In fall of 2000, the new Nokia 8260 came out. Like many other people, i was dying to have this phone, and was going to do anything to get it, even choose AT&T as my service provider. A lot of my friends had told me that AT&T gets the best coverage, so i decided why not and purchased the phone with the digital advantage 29.99 . At first when i got the phone, i turned it on, and it got 1 bar of signal strength. I decided that this was because the phone was still new, and i needed to give it a couple days.


After a couple days, the phone still got horrible reception. The phone could ring and receive calls, but it didnt do much good if i couldn't hear the person on the other end. It turns out the phone was defective and i had to have it replaced 11+ times in the past year. I have tried other AT&T phones in my area, and all of them have the same problem; you cant hear the other person! There was only one place in the house that i got decent reception, so whenever i needed to make a phone call, i would go there.


After a few months and a few more phones, The coverage seemed to grow in my area. I was impressed at the time, and i saw a new plan for talk across the region and get 120 anytime minutes with 500 night and weekend minutes and free long distance. This was a good idea for me because i travel to california often and wanted a phone to be able to use without getting ridiculous roaming charges. Little did i know what a mistake i was going to make. I called up an AT&T representative, and she explained to me that even thoughi was in the middle of my billing cycle and i had already used up some of the minutes on my other plan, i was still eligible to sign up for the new plan and get all the minutes that came with it at no extra charge. I told her to go ahead and switch it, thinking i would get the full 120 minutes and 500 night and weekend minutes to use for the rest of the month. Boy was i wrong!


The next month, i received a $379 bill from AT&T. It shows that i exceeded my minutes bigtime. I called AT&T and told them that there must have been some mistake and to correct it. They only informed me after i got charged that when i switched to the regional plan, the minutes that i had used for the previous plan would backdate to the first billing date of the billing cycle, and would count towards the new plan. This information rendered useless after i got the bill. Every single AT&T representative that i had spoke to told me the same thing; Sorry sir, you were misunderstood.


I would think that a company that wants to keep its customers would fix this problem, but no. After much unneeded arguing with the AT&T representatives and managers, i got the bill reduced to 185 dollars, nothing compared to my 29.99 a month. I bit the bullet and paid them. When it came time for the contract to terminate in october, the AT&T representative responded like this; sorry sir, your contract doesnt end until may. At this point i was furious. I once again argued with the representative and her supervisor but nothing seemed to help. It looked like i was locked into a contract with them until may.


At this point, i just waited for the billing cycle to end, and switched the phone over to the cheaptest plan at 19.99. Its going to stay that way until the contract ends in may, and guarantee you that i will never renew any sort of contract with AT&T wireless ever again. I now use a voicestream Nokia 3390, which gets much better reception, and i actually enjoy dealing with customer care. Anytime there is a problem such as an overcharge, voicestream customer care fixes it in a flash. Please take this into consideration when looking for a new wireless provider.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 29.99