call you were on and have to call them back.
Cingular had better get this transition working a bit better for its customers. All companies have teething troubles with a merger like this, but Cingular is promoting the crap out of the combined network when in fact, it isn’t combined at all.
