Is Cingular trying to cheat students?

Well if you really want Cingular, buy it as a regular customer, then call later and add the discount to your account.

 

Wirelessly posted (Walkguru's: LG-CU500 Obigo/WAP2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

Or use one of the online resellers, such as wirefly.com.

 

Well, since they probably give faculty and students a monthly access discount, like at my University, they want to recover part of that fee on the phone.
At my University, Cingular is the "Official Wireless Carrier", offering a discount to students and faculty. The funny thing is, though, that their network isn't very stellar there ha ha.

 

One would think that if they were the "official" carrier they would invest a little more in coverage around campus.

-Jay

 

Remember the Online prices are for New Customers & not normally for exsisting ones, also Premier discounts are usually a percentage of "Retail Price" so that is why it's more on the premier page.
The only difference is you can buy phones more often at discounts vs being a regular customer & having to wait 21 months.

Also as Andy stated, you get a discount on your monthly contract vs a non-premier customer. I have heard that these prices change pretty regularly, so keep an eye on it and you may get a better deal down the road.

I believe most carriers are like this with discounted plan customers, but I may be wrong on that.

Hopefully in the future, they will take better care of exisiting customers vs new customers, maybe as the market starts getting saturated.

 

If the student discount webpage is owned/maintainted by the university, perhaps they aren't updating it as fast as the main Cingular pages.

 

When 8525 just came out, I noticed the "full" price on Microsoft's Premier site said something over a $1000, and the Cingular web site showed "full" price as something between $500 and $600. With discounts it was the same, except through Premier you got that price without a mail-in rebate. Being that it was in the first week of 8525 availability I doubt it had anything to do with the speed of update, it's just some black magic (or else the price shown on Cingular web site is not really the "full" no-commitment price), although in this particular case the Premier page seemed to be maintained by Cingular, so I don't know if it applies fully to the university case.

 

Our web page with prices and phones would be updated about once a year. No one ever knew whose job it was to update the Cingular page. We would have discontinued phones displayed.

:loony:

 

I would say if teh discount is even cheaper than the premeire at the Cingular store you can then go buy it from there and still get your normal call plan discounts

 

Is this the form one would need to fill out?

 

Yes. But if one is already on the discount they might not require it (Orange to Orange are not being asked this and they were using this for Blue to orange mostly).

 

I was thinking about new subscribers who find better equipment deals on the main Cingular site than on their premier site and want to take advantage of that but still receive the monthly service discount, not the ones who already have the discount.

 

That would have to filled or visiting the online section from their work location to verify it (paper is the route if the web is not available).

 

My friend calls it "bigger discounts from higher mark-ups" I agree, it does sound like a deceptive practice.

 

ATTW alaways had their premier discounts right. I realy wonder why Cingular does that.

 

Because they are greedy compaired to the old AT&T Wireless.

 

And they don't want to go the way the old AWS did..

They do it, because they know they can get away with it.

 

Wlcome. And yes they are greedy. May be a national poll/petition and user feed back where they all request a form of unlimited in network SMS for $10 like VZW does. I don't see why they can't do that.

 

They can, but just like Athena said they don't want to. Unless the point comes where they'll feel it's hurting their bottom line, I won't expect to see that.

Your idea about petition is interesting, I would like to see the percentage of subscribers interested in unlimited SMS package -- preferable separate statistics for in-network vs. truly unlimited.

And indeed, welcome Athena!

 

Welcome Athena, good to see you here.

As for them hurting their bottom line, with the last Qtrly report, that doesn't seem to be an issue.
But, with their lower Post Paid customers vs Pre-Paid it doesn't actually look good and I am sure once Verizon post's their numbers on Monday, it may be a little more of an incentive for them to look harder at the reasons.

If T-Mobile adds more Post paid customers vs Cingular, it's going to look even worst.
A Petition may be helpful for them to see what's wrong, but they may just be blind & don't really care, also with their recent SMS PPU increase, the 1st Qtr results could reflect even more churn & lower Post-paid customers, but time will tell for sure.

I think we all know the main problem, being their SMS & Data plans are hurting them the most, then add the push to get rid of the TDMA customers, with their roaming rules and I believe their churn is going to get higher instead of lower.
Unless they start reading the different forums instead of their own & see what everyone is complaining about the most SMS & Data.

 

I wonder if they even read their own forums, I'm sure there's plenty of people complaining there as well... (assuming those posts don't get archived quickly).

 

I have a feeling, in the beginning they did, then stopped. I know it's been reported that Stan & Ralph were big on them in the beginning of the merger & now that Ralph is being moved to BellSouth he will be out of them for sure.

They could gain a lot of knowlege on what people think about their companies & plans, and this goes for all the carriers. But hey we are just common people & don't know what we really want. :loony:

 

Those forums went downhill since the merger... sad

 

Thanks for the welcoming Khal, Dmapr and Fire14..


I don't use SMS enough to warrant paying even the $4.99 price for whatever amount it is they give you. I think that paying a monthly fee for Cingular to Cingular SMS is ridiculous, it should be included in the m2m that we all get for free..

The only way I would pay for an unlimited SMS package is if it could be shared across my entire family plan.

 

Yes they did, and it's the mis-informed reps that started causing a lot of the problems there & posting while at work, and upper managment not caring about what was going on.

 

You are right, they need to do something drastic with their SMS plans, A Shared SMS plan would be very nice to have, I know I love having that feature on my Blue plan.

But if they came out with a decent SMS plan with Unlimited M2M SMS, like Verizon does, then I would be just as happy.
Heck it would probably be the item that make me migrate over, then I would have the rollover, but until they do I will enjoy my Unlimited incoming SMS on my Shared plan.

 

Well, as long as people are using the feature, and are paying the hefty fees to do so. I don't forsee Cingular making any changes to such a profitable thing for them. AWS was greedy for customers, which was why they were the best deal in town, which was ultimately their demise. Cingular on the other hand.. Is greedy for money. And as long as we pay them, they will continue with such practices.

 

As I have mentioned in other threads, I have a feeling they really weren't happy with their past Qtr on post paid customers & they even said they weren't happy with it, I think they are at a point where they know something has to be done to keep customers & continue to make a profit.

Maybe they will finally wake up & realize more people would go with a SMS/Data plan if they were priced & sized right vs bleeding people with their greed.
I do have some hope here, that they will wake up soon, I know come March 8th I am out of contract & if they ever try to force me to migrate, then I will go to Verizon or Sprint, I have no intention of renewing my contract with their current add on's.