Cingular has been advertising that AT&T users will be part of one big happy family with the Cingular – AT&T merger, but it’s far from the truth of what happened. If you’re an AT&T customer… watch out because it’s a bumpy ride ahead!

Here’s the story of my “migration” onto Cingular from AT&T:

I was on a high-minute AT&T family plan at the time of the AT&T - Cingular merger. What no one bothered to mention to the users of AT&T was that the two companies did not have compatible technology. So, when I lost my phone on a trip out of state, I couldn’t just walk in and replaced it at a local Cingular store.

The first store that I walked into in Tustin, CA told me they couldn’t help me. Their stores did not carry any AT&T compatible phones. However, they did hand me a sheet of paper that had 3 stores on the other side of Orange Country and Los Angeles that supposedly were still carrying some sort of AT&T compatible phones. They were not Cingular stores, but some third party clearance houses.

Thinking the encounter in Tustin was bizarre; I went to another Cingular store in Orange. As soon as I said that I was an AT&T customer, I was told that they couldn’t help me and I was handed a different paper with a customer service phone number just for the poor abandoned AT&T users. Apparently the one big happy AT&T – Cingular family was a complete fabrication of the Cingular marketing department.

I tried one more Cingular store and I was told that they could migrate me onto Cingular, BUT I would have to replace all of my phones at full cost! That was four (4) phones that they wanted me to pay full price for because AT&T technology was not compatible with the Cingular network!

Flabbergasted, I decided I better try the AT&T customer service number. After waiting on hold for over twenty minutes the first time, I was cut off. I called back and spent another eon waiting on hold, although this time I got a human being. The service person was very nice, but the news wasn’t as pleasant as he was. I could buy a replacement AT&T phone at full price but as soon as my contract with AT&T ran out, my brand new phone wouldn’t work when they migrated me onto the Cingular network. Since he showed I only had about four (4) months left in my contract, it was going to be a very expensive purchase. Buy a brand new phone and basically throw it away in four months. Not acceptable.

Next he explained that I could be migrated over to Cingular now and there were specials going on where if I signed up for at least another two (2) years, I could buy my high end phone and get 3 free inexpensive ones for my family. This sounded much better. Since I couldn’t see the phones as we were talking, he suggested that I visit one of my local Cingular stores and they could handle the migration. Of course, one of my questions was why hadn’t any of the salespeople told me that they could “migrate” me over to Cingular and help solve my problem. Apparently, the Cingular stores have decided that they just don’t like dealing with the AT&T orphans very much. So, I went BACK to the Tustin Cingular store. Now hold onto your seat, because the road got even bumpier!

I walked into the Cingular store and told the salesperson what I had been told on the phone and they told me there weren’t any specials where I could receive free phones. They could offer me a discount, but the cheapest phones that they had for my kids were going to cost me over $80 a piece! My reaction…. “You’ve got to be kidding!” So, I asked for a manager, but… surprise there was no manager available. To top it all off, when the salesman looked up my account on his computer, it showed that my AT&T account didn’t expire for ten (10) months, unlike the four (4) I had been told by the online representative, which made me ineligible for the “migration” to Cingular. Trying to keep my composure, but feeling like my head was going to explode! I left the Cingular store, still without a phone and still without a solution.

The next day, I decided to try the special AT&T orphaned customer service line again. This time the representative told me that I wasn’t eligible to migrate to Cingular, and that he apologized for the other representative’s misinformation. My solution now, was to pay full price for an out of date AT&T phone that would only be good for 10 months, at which time my AT&T contract would be over and I would have to switch over to Cingular and buy all new phones! Again… all I could think was “You’ve GOT to be kidding! Some merger!” AT&T users were losers in this merger. Most of them just didn’t know it yet.

So, I asked for a supervisor. There had to be a solution to this. Then I got cut off again. Another 25 minutes went by before I managed to get a human being on the phone. I had to apologize to the representative as soon as I got them on the phone, because I knew that I was starting to lose my temper. The representative was very nice, got a waiver from the supervisor to migrate me onto Cingular and then we started to pick out my phones…. No free phones available for the Family Plan. Arrrgh!!!!

Okay, so I gave up. The best I could do was order my phone (expensive) and then order two (2) phones for my kids and another for my sister. My sister’s phone was around $29, and I spent a little extra for camera phones for my kids that cost approximately $35 each. A media package was added to my phone since I have a lot of friends who love to text message. My kids surprisingly passed on the media packages. I paid for express shipping so that I would get the phones right away, and counted myself lucky to get through this mess with only a five or six hours on the phone and four trips into stores, eating up countless additional hours. My phones were supposed to be here in two days and all seemed well with the world. But nooooo……….

