Cingular Wireless and it's Multiple Pluses
Written: Mar 30 '01
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Pros: great rates, service, plans, reception
Cons: when you go over your minutes you get charged up the wazoo
The Bottom Line: It's as good as you can get. But if you go over your plan, be prepared to PAY the consequences, and next time, get a bigger plan.
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| longrain's Full Review: General Reviews of Cingular Wireless Customer Serv... |
When I unwrapped a cell phone for Christmas, a gift from my mommy, I was stoked and more. Not only would I no longer have to deal with missed phone calls when I was out because of my forgetful family, but I could be on the phone just about whenever I wanted. I didn't have to search out a pay phone and I could empty out my change-laden wallet. SCORE.
Not to mention the fact, that I felt oh so trendy carrying around a cell phone.
I started out with the $29.99 plan that consisted of 120 daytime minutes and 1000 night and weekends. For the first three months, I was also given a bonus 1000 free any time minutes. Now, what one would believe is that, the bonus 1000 any time minutes would be used AFTER you had gone over your regular allotted minutes. This is untrue. What they do is finish your 1000 minutes first, then go into your regular minutes. As it is very difficult many times to even use 1000 minutes in ONE month, your entire month of minutes paid is virtually unused because you are using your 1000 minutes. Which isn't too bad. Until about the second and third month, when you have no idea how much of your bonus 1000 is left, and you go over, about 120 minutes... and end up paying $64 extra dollars of over time.
Possibly one of the greatest flaws of cingular wireless, but that allows them to rack in the big bucks, is that you cannot find out how many minutes you have used until your billing month is OVER. So unless you manually try to add every minute (this means rounding up as well, because just 1 second counts for a minute of call time: ex. 1 min 8 secs equals 2 minutes) you would not be able to figure out how the hell many minutes you had used. And believe it or not, neurotic me tried and failed! So careful! Every minute that you go over your plan you get charged 45 cents!!!! That’s ALOT of money when it all adds up!
The people who you call to set your plan are very helpful and polite. Pretty much, they know how much people pay for using cingular and they KNOW that the customer is ALWAYS right. They are VERY accommodating. These on phone customer service allows people to change their plan, ask questions, get answers, and even pay their bill by credit card on the phone.
The roaming for Cingular isn't too bad either. I live about as South in California as you can get, but traveled as far up to San Francisco and not gotten charged for roaming.
Also, my phone pretty much works well everywhere, and doesn't go out when driving under bridges or between hills. The only times I really lose reception is if I'm driving in the mountains, or am in a basement of some sort.
With Cingular, if you can stick to your plan, you should be pretty satisfied.
The plan I use in now 39.99 a month... which isn't bad at all considering what I get out of it. I get 300 day time minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, long distance and texting which is where you can type messages on your phone and send them to another cingular phone user.
This suits me perfectly. Now I can talk for as long as I want nights and weekends to my friends everywhere... and not have to worry about minutes at all. This is actually way cheaper than having a regular phone that charges you per minute. I love that.
A tip for cingular wireless users: try hard not to use your daytime minutes up in the beginning of the month. It always the end of the month when you most need them, that you don't have any and EVERYONE calls you.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 39.99
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Epinions.com ID:
longrain
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Member: Long Rain
Location: the end of the earth
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 6 members
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