Adios! Cingular . . .

(PeteCresswell) wrote:

> That's what I have for my wife/daughter. Minimal hassle - not like other plans
> where you have to remember to refresh it every so many months.... just once per
> year.
>
> Only two reasons I didn't go with it myself:
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1) I had heard it said that prepaid accounts don't get the same network coverage
> as monthly accounts.

Hmm, I wonder if this is true. It may be that there are different
roaming policies in place for T-Mobile.

> 2) The person in the store didn't seem confident that my number (which I've had
> for about 10 years and probably 1,000+ customers/friends/relatives know) could
> be preserved under a prepaid account.

T-Mobile will port for post-paid to pre-paid.

> Another plus that I see in prepaids is that so far they seem to have escaped the
> feeding frenzy of government taxing agencies - or at least I don't see all the
> taxes....

Yes, the taxes appear to be built into the per-minute rate.

---

› See More: Adios! Cingular . . .

In article <[email protected]>,
John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:

> >>If T-Mobile actually has
> >>good coverage in your area, you can get essentially 1000 minutes per
> >>year for $100.
> >
> >That's what I have for my wife/daughter. Minimal hassle - not like other
> >plans
> >where you have to remember to refresh it every so many months.... just once
> >per
> >year.
> >
> >Only two reasons I didn't go with it myself:
> >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >--
> >1) I had heard it said that prepaid accounts don't get the same network
> >coverage
> >as monthly accounts.
>
> Coverage is the same.

"Coverage is the same"? With TMobile? John, have you ever actually
gone to T-Mobile's web site or a store or even picked up any brochures?

Obviously not. Because if you had, you would have known that coverage
for their pay-as-you-go customers is drastically inferior to that for
their contract customers.

Here's their coverage for those on a national plan:

http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/?class=coverage


And here's their coverage for their pay-as-you-go customers:

http://www.t-mobile.com/prepaid/coverage.asp

That's a pretty drastic difference; the pay-as-you-go customers suffer
as they travel around the country.


So where do you get the idea for between prepaid accounts and monthly
accounts that "Coverage is the same"? It's not even close. You can't
even try to pass your statement off as a mistake.

You've been outed. Let's see how you dance around this one. Maybe
you'll just go away for a couple of months--again--and come back hoping
that no one will notice you. Won't work, but at least we'd be two more
months without you.

It's pretty obvious that you just make things up as you go. You don't
know squat, but you'd sure like people to think you know things. So
rather than say, "I don't know"--or, even better, shutting up--you
simply make things up.

Then you throw out these made-up things and see what sticks.

Do you have such a need to hear yourself speak that you'd show yourself
as an utter boob to the rest of the world? Man, that's a serious
problem you have.

You have two ears and one mouth--you should listen twice as much as you
speak.

Better to remain silent and appear the fool, than open your mouth and
remove all doubt.

In article <[email protected]>,
John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:

> >>Coverage is the same.
> >>
> >NO. Network coverage is not the same with Cingular. Just go to
> >Cingular's website and you can see it.
>
> I didn't know there was any difference -- thanks for pointing that out.
>
> Cingular Nation GSM:
> http://onlinestorez.cingular.com/cel...finder.jsp;dse
> ssionid=EKWY4SR1EHPEVB4R0H0SFEY?zip=94583&mapt=nationalMap
>
> GoPhone Pick Your Plan:
> http://onlinestorez.cingular.com/cel...finder.jsp;dse
> ssionid=EKWY4SR1EHPEVB4R0H0SFEY?zip=94583&mapt=gophoneMap
>
> While not identical, these two are quite similar.
>
> However, there's a much bigger difference with GoPhone Pay As You Go:
> http://onlinestorez.cingular.com/cel...finder.jsp;dse
> ssionid=EKWY4SR1EHPEVB4R0H0SFEY?zip=94583&mapt=prepaidMap

So let me get this straight:

* you originally claimed that between prepaid and contract customers,
coverage was the same.

* This was for T-Mobile, for which the above statement couldn't be any
more untrue. Obviously, you had no idea what you were talking
about--but you opened your piehole anyway. Love to hear yourself talk,
don't you.

* Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that you thought the
discussion was about Cingular (which opens a whole 'nother can of worms
about your inability to follow a simple conversation), we can
assume--best case--that you were talking about Cingular's coverage.

* What was that you said regarding prepaid vs. monthly contract
customers? Oh, yeah--"Coverage is the same."

* BUT WAIT! Now it comes out that even with Cingular, the contract
customer coverage and the GoPhone customer coverage--both classes of
them--is different. Three different classes of customers, three
different coverage maps.

*Did I mention that this was within Cingular's own business? We're not
talking non-Cingular here, we're talking Cingular--the company that John
Navas claims to know everything about.

* So what exactly were you talking about when you claimed that for
contract and pay-as-you-go customers, "Coverage is the same"?

Face it, Navas: you didn't even know about Cingular's coverage plans.

Yet you didn't hesitate to open your piehole and spout out something,
anything, regardless of how wrong it might be. You have no qualms about
spitting random crap out of your mouth and expecting that people will,
by definition, believe you.

Shut your piehole AT LEAST until you can back up what you say. Which is
about zero in this newsgroup, or has been lately.

Go take one of those two month vacations from this newsgroup again.