Two days came and went and no phones. The third day I called the Cingular customer service number, after all I was no longer an orphaned AT&T customer, I was now a new and improved Cingular customer, but nooooo…

Cingular told me I didn’t exist in their system yet, so I was supposed to call the AT&T customer service number. Sigh… back to being an orphan. However, this time when I called AT&T they told me they couldn’t help me either. I called Cingular back and they transferred me to the Migration Department. Apparently my transfer was lost in limbo somewhere. The representative that helped me this time told me that my migration had been held up because the person that did the migration forgot to take down my social security number. Now, it’s not as if I were still in the wilds of Alaska on my trip, I was back in Orange County and they had all of my phone numbers: my home phone and my office phone, as well as my email. Had they bothered to contact me through any of them to let me know there was a problem? Nooooo…

So, we cleared up the hanging up and finally my phones arrived. Oh yes, and for my aggravation they waived my shipping fee, BUT when I got the phones low and behold the shipping was on the bill. So, I called. UGH! Another hold and finally the salesperson tells me that I have to ask to have it waived when I call in and activate the phones because I don’t have a bill that she can adjust yet, Because of course, the phones aren’t active! No I’m not kidding.

So, I put all the phones together so that I can activate them, I call up, and then the saleswoman tells me that she needs the serial number that is on the cards that I just installed in the phones. Yes it was also on the boxes, but I didn’t know which phone had which card in it. So as we sat there on the phone together, I had to pop the card out of each phone as we went through the activation process. Finally! Woo Wee! The phones worked. I added insurance to my phone and my daughter’s phone. (My son didn’t want to pay the monthly fee and my sister’s phone was too inexpensive to warrant the insurance.) Finally… all was good with the world. After weeks without a phone, and yes, I was going out of my mind… I finally had a phone again. My family had new phones, which trick new features and everyone was happy. Was this the end of my Job-like tale of trials and tribulations? Nooooooooo…

A couple of weeks after getting my phone, my yahoo and web connection suddenly failed. No matter what I did with my settings, I couldn’t connect. When I got home I looked up the number for technical support and called. Hey! I wasn’t an orphan! I was a valid Cingular customer. The technical support guy was great! There was a glitch in the system and he had to remotely reset our phones. Everything was done quick and easy, BUT when I asked him to tell me about one of the features on my media package, I found out that it wasn’t on my account. The order hadn’t gone through with the messed up migration. I was annoyed, since now I was going to be charged for each of the text messages I had sent so far, but I decided I could meditate away the frustration and just let this one go. I had a phone, it worked, and all would be good with the world. Was that the end of things? Nooooo…

My daughter’s phone was stolen yesterday. We thought at first that it might just be lost, but when I signed into my account online, we could see that someone was placing calls on her number. So I deactivated the phone. So far so good! Thankfully, my daughter had opted for the insurance, so we’d be able to replace the phone without too much trouble. So I looked around for where to find the spot where you could replace a stolen phone. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I couldn’t even find a spot online that showed which phones had insurance policies or which ones had the extra media packages. Just in case you’re wondering, I’m not a computer newbie. I have a large education website, ClassBrain.com, and I’ve been on computers since I was 15; I’m now 48! I’m an online expert, specializing in researching things other people can’t find. Ironic I know. So, I called customer support.

Okay, I admit it; this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The customer service person regretted to inform me that my daughter’s phone didn’t have insurance. The only insurance policy was n the main phone. I thought my head was going to explode! As cam as I could, because I knew I was angry I tried to take it slow, I explained that two (2) of my phones had been ordered with insurance and two (2) had been left uninsured. This particular phone was insured. No, she explained, it wasn’t. Yes, I explained, it was supposed to be. My migration had not gone smoothly, I explained, and I was the official Murphy’s Law poster child for the AT&T migration program. She kindly went to talk to a supervisor. When she came back, she explained that they would kindly offer me a $100 discount for a similar phone for a cost of only $89.95!

Okay, let me get this straight, because their company screwed up, I was going to have to pay an additional $39.95 to replace the phone? Yes that was about it, the deductible if the insurance had been properly in place would have run $50, but for me… I would receive the special price of ONLY $89.95! As I was losing my temper the representative offered to get me her supervisor to confirm the deal they were offering me. Cingular supervisor, Marsha Santagato (yes Santa’s cat), confirmed their generous “deal” with me and told me that if I didn’t stay on the line to complete the deal, I would have to pay the full $189.95. Such a deal! They even waived my shipping costs. This time I took names just for validity’s sake. Since I had originally decided that my experiences must have been a fluke, I had originally decided not to write this article. Today changed my mind.

Let me warn all the AT&T orphans out there. Despite all the advertising about the great big happy Cingular AT&T family, all you have to do is take a look at an AT&T store to get a clue of what happening. Everything is now branded as Cingular, and you would never even know that AT&T had existed. This wasn’t a merger; it was a take-over, and a hostile one as far as the AT&T customers are concerned.

Of course one of the interesting questions becomes, “What is going to happen to all of the AT&T customers have their contracts expire?” That’s what the migration department does. They’re in charge of migrating all of the old AT&T customers onto Cingular. Of course, if you’re an AT&T customer, you hopefully don’t have an expensive recently purchased phone, because you won’t be able to keep it. It’s not compatible with Cingular’s network. God help you, if you are like me and have a family plan with multiple phones, you get to replace them all! I have to wonder exactly how much Cingular is making off of all the pathetic AT&T customers like myself. So far, the cost to replace four (4) phones, and then to buy another, even with their “discount” for the upset customer: over $300! Such a deal! At this point I wish I hadn’t let my sister talk me into the AT&T family plan. Verizon has never sounded so good!