Cingular has this online tech support chat thingy where you can ask techs chat in realtime. I thought, hey lets give this a shot and see if the wait time is less. They do in fact have a holding queue for their techies.
The thing they do not tell you is that the service is useless unless you call about how to operate your phone. EVERY phone comes with a very detailed user manual. RTFM. There is no other purpose for the online chat: they know nothing about service plans or deals. I logged on to ask if I could use my formerly-at&t phone with Cingular customers, and get their free "mobile-to-mobile" stuff. I'd love to talk to RAM for free before 9pm now that she's got a Cingular phone. Click here to see what resulted of my online chat session.
After being frustrated, I called their number and they surprisingly picked up the phone almost immediately. Some guy who sounded twelve helped me out and had to get his supervisor to hold his had during the conversation, because he "didn't want to give me wrong information." The answer was no.
So I asked another question; could I cancel my phone and then re-activate it in six months with the same number? Apparently (according to the kid's supervisor) not. He says they used to have a plan suspension option (where you could pause your service for a while), but that's been discontinued. He recommended buying the cheapest plan and just not using my phone. How much is the cheapest plan? $19.99. Eat me Cingular. You've forced me into losing my number while I'm studying in Oz.
On the light side, I won't be paying the $35 set-up fee to switch from an at&t contract to a Cingular one: I will be paying it to activate a new account. Bastards. And I refuse to go back to Verizon.
I've always been surprised at getting the polar opposite of help when I call. I've had the people yell at me that I shouldn't have called with my phone and tell me that I'm wrong when I told them the problem.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I just went with my Aunt to switch her phone from AT&T, and there should be no extra fees. Go in to a store: they're much more helpful and can actually do things about bills and phones and not charging you for things.