LG 1500 And Cingular's Nationwide GSM Plan

I have a LG 1500 and it is on a Cingular Nationwide GSM Plan. When I go into certain buildings, the word "Cingular" disappears from my screen, and even though I have service bars on the screen, if I try to do ANYTHING needing the network, the phone flashes "Service Unavalible". I have talked to Cingular, and I was told that cell phones were for outside use, and they did not have coverage in most buildings. When I asked why the phone showed service bars, I was told that there was no service, and that the phone has a glitch. Then I asked if I could program the phone to use Verizon's network since there was no roaming on my plan. I was told that I couldn't without paying roaming. What's the deal here? Is Cingular just trying to squirm out of roaming charges because of their horrible network coverage? What do I have to do if I am out of my normal area and the phone does this and I need it? HELP!

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Sounds to me like you got an idiot CSR. Call again and hopefully you can get somebody who has higher functioning brain cells. If not, ask to talk to a supervisor. "cell phones are for outside use...don't have coverage in most buildings" is what raised the red flag for me. I mean a house is a building, so is a grocery store, a courthouse or hospital...my phone gets service all over the place.
If using another carriers tower is an option, I don't think Verizon works on GSM, but T-Mobile does...on my phone I go to settings..network services...system selection...switch from automatic to manual. There I would find what networks I could "roam" on. I think Cingular will allow it, but you will be terminated if you use roaming 51% for 3 months. But I am not 100% sure this is still the way it works.
Is the phone new? Are you new to Cingular? (in other words you have x# of days to return the phone for replacement and/or cancel your contract. Was everything working at one time and now not? Whats your location? Phone has a glitch...now that's a great technical term. Maybe even try the tech support number, its on the cingular website.

Am I new to Cingular? Well, kind of yes. I had AT&T for 2 years, and before my contract was up, they told me that I needed to sign a new contract and get a new phone with Cingular because they were taking down AT&T's old network. So to answer your question, I am past the 30 days of the return policy, the phone is new, and technicaly, I am new to Cingular's GSM network. The phone works fine other than taking about 60 seconds to find the network when turning on. And yes, I was lucky to even understand what I got out of the conversation with the service rep. I looked on the phone, and there is no settings or network search on the phone. It is like Cingular has locked it so it won't connect to any other network. My understanding with the GSM plan was if Cingular couldn't get a signal from their own network, I would be routed through another carrier's network without roaming charges until Cingular's network was avalible. Is this not the case? Should I switch back to a Nokia? (I had one with AT&T and loved it)

Boy did you get messed over. I was told by a service rep Supervisor, within the past 2 months, (when we were trying to figure out if migrating to orange would ease my service issues,) that I will have the option to go month to month when my contract expires. The details: I am Cingular blue (former ATTWS) and my nokia has served me well. I have an extremely good plan due to taking advantage of an ATTWS promotion and being offered bonus minutes thru a mailer that was targeted for my old plan (I only had to make a ph call to a dedicated number for that promo)but accepted and applied by a supervisor before the official date of buyout completion (I had been month to month and the mailer was intended to entice me to remain with them, and the promotions they were running at the same time were to beef up membership to sweeten their end of the buyout deal.) Family plan 1250 shared @ $59.99 plus 300 addt'l for total of 1550 min, additional lines at $10/mo (3 lines-works out to about $37 per line/mo w/ taxes), free N/W-nights start at 7pm, free m2m, free long distance/no roaming when calling from my region (most of the state). Cingular has nothing that comes close, the supervisor agreed that by migrating I would pay more for substantially less. A couple months back I was encountering service problems intermittently. Essentially, the programming for my phone forced it to hold on to the signal from the ATT tower even if the signal was stronger from the Cingular tower. In my state they recently completed performing some sort of upgrade to their system and now the programming for my phone is such that it will now pick up the stronger of the two signals. It took several calls and a couple of live chat sessions with a fabulous online tech rep and alot of questions on my part to get this info and be able to understand it in lay terms.
Cingular has had to work on performing these system upgrades in order to reduce the possibility of a huge exodus of blues this year to thier competitors. That would be fiancially disasterous for them.

Having said all that, I just can't buy the line of BS you were fed by the csr and so therefore again suggest you call them again , get supervisory help, until you get somebody who doesn't have their head crammed you-know-where.

When my contract nears expiration, ultimately my account will be directed to their retention specialists either by them or by my request, to negotiate contract terms(plan details, migration fee waiver and free/discounted phones are the negotiable items)for me to be sufficiently enticed to migrate and agree to another 2 yr commitment...They're gonna have to make it pretty sweet for me to do so. Their choices..1)to do me right and be assured of keeping my payments coming for 2 more years. 2)Keep me( or should I say my money coming)by honoring the terms of my current contract on a month to month basis(your basic grandfather clause)...no guarantee I'll stay, but probability is good. 3) They can alienate me and chase me off to a competitor.
Given that they have poured mucho dollars into billing and service sytem upgrades to better assimilate blues, if you were running a business, what would you do?
Smiles.

You seem to have had better luck with AT&T. I am in Washington, and the service here was HORIBBLE[I][U]! It sounded like you were using a pair of tin cans and some string instead of a phone! I thought about going to Verizon, but Cingular had rollover....... when my contract runs out, I might switch.....