Ok, so I called 611 yesterday...

[Jay2TheRescue]

Lord this has been a slow day here on WA, I guess I'll share yesterday's 611 experience...


I called 611 to try and get my home network changed from orange to blue because I am surrounded by blue towers at my home and office, the orange towers are farther out. Talked to rep#1. Nice gentleman. He said he wasn't sure how to help me , so he transferred me to blue CS. Rep #2 (Fantastic woman on blue CS w/ a Georgia accent that just made me melt ) She wasn't sure how to help me either, because she said she couldn't bring my account up. We talked at length anyway. She suggested I try calling 611 and asking for the "migration team". When I did so the lady (Rep #3, wonderful ((older??)) woman, wasn't sure what to do. She said there was no migration team for people to go from orange to blue. Anyway she was very helpful anyway. She noted the coverage gap between the blue and orange, and put in a trouble ticket, and the standard "I'm gonna send you an update to your phone". She said she was going to have the engineers call me directly because she was having trouble understanding my issue (Lots of technical language). Anyway this has been an adventure of sorts and I can't wait to speak to the engineers.

I had nice discussions with all of them on network integration, and they all seemed to be very well informed on the progress of such integration efforts. I guess I'll just continue to manually select the blue network at work until integration makes its way here. (Hopefully soon!) Then Cingular will have the best network out there. As it is right now in my area to get the "best" network you have to do some flashing, flexing, and sometimes a little seem editing to get the job done .

[Gamer03]

Sounds good.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Jay.

[lilprincess2]

Yeah Jay thanks for sharing your experience with us! Sometimes you have to wonder how come you know more than them at times. lol Also on a side note, is'nt it slow here everyday? hehe Does'nt matter though, cause i keep coming back to see what's going on.

[Jay2TheRescue]

Originally Posted by lilprincess2

Yeah Jay thanks for sharing your experience with us! Sometimes you have to wonder how come you know more than them at times. lol Also on a side note, is'nt it slow here everyday? hehe Does'nt matter though, cause i keep coming back to see what's going on.

Sometimes this place is 'rockin and I can get like 20 or 30 posts a day, (last Saturday was great! I think I got close to 50 posts that day!)and others it is so slow I have to stretch to get 10.

[lilprincess2]

You might be here too much Jay if you can post 20 to 30 posts on a rockin day. lol I'm lucky if i post 3-4 posts a day. hehe

[ShoresGuy]

You guys need to post more pics in the Cell Site Gallery then . That place was bustling last week and in the last couple days, it's been a bit slower.

[Jay2TheRescue]

Originally Posted by lilprincess2

You might be here too much Jay if you can post 20 to 30 posts on a rockin day. lol I'm lucky if i post 3-4 posts a day. hehe

I spend my idle moments at work here... I've had over 100 posts this week. I hit 1,000 last friday night.

[RhoXS]

With reference to the original post, I had a similar experience.

I had a TDSM Motorola V60T for a number of years and had consistently reliable service in almost all locations, including my home and office. In sharp contrast, my phone service just plain sucked after I was forced to upgrade to a GSM phone in September, 2004. At my work location, there is an Orange signal but it is consistently too weak to be reliably used. However, there is a Blue cell site, on our property, about 200 yards from my office window. We rent AT&T/Cingular space at the 150' level on our communications tower (this is a large industrial site) for a blue cell site. Since I am a Cingular customer, my phone would not use the strong Blue signal unless it completely lost the Orange signal. Every few minutes I would be teased with a brief four bar signal that never lasted long enough to make or finish a call. I had a simialar situation at home.

I spent all too many hours on the phone with all levels of technical support personnel and managers. Cingular simply refused to send me a Blue sim card because they said they had no administrative solution for sending an Orange customer a Blue card.

I solved the problem a few months ago by downloading the "Network Select" hack for my then Treo 600 (now a 650). I now simply keep it locked on the 310380 network and have almost perfect phone service at my office and at least usable service at home.

Interestingly, with only a few exceptions, it has been my observation that the Blue network provides substantially better coverage than the Orange network. In any case, this will no longer matter once the network integration project complete.

