Cingular is messed up here

Sorry about the thread title, I'm not trying to start a bashing argument against Cingular, but here's some of the things I've noticed around here(Utah) and that are buggine me, since the person I talk to most has Cingular and it's annoying and aweful to talk to her:

- Cingular CS reps are desperate to get your sale and will tell you anything to get you to sign up. If you walk past their kiosk, be prepared to be hunted down by them, and basically forced to talk to them.

- Voice quality on both, the GSM and TDMA side is plain out aweful! Garbled calls seem to happen all the time and pretty much wherever the customer is. What happened to the once great AT&T network here?

- Coverage stinks. Just yesterday I went to two friends houses with my girlfriend who has Cingular and her phone didn't work in either of those neighborhods where I had good service.

- Calls drop and garble even in major, important areas, like downtown Salt Lake City, many large business areas and mall areas. The phone might show 4 bars, but when a call is initiated it goes down to 1. Indoor coverage and call quality is aweful.

- When calling a Cingular phone, people more and more get a message saying that the number is disconnected, then it works again the next time.

- Calls roll to voicemail, or the phone never rings at all. I thought that in GSM the actual phone was supposed to ring when I hear the first ring. Well, with Cingular here, i hear 1 to 2 rings before the actual phone starts ringing.

- Some Cingular customers never receive SMS from other carriers.


Cingular in this area is hopeless and I'm getting quite fed up because it seems like every Cingular person you talk to, be prepared to get cut off or have a garbled conversation. There's a lot of people here who want out, they seriously need to start caring about this market or they will have, once and for all, lost even more customers to Verizon and T-Mobile. There's so many problems with Cingular here it's almost unbelievable...any comments?


Andy

 

So I guess the "the number is disconnected" message is a network wide problem for Cingular. It has gotten worse over the last few months.

Also, when calling Cingular customers it often takes about 10 seconds for the first ring, but their phone actually starts ringing after the second ring. Also, the caller's party ring often sounds so weird, even worse than calling a phone in Asia or something. Very, very strange.

 

To Novel in Provo, huh?
Yes, Cingular phones here completely suck. YOu cannot believe how many people want out of Cingular here in this area.

 

viewfly,
I actually am getting frustrated talking to my girlfriend on her cell, and other friends and people on Cingular. It's pathetic, it's that bad.
Sunday I was going to meet my girlfriend; I was getting out of work and calling her cell since she was waiting for me but I couldn't find her; I called 4 times, sometimes the phone rang for 3 times sometimes for 7 times before going to voicemail. I left two voicemails, 1 page. Her phone never actually rang and she got the voicemail notifications and page 20 minutes after I left the last one, and a while after I had already met her. It's not her phone, it's a universal problem.
AT&T TDMA used to be awesome here, my aunt had it for years, but switched to Verizon a few years ago and couldn't be happier, especially when her business partners have to use her phone to make calls because their Cingular phones are too garbled.
I haven't written a letter or complained, but I bet they know about the problem. Why they're not doing anything about it, I have no idea. I just know that once people's contracts are up, a lot are going to switch. I can think of 5 people that have left Cingular here within the last 6 months, all of which went to Verizon and couldn't be happier.

 

Cingular actually seems to work better in not populated areas that they natively cover, like I-70. Weird. A lot of Flaming Gorge and Vernal is roaming on WW/Alltel though I think so you're not actually on the Cingular network.

People have been moving with their feet, some, like my girlfriends family signed up, and are not stuck in a contract(don't ask me why they didn't leave within 30 days). Others have left the company, Verizon getting most of those people. I heard over on HoFo at least 6 months ago that Cingular finished the 800 here in UT; coverage on both, TDMA and GSM has been crap ever since day one of GSM here.

 

I heard that rolling to vm is a problem in GSM while on the move between cellsites, but Cingular's issue is more than that here.

 

There is no reason for a carrier not to have good service in this market. Cingular service is not only bad in SLC, but along the entire wasatch front, where over 1/2 of the Utah population lives. What good does great coverage along I-70 do for me, a road that most people don't travel more than a few times per year, but service in the metro is crap.
It pretty much is sandwhiched in there between mountains and the lake, and there are some hilly areas as well. I live in a big valley about 2 minutes from the mountains, Sprint coverage is almost nonexistant at home neither is CricKet, Cingular breaks up, despite having 1 to 3 bars depending on where you are.
T-mobile coverage in SLC has improved a lot over the last two years; they used to have major capcity issues here. They now have surprisingly good coverage in a lot of places, even residential areas thanks to cellsites on wood poles(which does no good because as soon as power goes out they're out), but other areas they are surprisingly bad in. They've improved a lot though, and don't have a lot of capacity issues here anymore, but starting a few months ago, service has started going downhill again. All 4 of my supervisors at work have t-mobile and are about to switch to Verizon, my boss has Cingular and is going to leave them for Verizon as well.

CricKet is even better here than Cingular. It's unbelievable. What's surprising is that it seems like Cingular service/quality gets better as you leave the city, which hints capacity issues, BUT this is a GSM network and quality should not degrade much, if at all, with usage. They don't have as many subscribers here as Verizon and I believe have a lot more spectrum that Verizon has, and Verizon has no capacity issues here, so why should Cingular? Network busy messages and error messages are getting quite common on cingular and voice quality gets even crappier during rush hour times.

 

I have a Cingular detailed map on my computer It's all a lie I guess.
Tmobile does have good coverage in a lot of areas, don't get me wrong, but they're starting to get the damn echo that Cingular has here. It's getting worse all the time.
I just got home, tried calling my girlfriend from the car and got a message, twice, that the number I have dialed is not in service, the third time it rang weird three times before going to voicemail.

My family and I travle international a lot and have local SIM cards and an unlocked GSM phone, which actually is the cheapest method for us.

 

Well don't ask me why all these people here that sign a cingular contract, see it's crap don't get out within 30 days and then complain. It's their own fault, partially, but someting is wrong with cingular here.

 

AT&T here was great when the only thing they were running was their TDMA network. They were simplay AWESOME! Unbelievable that such great cell service detariorated right before AT&T started rolling out GSM across the valley(it happened from north to south, along I-15 then east and west I think) the TDMA network started going to crap and the GSM network was crap the minute it came. Reception was worse, has gotten better, but both networks are a joke now. I have no idea how AT&T could let something like this happen- they lost a tons here; they could have been a great competition to the market leader, verizon here.

 

Well what's weird is that t-mobile used to have big time capacity issues here about two years ago, then I think they fixed them, addded quite a few more sites, but now voice quality is deteriorating again...seems like GSM here in Salt Lake is not that great of an option.

 

There is no network integration here. There's only one network, which is the blue side, and it's been horrible ever since AT&T started to do GSM, or should I say, getting ready to do GSM.

 

Verizon is Southern California is awesome, no comparison.

Anyways, so thursday during rush hour I tried calling my girlfriend and another cingular user a few times. Both phones(in different areas across the valley) would ring anywhere from 2 to 7 times, then nothing, just dead air instead of the mailbox. Then, about 30 minutes later, my girlfriend called me from her cell and her call dropped right when I picked up, so I called her back and it rings a few times, then I get a CINGULAR message telling me that due to the recent Hurricane they cannot complete the call. The recording kept on repeating itself so I put it on the speaker and me and my friends had a laugh. I have a Salt Lake number and so does she...What hurricane???
Friday, her number is mysteriously disconnected again. It went right through the third time, but her phone never rang and she got a voicemail notification about 30 minutes later...Wow!!!