Amazon, Number Porting and Rebates: SprintPCS=Yes, T-Mobile=Yes,Verizon=Yes, Ciingular=No

SMS wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
>
>> So, the answer would be to keep both lines until the
>> rebate came in, or change numbers. Why does it work
>> this way? Don't know.
>
> It works that way because Cingular wants to discourage
> people from buying on Amazon.

Why would Cingular want to discourage people from
buying from one of their channel partners? I've heard
opinions of bad management but that seems over the
top? Why not just discontinue the partnership?

-Quick

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› See More: Amazon, Number Porting and Rebates: SprintPCS=Yes, T-Mobile=Yes,Verizon=Yes, Ciingular=No

Quick wrote:
> SMS wrote:
>> [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>> So, the answer would be to keep both lines until the
>>> rebate came in, or change numbers. Why does it work
>>> this way? Don't know.
>> It works that way because Cingular wants to discourage
>> people from buying on Amazon.
>
> Why would Cingular want to discourage people from
> buying from one of their channel partners? I've heard
> opinions of bad management but that seems over the
> top? Why not just discontinue the partnership?

I suppose they figure that someone deciding to port to Cingular is not
going to change their mind about which carrier to port to based on the
rebate, and that they can discourage the customer into buying direct
from Cingular rather than through a partner that costs Cingular more in
acquisition costs.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, but sometimes you end up with some very
naive marketing people that put up these kinds of roadblocks. Maybe
that's a reason why Cingular is doing so poorly in terms margins and
churn compared to Verizon.

"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
[snip[
> The other issue is that no one has any idea how Amazon enforces the rebate
> provisions. Do they wait 180 days to process the big rebate, and only
> process it if the phone number is the same as the one they issued?

It took a while for the rebate to arrive, but I don't believe it was 180
days. It was over a year ago when I did this, so my recollection is a bit
fuzzy. IIRC, the porting fee was $29, not $36. Not a big deal,
particularly considering that I got a $150 rebate on a $30 phone.

I bought the phone and signed up for Cingular service from Amazon. After
the phone arrived, I called Cingular to port my T-Mobile number. No mention
was made of any charge for this service -- it just showed up on my bill. A
few months later, I saw what appeared to be a "self-service" tool on the web
that would allow someone to port their phone number on their own. I thought
there was a statement saying that there was no charge for the porting when
using this method.

I disliked Cingular customer service and their billing errors so much, I
fixed my old, broken phone (the reason I left T-Mobile in the first place)
and switched back to T-Mobile.

IMHO IIRC wrote:

> Cingular
> Cingular and Amazon.com have not yet established a method for customers to
> transfer their current number to a new Cingular account. Unfortunately, in
> order to port your previous number, Cingular will cancel the account that
> Amazon.com activated and will activate a new account with the ported number.
> This process makes you ineligible for the Amazon.com rebates. We hope to
> offer a porting option in the coming months, so please check back.

A workaround to this could be porting your number to T-Mobile To Go, and
keeping the prepaid account open with the old number until the Amazon
rebate arrives. Then port the T-Mobile To Go number over to Cingular. It
wouldn't cost much to keep that prepaid account open for a few months.
It wouldn't work for me, since I don't have T-Mobile coverage where I
live, but if you can live with T-Mobile To Go for your incoming calls
for a while, it's one workaround.

SMS wrote:
> Isaiah Beard wrote:
>
>> I know for a fact because I know someone personally who got burned
>> this way. Even porting after the fact invalidates the Amazon rebate.
>
> The issue is how long before you get the rebate? Amazon says you must
> keep the phone active for 180 days. So do you not get the rebate for 180
> days?

I think the rebate period is 6-8 weeks, typical time frame for mail-ins.
If you deactivate the phone, I *think* the rebate, if you've redeemed
it, is tacked on to your cancellation fee, but I can't be sure.





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John Navas wrote:

>>>> Simply that Amazon hasn't worked out a deal with Cingular to allow number
>>>> porting as part of its reselling of new Cingular service;
>>> Thank you John, for rehashing to OP's post and the whole point of this
>>> thread. Once again, you have brought nothing to the table.
>> On Usenet, I think that many of us hold out the hope that posting
>> incontrovertible evidence will encourage people to refrain from posting
>> incorrect or content free responses. In many cases it does have that
>> effect, but not always.
>
> There's no "incontrovertible evidence" (as yet at least).


It's on the website. All you have to do is read the fine print.




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I'm not sure which would be worse no signal or dropping calls. I have both
cingular (personal) and verizon (work) phones and I would love to only have
Cingular. VERIZON STINKS ... dropped calls all of the time and mediocre
coverage in my area.

"IMHO IIRC" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:4Nudg.23798$ZW3.22442@dukeread04...
> Just now on the Tonight Show, Jay Leno was asking about the audience
> voting for the American Idol.
> Then he asked how many people didn't vote because they could not get a
> signal on Cingular.
>
>

"Ann" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> I'm not sure which would be worse no signal or dropping calls. I have
> both cingular (personal) and verizon (work) phones and I would love to
> only have Cingular. VERIZON STINKS ... dropped calls all of the time and
> mediocre coverage in my area.