SMS wrote:

> When you buy a car, I'll bet you don't finance through the dealer, you
> don't buy an extended warranty, you don't opt for fabric guard, paint
> sealant, rust proofing, glass etching, Lo-Jack, the gold package, or
> electronic ash trays.

> You probably go into the dealer with a spreadsheet
> showing MSRP, invoice, and actual dealer cost, subtracting out the
> add-ons between dealer cost and invoice. The dealer sells to you >
> because
> he has an essentially unlimited supply of they type of vehicle you are
> buying, and it helps his cash flow to sell to someone for a small
> amount
> over cost.


You mean he doesn't get suckered? Probably not, and I don't either.
When I buy a car, I'm not viewing my purchase as a charity donation to
fund the dealership owner's next boat payment. I'm viewing it as a
simple business transaction and my position is to make that transaction
as a beneficial to me as possible. Likewise, the dealership's intent is
to make the same transaction as profitable as possible without losing
the sale. Through the process of negotiation, we reach a deal that both
sides feel is amicable. If it turns out that I won't pay a price that
they won't lose their shirts on, they have every right to say "no deal."

Likewise, when I deal with a wireless company, I'm going to pick the
services I need and use the most, and not bother with the rest. I don't
need nor want blingtones, so I'm not going to pay inflated prices to
buy them. And if the rate I as a customer am paying to Cingular is not
profitable to them, then maybe should not have offered that deal int eh
first place. It's pretty obvious I, a single customer, wasn't exactly
twisting their arm to make them lose money.

I'm sorry you feel that a "good customer" must be stupid, and spend
stupidly. Since when did it become my patriotic duty to fatten Stan
Sigman's wallet?

I'm sure than when Cingular and its parent companies negotiate
interconnect fees to landline companies for CID with Name, they don't go
to the table with altruistic ideals, ready to make sure that their
competitors get a good deal. Nor do they aspire to give ILECs that
aren't SBC-affiliates copious amounts of cash when they negotiate
getting backhaul gear connected to their BTSs and MTSOs.

Indeed, Cingular will fight tooth and nail for every penny it shears
off the cost of those contracts. And thus, so will I.

> You probably pay your credit cards in full each month too.

Yup. I'll let schmucks like you let your money go to waste every month.
Enjoy your 24%+ APR, buddy.

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

Isaiah Beard wrote:

> You mean he doesn't get suckered? Probably not, and I don't either.
> When I buy a car, I'm not viewing my purchase as a charity donation to
> fund the dealership owner's next boat payment. I'm viewing it as a
> simple business transaction and my position is to make that transaction
> as a beneficial to me as possible.

Jeremy believes that Cingular should have done more to retain him, based
on the length of time he was with AT&T. Unfortunately, the carrier
doesn't really care about that. The carrier is fighting to get the
sucker customers, that spend foolishly on ring tones, sending low
quality photos, and SMS messaging. They also like the high value
customers that buy loads of minutes and/or data services.

AT&T had some very good deals prior to the acquisition by Cingular,
which is probably part of the reason they got into trouble (that and the
way they botched WNP). Cingular knew from the start that they'd be in
for a difficult time as they tried to wean the AT&T customers off of
their low-priced plans. Maybe that's why Cingular's results in terms of
net additions have been so awful lately.

The automobile analogy was probably a bad one. With wireless, many times
when a carrier offers a sweet deal to retain a customer, details of the
deal circulate on-line and then many others demand the same sweet deal.
Sprint got into a bad situation with that sort of thing. With a vehicle,
the prices vary so much due to other factors, such as location, that
posting details of an especially good deal, doesn't have any bearing on
the ability of someone else to get that same deal. Car dealers are more
pragmatic, as well. If they sell to one person at $300 over their cost,
it's fine, as there is sure to be a sucker the next day that pays dealer
invoice and naively believes that they're getting a fantastic deal. As
long as it's not a vehicle that's in short supply, they work on moving
as much volume as possible.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:48:10
-0500, "(PeteCresswell)" <[email protected]> wrote:

>Per John Navas:
>>There are basic rate plans from all carriers.
>
>But they're all bundled with hardware - to the user is locked into a period long
>enough to pay off same.

You can get SIM-only (no bundled hardware) service from Cingular.

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

Per John Navas:
>You can get SIM-only (no bundled hardware) service from Cingular.

Oooooh!!! I was drifting away from my resolve to go back to Cingular since
tMob's service got noticeably better in the areas I frequent. Now you may have
talked me back into returning to Cingular....
--
PeteCresswell

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Sat, 11 Feb 2006
14:17:08 -0500, "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <[email protected]> wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>,
> John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> >>If T-Mobile actually has
>> >>good coverage in your area, you can get essentially 1000 minutes per
>> >>year for $100.
>> >
>> >That's what I have for my wife/daughter. Minimal hassle - not like other
>> >plans
>> >where you have to remember to refresh it every so many months.... just once
>> >per
>> >year.
>> >
>> >Only two reasons I didn't go with it myself:
>> >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >--
>> >1) I had heard it said that prepaid accounts don't get the same network
>> >coverage
>> >as monthly accounts.
>>
>> Coverage is the same.
>
>"Coverage is the same"? With TMobile? ...

Didn't say that. I was referring to Cingular.

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>