What was the VP's name. I can email him if you have his name.
B.

I opened a family account: 2 new numbers, plus one ported number from
Sprint, for three lines.  I used Portables, Inc., a Cingular subsidiary, to
take care of matters.  I used the branch in Fair Oaks Mall in No. Virginia
(by I-66 and US 50) -- a guy named Russ Chapman is the manager.  Everything
worked like a charm.  There was an initial confusion over a credit on
account and Russ took care of that.

I had trouble getting my Web access setup -- their tech people were friendly
and very helpful, and although it took some effort on both sides owing to
the general switching to GSM, I was pleased there also.

Granted, I'm a new customer -- but so far I am pleased with the way Cingular
has handled matters.

But, when I had a problem, I fell back on true and tried business methods:
hard copy of everything with a preliminary fax (even e-mails were backed up
by snail mail), copies to everybody so all are kept in the loop, flawless
business courtesy at all times.  There is power in a good paper trail.

Porting has not gone well for anyone. 99.9% of the problems are with the old
service provider not the new one. The most screwed up seems to be ATTWS,
though landlines have been a mess too. Around here we have SBC for local, in
most cases, and those have worked fairly well, but almost any other port
that I've seen done from landline has been a catastrophe. My recommendation
right now is; don't try to port from any carrier to any other carrier. We
have several in process that still report that they are waiting for
concurrence from the OSP. Some of these are 3 weeks old. In a few cases, the
OSP has already terminated service, but the routing still directs calls to
them because they have yet to release the number. Cingular's Feb time frame
is based on trying to get the ones already in house straightened out.
Current suggestions are to use call forwarding on your home phone to route
calls to a new Cingular number till after Feb 1st, then call to have the
number switched ($36.00 fee waived). It accomplishes the same thing and
gives the carriers time to sort out porting issues. (Though you do have 2
bills for the duration.

Mark

I bought a new phone from Best Buy, used their staff to make the calls, etc.
when I ported over from Sprint.  That was December 30, and my new phone was
working within hours.

Dan
Washington, DC

I ported to T-Mobile from Cingular and that went fine. The service in
my area wasn't good with T-Mobile so I have been trying to port back.
After countless hours of being on hold and speaking to customer
service on both ends, one phone is working and one phone can't receive
calls... they all go to T-Mobile's voice mail (as I no longer have the
phones from T-Mobile). Cingular tells me they are unable to port any
numbers unless I go into a store. Meanwhile, they ported one number
without going into a store. Cingular blames T-Mobile and said they are
purposely holding up the porting process in order to charge me
cancellation fees. T-Mobile has been polite and helpful while Cingular
passes me along to different representatives who act like they don't
know anything about the problem. T-Mobile assures me that I won't be
charged for my inconvenience. Cingular claims I don't have an active
account with them (meanwhile the Cingular phone continues to be able
to make outgoing calls!) Cingular, you suck!