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| jeremy wrote:
> You ignore the fact that AT&T/CINGULAR promised their customers that nothing
> would change. I have the notice, signed by both presidents.
>
> AT&T made much of "lifetime" perks, as long as the customer remained on his
> plan and paid the bill each month. Cingular, as successor, had a moral and,
> I believe, a legal obligation to uphold ATTWS' commitments.
What they did with the $5 surcharge for continuing on TDMA to the bitter
end violated that promise, but other than that they could argue that
customers that switched to a a GSM plan, for whatever reason, were no
longer on the plan they signed up for. On the other hand, the technology
change was not something that those AT&T customers asked for, so you
could argue that Cingular should have kept them on plans with the same
cost structure even when they moved them to GSM.
> I left--for Sprint--and couldn't have been happier. It's been 14 months
> now, and I have had no surprises and no fine print.
Good for you. For many of us, Sprint and T-Mobile are not viable
options. I.e., I just got pissed at PagePlus because by not adding money
within 4 months to my daughter's prepaid account, I had lost the $50
balance on the account (they restored it, but just this once). I looked
into prepaid from T-Mobile, but they still have no coverage (well 1 bar)
on the map for my area. Sprint also has big gaps in coverage. I know the
reasons for these gaps, as I follow the planning commission meetings
where Sprint and T-Mobile are routinely denied permits for new sites.
They have a double disadvantage in that they arrived on the scene after
cities got stricter about permits for sites, and they operate at 1900
MHz which has less range per site. Other cities in my area present
similar obstacles to the PCS carriers.
Many of us are stuck if we want the most complete coverage for our area.
In the SF Bay Area, Verizon has the best coverage by a wide margin, with
Cingular a distant second, and Sprint and T-Mobile an even further
distant third and fourth. I know that it some areas of the country this
is not the situation, but that's the fact of the matter in my area.
> Cingular COULD have turned us former ATTWS customers into boosters, instead
> of detractors.
Clearly they made the business decision to dump the low ARPU customers
because they knew that a sufficient number of those customers with
sweetheart deals would agree to the higher cost plans rather than leave.
After all, even the higher priced Cingular plans were no more expensive
than the offerings from the other carriers.
[Copied to alt.cellular.attws. Please post all alt.cellular.cingular
posts to alt.cellular.attws as well. The Cingular name is going away,
and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
Wireless Service.]
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