As choices disappear from the cell phone service provider scene and as AT&T Wireless will be no more come June here's the perspective of a former AT&T Wireless customer who switched to Cingular (which bought out AT&T Wireless) before the mandatory switch coming down in June. Word to the wise, your old AT&T contract will not automatically be grandfathered into a new Cingular contract.instead, you will have to sign a new contract and of course you may switch to any number of other cell providers.
One of the few phones Cingular offers free for new customers is the Samsung x427m. This phone is compact and looks nice, but is VERY poorly designed. One of the biggest annoyances is the address book. For example, different fields are ready for you to enter Joe Smith's cell number, home number, office number and a fourth category, but when the person calls, the stupid phone's Caller ID only shows you Joe Smith called, NOT what number he is calling from! So if you miss the call, you have no way of knowing whether he called from his home, cell, office etc. How stupid! There is no way to fix this on the x427m! Even my 6 year old Eriksson cell phone had a better Caller ID set up.
The Samsung x427m also lacks a vibrate mode which is essential for the office, school among many other venues where you don't want the ringer on. Of course, this phone readily offers nonsense like online shopping for disco music ring tones and games.
This phone also feels free to wait a day or two before letting you know you have a text message. BTW, Cingular charges ten cents to receive a text message (unlike AT&T wireless which did not charge for incoming text messages). Spam text messages could bankrupt you. Speaking of new charges, BEWARE, all new phones will come with the internet surfing capability activated and you WILL BE CHARGED every time you activate the internet button (once you touch it, you can furiously press the red stop button, but the browser will take its sweet old time in logging off while you rack up charges). It is the BIGGEST button on my phone so it was easy to hit accidentally. You can call Cingular and have them deactivate its capabilities so you won't be charged.
Cingular's website is a Byzantine maze of confusion. AT&T's was much better. Minutes used is often several days behind, even though Cingular has the biggest network in the USA they still hide behind the excuse that they are awaiting airtime use reports from other providers' cell towers and that's why minutes used is always so unreliable and outdated. Sure! Cingular also has NO WAY to contact customer service by email on their website (unlike AT&T which had a good email system). This ensures that you'll never get any question answered in writing from Cingular customer service. An answer in writing could be used in the future to prove them wrong in a dispute and Cingular won't be having any of that! How convenient for these corporate whores.
Lastly, the corporate whores made paperless billing the DEFAULT (so when you sign up, you have to specifically request a paper bill). So this is what will happen when millions of you sign up for Cingular in the next few months:
1) you'll await your bill and figure its plausible that with a new contract the first bill might take a little longer.
2) You'll never get a bill (because paperless billing is the default even though they NEVER took your email address. No, it's up to you to log on to Cingular's website to pay your bill you should have known that).
3) You'll call Cingular to inquire.
4) Cingular will tell you you're late (b/c you never got a bill) and 5) Cingular happily informs you that you now owe outrageous late charges.
Caveat emptor - other providers are probably just as messed up. Just be aware of your options and the snafus going into a new contract.
Ron
Anytown, New York
U.S.A.
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