On my most recent bill, Cingular states that beginning in October, a $4.99 extra monthly charge will be applied to my account if I don't upgrade to one of their new GSM phones. I am pleased with my Nokia for the time being and am waiting for some of the newer Nokia's to be released. My question is, can Cingular impose an extra charge even though my old phone will work on both GSM 850 and 1900?
The $4.99 penalty charge was extensively discussed here a while ago, but my understanding was that only TDMA and analog users were getting the notices. Could there be a reason that Cingular thinks you are on TDMA? Do you have a multiband TDMA + GSM phone? I had a Siemens S46 at one time, that did this. Here's the thread: 4.99 Penalty Thread - To your question, one opinion in the above thread was that if you are out of contract, Cingular can raise the cost of your service. If you are under contract they cannot. My understanding is that since they haven't offered TDMA contracts for over 2 years, those users are out of contract by definition.
yes they can... its in the terms of service...but if you are uder contract and dont want to pay that fee you can cancel service and claim the fee to be the cause...the ETF will be waived (thats also in the terms of service)
You are probebly getting this because you are on a TDMA only plan and haven't changed or upgraded since GSM was offered. They want you to get on a GSM plan so you aren't cut off when they fully decommission the TDMA network.
My contract has expired. I am using a GAIT phone. Cingular is still going to charge me an $18 fee for upgrade activation. Does this sound right?
What a ripoff...seriously. In order for people to stay with the company, you'd think that wouldn't chage you an 'activation' fee since you are already a Cingular customer. What a greedy company.
If Verizon had a legacy network that is wasting resources, that they want to shut down but a small percentage of their customers refuse to upgrade from it, I would place my bets that Verizon would do something similar. Just keep my words in mind when the day comes and Sprint decides to phase out IDEN and some Nextel diehards refuse to upgrade to CDMA.
its not an activation fee... its an upgrade fee... activation fee is 36.00... the 18 bux is for shipping and handling...if you were to bone up on your negotiation skills you will probabaly get it waived
At least until recently I still knew a person who used a Verizon AMPS only phone and all Verizon ever did was send him a free cheap CDMA/AMPS phone...didn't even charge him shipping.
That's because they had to get a 911 compliant phone in his hands that has GPS. FCC mandated even though it's not strictly enforced. Last I checked, none of the CDMA carriers are completely compliant.
Well for whatever reason they did or had to do it, they didn't charge a fee to get customers off their old network, but sent them equipment to take advantage of. That was my point.
And do you know what the reciprocal is true Andy how dare you get on your high horse and say no other company but Cingular would charge a fee when you know that isnt true. I can understand this persons complaint but no cell company is perfect plain and simple.(what i mean by that is companies are for better or worse out to make a profit nobody wears the white hats).
No, they had to do it for the FCC. It had nothing to do with getting customers off their old network. FCC regulations stated that 95% of all people had to have GPS phones for 911 by a certain date or the carrier had to use a tower triangulation method to get the location for 911. The CDMA carriers went with the handset GPS based system while the GSM carriers went with the triangulation method. As the CDMA carriers got closer to the deadline they were having to give out cheap phones with GPS like crazy to people and try to convince them to use it. Then all of sudden the FCC decided they'll need more time to get all the handsets changed out. The cheap free phones being exchanged for the older ones without GPS stopped then too. Alltel did the same. Alltel still doesn't have 95% of the customers with GPS handsets.