It really is of no practical matter to Cingular but I do harbour considerable resentment toward Cingular for a year of paid for but mostly unuable service. Since a viable solution obviously existed, I cannot begin to understand why it was beyond Cingular to provide it to a long time customer.

[Fire14]

Originally Posted by RhoXS

I spent all too many hours on the phone with all levels of technical support personnel and managers. Cingular simply refused to send me a Blue sim card because they said they had no administrative solution for sending an Orange customer a Blue card.

There are quite a few reason's they couldn't just send you a Blue SIM card, 1 being the phone is locked.
2 your billing is setup on the Orange system and sending you a Blue SIM would not agree with the billing system, including Rollover mins, Blue customers don't get Rollover mins.
3. they want people off the Blue side and all customers eventually onto Orange system, that is 1 of the final goals of Cingular & makes alot of sense.
4. with the integration, everyone will eventually have the coverage of both networks and this type of problem won't be as much of an issue, unless they don't have a tower in an area.

They are other reason's as well, just like they won't send Blue customers an Orange SIM, you have to migrate over to there system if a blue customer had the same situation, and would include buying a new phone and loosing alot of promo mins and free incoming SMS etc...

Even though it was a pain and left a bad taste in your mouth, I can fully understand the reason they couldn't do it, it's just a shame they didnt' give you at least a partial explination on why, and I hope this helps you understand a little bit of why they couldn't do it.

[ZaphodB]

...except in California and Nevada, where they want people off the Orange network, which they sold to T-Mobile -- they are working to bring the Blue network up to snuff.

[RhoXS]

I did have a good discussion with A Cingular manager where he all the reasons given above for not being able to give me a Blue sim card were discussed. However, not a single one of them is valid. My phone is an unbranded unlocked generic Treo 650. Every other reason is an administrative restriction that Cingular has established for themselves. Since the technology was easily available to mostly resolve the problems I was experiencing, I can find no good excuse why I had unuasable phone service for over a year. Although I do not have any contract with Cingular, there is no other GSM provider in this area that has usable service either. This precluded a switch to another carrier.

[Jay2TheRescue]

OK, I called 611 today to find out why my friend had overage on her account when she still had anytime minutes. Turned out it was because of that cruise she took 2 weeks ago - international calls. Anyway the CSR I talked to was EXTREMELY helpful. Kathy M (I'm not posting her full name) from the Oklahoma call center. She was extremely knowledgeable and for once I felt like I wasn't talking over the CSR's head. She even gave me the info to be able to contact her again if I ever needed help. Thanks Cingular! Kathy M in Oklahoma deserves a raise!

Anyway she gave me all sorts of good info. The Razr just had a price drop the other day, PM nights are still available - its just not on the website, and if you go into a corporate store you can get a BOGO (Buy One Get One free)on a Razr! (She stressed that it was only available in corporate stores, and not on the net). We also talked at length about the quality of phones from different mfrs, and the differences between the orange & blue networks. She also said that it appeared that they were getting started on network integration in the DC/Baltimore market. She said it was a pleasure talking to someone who knew what she was talking about. I told her about WA, and she said she would check it out when she got home today. Thanks Kathy & Thanks Cingular! Hopefully she'll like what she sees and come again.

Later, Jay

[Jay2TheRescue]

Originally Posted by Jay2TheRescue

... PM nights are still available - its just not on the website,...

I guess I can't type when I'm tired. I meant to say 7 pm nights are still available.

-Jay

[Jay2TheRescue]

Follow up letter Cingular just sent me after I emailed them about the fantastic CS rep that helped me the other day:

Dear Mr. Sincavage,

Thank you for e-mailing Cingular Wireless with your kind response. At
Cingular Wireless we always appreciate knowing that we are raising the
bar in assisting our customers.

I have forwarded your compliments to Kathy (deleted) Manager to go her
file. If you need any additional assistance please feel free to contact
us or you may call Customer Service at 1-800-331-0500, and a
representative will be happy to assist you.

I encourage you to visit us at www.cingular.com often to view your
monthly account statements, make payments and shop for new products and
services. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve you. Thank you
for choosing Cingular Wireless.

Sincerely,

Kaycee (deleted)
Cingular Wireless
Online Customer Care Professional




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