On The Verge

A few weeks back I posted a couple of items -- “Merger mania: Cingular and AT&T get worse” and “UMTS handsets have disappeared from Cingular San Francisco” that described my frustration with the merged Cingular and AT&T Wireless. I had planned to buy two new phones for my wife and son but was stymied by the state of the Cingular/AT&T Wireless merger. The stores all now fly a Cingular banner, but inside there are still separate Cingular and AT&T worlds. I couldn’t buy an Auiovox AT&T-branded phone because we are Cingular customers. And the UMTS handsets that AT&T once offered had disappeared in mid February. Determination, however, finally yielded the Audiovox phone but UMTS will wait for now.

Weekend before last, I had to buy my son a birthday gift. I had planned to get him the Audiovox Smartphone for his birthday. After several frustrating Cingular store visits, however, I had decided to write Cingular out of our lives and swap to Verizon when our Cingular contract ends in May. But I had mentioned the Audiovox phone to the birthday boy and he had become quite enamored with the feature set. So again I headed to the Cingular store. I figured that I would just sign up for a new AT&T Wireless account since the Cingular contract would be over shortly. We’d then add a second phone for my wife onto the new account when the Cingular contract ended. We’d be forced to pay both bills for 6 weeks or so. But I thought the new account scheme would deliver the phone of choice immediately.

The clerk in the Cingular store would not sell us the Audiovox phone and an AT&T Wireless account. He knew, from previous visits that we had a Cingular account. I told him we would establish the new account in my wife’s name whereas the existing account is in my name, but he refused. He said he only had three of the Audiovox handsets left and was holding them for existing AT&T Wireless customers that might be renewing their account. I even tried to pay the full $350 for the phone with no service and he refused despite the fact that the display listed the phone for sale for $350.

I returned home empty handed and simply in disbelief over how Cingular was operating. Ironically, I was more determined than ever to buy the phone to prove that it could be done. I did a Google search, and found a note that Amazon.com had a special deal on the phone. Sure enough, Amazon offered the $350 phone to anyone willing to pay. I was going to buy the phone, get it unlocked, and use it with our existing Cingular SIM card.

But Amazon had a better offer. The virtual retailer would sell it with a new AT&T Wireless account for $200, and then kick in their own $150 rebate. So my wife went online, ordered the phone, and signed up for an AT&T account in her name. The phone arrived yesterday without a hitch for $199 and we’ve submitted the rebate forms to bring that price down to $50. The phone is very compelling – but more on that in a later post.

It’s just amazing to me how Cingular could let such a chain of events happen. They would have retained our original account weeks ago at minimal expense had they had their act together. Instead, they had to go through the expense of creating a new account and then they will have to cancel our old one. They will also have to pay Amazon their commission for capturing the new business. It was a bit of trouble on our part, but my wife wanted a new phone number anyway because she has been stuck with a 619 area code on her phone that predated our current 858 area code. Of course Cingular wouldn’t change the phone number on the existing account without a hefty fee. For me, the downside is memorizing two new phone numbers.

Meanwhile, I’ve given up on UMTS for now. A reader that commented on my previous post took me to task for claiming that Cingular hadn’t revealed their UMTS plans. That reader is correct in stating that a web search reveals that Cingular is planning an HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) network for the 2006/2007 time frame. And HSDPA offers better performance than UMTS. BUT, THAT WASN’T MY POINT. The AT&T UMTS network is ready today here in San Diego as well as in other places like San Francisco. I hoped that Cingular would go ahead and operate those networks and offer those of us willing to pay for UMTS that service now. And they haven’t said that they won’t support the UMTS network that AT&T already has in place. They simply haven’t said anything about that UMTS network and whether they will continue to support it – and that’s a fact.