So I'm having a hard time thinking of staying with Cingular cell phone service. (Or AT&T as they are now called.) I have had them since 2000 personally and really  have had no problems to think of. But my husband who has only been with them personally for a little over a year is already being persecuted by them.

He does a lot of training in places other than SC. Recently he was in OK for about two months or a little more and of course took his phone with him. Apparently the Cingular nationwide plan doesn't include Altus, OK. And here's why:

Because for the time he was in Altus all of the calls he made was from a shared network, not a Cingular specific tower. (Something a general person would never know!) Because more than 50% of his calls made for two consecutive months of billing were not on a Cingular network he is getting kicked off permanently.

Now if he chooses to stay with them, anytime his phone wonders off of a Cingular tower and onto another providers network he will not be able to use his phone. At all! It will simply disconnect. This isn't a temporary thing either, and not just on this account. Even if he cancels this one and gets a new one through them, it will always be monitored in the same manner, indefinately.

They gave him two options: 1.) Take his number to a new provider without any charges for early termination. Or 2.) Cancel all his services with Cingular with no early termination fees. That's it, that's all we can do. I asked to speak to a supervisor and she was very rude and was all like, "It's not our fault he used someone else's network." I asked if they didn't realize that MOST military will do the same thing and was told that of the 1% of the time this happens it is military it happens to. (Imagine that!) Then I asked her if there was anything being done to accomidate those military members so that this would not happen in the future to others and her response? "The number of customers that are military are so insignificant that there is no way we would make a special plan for them." Being overly frustrated at this point I asked to speak to her supervisor for lack of anything nice to say to her anymore and was promptly refused. Absolutely and positively could not get to speak to anyone above her. I called back a couple of hours later and a day later and it must be in the notes when they pull up his account number to not go above the Team manager position, which was her title.

I  am determined to find a way around that and to make sure the entire company knows this is a problem and it should be working on a solution rather than kicking people out of their network. I mean really it's forcing us to go to the competition, which will hurt them hopefully in return. Still though, it's inconvienient. and disrespectful of the US Military in general. Or at least in my opinion.

So here is my delemma, of course we will be cancelling Shawn's phone account. But I still have them and my contract is not up until February. Should I add a family plan to my current one and get him a phone that way? Or should we just use the one phone for now and cancel them all together after my contract is up? I don't know much about the other providers service or rate plans personally. Like I've said before, I have been with Cingular for seven years now.

If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to leave some. And most definately DO NOT USE CINGULAR/AT&T!