You'll get much better reception if you remove the aluminum foil you to use
to line your hat and cover your windows ;-)

Fightin' Joe

Ann wrote:
> I'm not sure which would be worse no signal or dropping calls.

It's a personal preference I guess. In my area, San Francisco Bay Area,
the situation is the opposite of where you are in terms of coverage.

More coverage, especially in fringe areas, can translate to more dropped
calls. For example, last Saturday I received a call from a relative who
was in the east bay, in the hills above Berkeley. If she had been on
Cingular, she would not have been able to call at all, but with Verizon
there was sufficient coverage to initiate the call. However as they
hiked further into the park (Tilden Park), the call dropped as they
walked outside the range of the nearest analog tower.

If the carriers turn off AMPS urban areas, as they will likely do in
2008, it will be a big boost for Cingular as it will worsen Verizon and
Sprint coverage significantly.

SMS wrote:
>
> If the carriers turn off AMPS urban areas, as they will
> likely do in 2008, it will be a big boost for Cingular as
> it will worsen Verizon and Sprint coverage significantly.

Then why would they do that? There is no mandate to
turn off AMPS. Carriers will only do so if it's cost effective.

-Quick

SMS wrote:
> If the carriers turn off AMPS urban areas, as they will likely do in
> 2008, it will be a big boost for Cingular as it will worsen Verizon and
> Sprint coverage significantly.

Let me think about this aloud.

Verizon has lots of analog towers out there. Verizon uses them for rural
analog coverage and Sprint use them for rural analog roaming. It would
seem Verizon would eventually convert those locations over to CDMA,
therefore both Verizon users and roaming Sprint users would still have
digital coverage.

---------------------------------------------------

AT&T initially deployed a lot of analog towers in rural areas. I don't
know the current status in some of the outback western states, but just
about all other ares converted to TDMA and eventually to GSM.

Since Cingualr acquired those towers...is Cingular going to simply
retire them or convert them to GSM (a necessity as Cingular only sells
GSM phones now).

Quick wrote:
> SMS wrote:
>> If the carriers turn off AMPS urban areas, as they will
>> likely do in 2008, it will be a big boost for Cingular as
>> it will worsen Verizon and Sprint coverage significantly.
>
> Then why would they do that? There is no mandate to
> turn off AMPS. Carriers will only do so if it's cost effective.

Verizon has been drastically cutting the number of tri-mode phones that
they offer. The digital-only phones cost them a lot less, and once very
few people have tri-mode phones any more, they can claim that there is
no need for them to continue with the AMPS network. In urban areas, AMPS
takes up a lot of bandwidth that cut be used more profitably. If they
would at least keep AMPS turned on on the towers that are on the edge of
urban areas it would be sufficient, but I think that they'll just want
to turn the whole system off except in rural areas.

I wonder about Verizon's coverage claims, and if they would hold up if
they had used digital-only phones. I also wonder what phones Telephia
used in their testing--I'd wager that they didn't use tri-mode phones,
but that Verizon really can't complain since they are trying to get rid
of tri-mode phones. OTOH, dropped calls wouldn't be affected per se,
since there is no transfer between CDMA and AMPS anyway.

Isaiah Beard wrote:

>> There's no "incontrovertible evidence" (as yet at least).
>
>
> It's on the website. All you have to do is read the fine print.

Or call Cingular, as I did.

When both Cingular and Amazon state that there is no rebate if you buy
at Amazon, then port your number, is as incontrovertible as it's likely
to get. What you _can_ do is to keep your old service until the rebate
arrives, then do a number port, but this means paying for two carriers,
and carrying two phones, for a couple of months.

It's typical Navas to make statements like that when he has no
corroboration.

SMS wrote:
> Quick wrote:
>> SMS wrote:
>>> If the carriers turn off AMPS urban areas, as they will
>>> likely do in 2008, it will be a big boost for Cingular
>>> as it will worsen Verizon and Sprint coverage
>>> significantly.
>>
>> Then why would they do that? There is no mandate to
>> turn off AMPS. Carriers will only do so if it's cost
>> effective.
>
> Verizon has been drastically cutting the number of
> tri-mode phones that they offer. The digital-only phones
> cost them a lot less, and once very few people have
> tri-mode phones any more, they can claim that there is no
> need for them to continue with the AMPS network.

It's not a matter of having to "claim" justification, or them
"wanting" to turn it off or not. When the regulations allow
they can do so at will. It's simply a matter of cost
effectiveness. If they are losing money running AMPS
on a particular tower they will most likely turn it off. I have
no doubt that they will factor lost customers, publicity,
effect of changed coverage maps, cost of supporting
multiple technologies, etc. into the "is it cost effective" calculation.

-Quick

SMS wrote:

> If the carriers turn off AMPS urban areas, as they will likely do in
> 2008, it will be a big boost for Cingular as it will worsen Verizon and
> Sprint coverage significantly.

Sprint's all digital, and Verizon's native coverage has been 100% digital for
a while. Would only affect roaming, and the roaming carriers that provide
AMPS won't stop just because FCC says they are no longer *required* to
provide AMPS.

Back in June 04, I was living where I'm living now and was in the process of
dropping Verizon. Out at my house, at the edge of VZW coverage, I can get an
analog carrier, but make an analog call there? Ha. No way - all I ever got
was fast busies.

--
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