Being polite accomplishes far more than calling CS after your wife
chewed you out because you forgot to take the meat out of the freezer to
thaw out.

===============================================
* Reply by Jack D. Russell, Sr. <jackru$$ell2@notmail.com>
* Newsgroup: alt.cellular.cingular
* Reply to: All; "Ranny Welton" <rwelton@swbell.net>
* Date:Fri, 24 Mar 2006 05:47:26 -0500
* Subj: An Alternative Viewpoint
=====================================================

RW> After lurking on this forum for a few months and hearing the evils
RW> of Cingular, I really would like to offer some different
RW> experiences.
RW>
RW> I moved to Cingular about 5 months ago, primarily to move to the
RW> then new Blackberry 8700c.  I have been very pleased with the
RW> performance and service of the phone.  I live in the midwest and do
RW> a small amount of travel.  So far, I have only been to a few points
RW> on the east coast, however it has had good signals in all the places
RW> I have been.  Also, I have yet to experience a dropped call.
RW>
RW> I have only had one experience with Customer Service and that was in
RW> the process of porting my old number over in a timely manner.  It
RW> turns out the problem was with the old carrier.  Cingular customer
RW> service was easy to reach, courteous and very helpful in giving me
RW> advice on what had to happen.  Once I called the old carrier, the
RW> number was released and all was good.
RW>
RW> I had a sim card malfunction (like someone else on this forum
RW> described) and the phone locked.  I rebooted the phone (disconnected
RW> and reconnected the battery) and it worked fine.  The second time I
RW> received the same malfunction about a week later, I stopped by the
RW> Cingular store, politely told the person that I had experienced a
RW> sim card malfunction twice and did not think that was normal.
RW> Without further question, he replaced my sim card with a new one,
RW> charged me nothing and wished me a good day.  No subsequent
RW> problems.
RW>
RW> I am sure I will not be totally excited about, nor agree with
RW> everything Cingular does, however I wanted to balance this forum a
RW> bit with another set of experiences.
RW>
RW> BTW, I do not work for, nor have any connection with Cingular and am
RW> not a cousin of Mr. Navis :-)
RW>
RW> Ranny

My experience with Cingular (for the past 5 years) has been the same.
Not one negative episode. We must be doing something wrong. ;)

Somewhere around Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:56:06 GMT, while reading
alt.cellular.cingular, I think I thought I saw this post from Ranny Welton
<rwelton@swbell.net>:

My experience (West Coast Bay Area) has been the same, and I've had them for
about 5 years.  The only problem I ever had was one night a couple of years
ago, the system seemed to go beserk and calls were crossed up and I'd call
one person but get a stranger, and the person I called got a call from
another stranger, or so it seemed.

When my son locked himself out of his phone, I called and first was told to
go to a store and ask for a new sim.  Then I called back, and told them that
I had gotten a new 64K sim recently, so could I get one for my son sooner
rather than later.  The sent 2, Fedex express, totally free (on for my
wife's phone, too).  

They've all been very friendly, pleasant, and not always knowledgeable, but
willing to listen and do their best, it always seemed to me.

The only thing I would wish different would be that they were more
consistently knowledgeable, and didn't give different answers from different
people for the same question.  However, if I really need to know, I call
back and ask more questions from more people, and usually get the answer.