Archived from groups: alt.cellular.cingular (More info?)
I'm in the middle of a Cingular roaming nightmare. If anyone has any
ideas how to prod Cingular out of their complacency, please let me
know.
Background: I was a reasonably happy customer of Cingular for over two
years -- not totally happy, but happy enough to realize that none of
the others were likely to be much better. I'm based in Tallahassee FL
with a National plan. I had traveled to Seattle and Los Angeles quite
a bit. Last August, Cingular gave me a new Nokia 6340i and $30 in
exchange for a 2-year contract -- presumably mostly because they are
moving to GSM and my old phone didn't support it, though surely partly
to get customers under contract before number portability arrived in
Tallahassee.
It's not a big surprise that the 6340i gave me much better service on
the west coast, where it's all GSM. Excellent service in the middle of
the office building where I'm working in LA, where previously I had no
signal at all -- usually a seven-bar signal. Excellent strong signal
everywhere in the area (just north of LAX). Good service in Seattle
when I went there for a weekend in November, in locations where I'd
previously had poor service. So I was a happy camper.
The first inkling of problems came in January, when the 6340i started
shutting itself off spontaneously. That isn't what I'm writing about
here -- I'm pretty sure that's a Nokia problem -- but that's when I
found out that in Cingular, East is East and West is West and never
the twain shall meet. Not only are the tech people in LA unfamiliar
with the 6340i, they don't touch anything TDMA. And they can't even
get into my account to set up a loaner phone. The original companies
-- Bell South Wireless and whatever the west coast part was -- are
merged in name only, not in operations.
But other than the phone problem, I continued to get good service.
So on to my current problem:
On Thursday, March 18, I was in LA, and I suddenly stopped getting
digital service. The phone would occasionally say Cingular Extend, but
could not place calls even when it showed a signal. Despite several
hours on the phone with tech support (most of it on hold playing the
extremely annoying advertising messages over and over and over and
over ad nauseum), this condition continued until I left LA on the
morning of Saturday, March 20 for a week at home. I had reached tier 2
support and had been given a roaming ticket number.
When I changed planes in Memphis, the phone worked fine. The entire
week in Tallahassee, it worked fine. I called tech support -- twice --
to check on the roaming ticket; they said it had been closed but
refused to attempt to locate any information on the action taken.
(Later experience, described below, would show that no effective
action had been taken.)
On Tuesday, March 23, I swapped the phone out (for the second time)
due to the problem of it turning itself off (up to a dozen times a
day). In retrospect, this was a mistake, because it conflated the two
problems. However, the new phone worked fine in Tallahassee. It also
worked fine in Memphis on the evening of Sunday, March 28, when I
again changed planes on my way to LA.
When I reached LA, the problem returned full force. No "Cingular"
signal, only a sometimes "Cingular Extend". I tried in a number of
locations near the airport and at my hotel a couple of miles north --
an area where the GSM signal is so strong you can float in it. I was
actually able to call my voicemail, but could not place ANY other
calls, not even to Cingular customer service. I contacted after hours
support; the level of competence I encountered is indicated by the
rep's suggestion that I walk around to find a better signal -- in an
area where you have to be in a steel and concrete bunker to avoid the
signal.
The next morning I took the phone to a Cingular store across the
street. They got the same results, the only difference being that
Cingular tech support didn't assume they were dolts. After an hour and
a half, they claimed that my phone had not received the proper
downloads -- "over air activation" -- after I swapped it out. They
sent me out to stand under a Cingular tower, claiming that there I'd
be able to receive the downloads, whereas near a Verizon tower I could
not. That evening, another rep on the phone gave me a different
location for the tower, with identical lack of results.
Tuesday morning (March 30) I called again and asked for one rep to
stay on the problem until it was fixed. The rep agreed to be my
contact. She came to the same conclusion, that my phone needed
downloads, and said that yes, getting the downloads outside my home
area was hopeless. I shipped the phone to her office in Ocean Spring
MS, where she checked it out, verified the downloads, and swore that
everything would be fine now. Due to a couple of shipping foul-ups, I
didn't get it back until yesterday, Wednesday, April 7.
And it still isn't working. Exactly the same symptoms. I'm waiting for
the rep to contact me. I've been without west coast roaming service
for a full three weeks now -- which for me at this time means I've
been without a cell phone for three weeks, since I only have the phone
for travel and am currently traveling to, duh, the west coast.
It appears that Cingular simply has no system for elevating problems
which can't be solved at the regular tech support level. My guess
would be that this is a problem with authorization in the roaming
system.
Non-destructive suggestions welcome. ;-)
Edward Reid
I'm in the middle of a Cingular roaming nightmare. If anyone has any
ideas how to prod Cingular out of their complacency, please let me
know.
Background: I was a reasonably happy customer of Cingular for over two
years -- not totally happy, but happy enough to realize that none of
the others were likely to be much better. I'm based in Tallahassee FL
with a National plan. I had traveled to Seattle and Los Angeles quite
a bit. Last August, Cingular gave me a new Nokia 6340i and $30 in
exchange for a 2-year contract -- presumably mostly because they are
moving to GSM and my old phone didn't support it, though surely partly
to get customers under contract before number portability arrived in
Tallahassee.
It's not a big surprise that the 6340i gave me much better service on
the west coast, where it's all GSM. Excellent service in the middle of
the office building where I'm working in LA, where previously I had no
signal at all -- usually a seven-bar signal. Excellent strong signal
everywhere in the area (just north of LAX). Good service in Seattle
when I went there for a weekend in November, in locations where I'd
previously had poor service. So I was a happy camper.
The first inkling of problems came in January, when the 6340i started
shutting itself off spontaneously. That isn't what I'm writing about
here -- I'm pretty sure that's a Nokia problem -- but that's when I
found out that in Cingular, East is East and West is West and never
the twain shall meet. Not only are the tech people in LA unfamiliar
with the 6340i, they don't touch anything TDMA. And they can't even
get into my account to set up a loaner phone. The original companies
-- Bell South Wireless and whatever the west coast part was -- are
merged in name only, not in operations.
But other than the phone problem, I continued to get good service.
So on to my current problem:
On Thursday, March 18, I was in LA, and I suddenly stopped getting
digital service. The phone would occasionally say Cingular Extend, but
could not place calls even when it showed a signal. Despite several
hours on the phone with tech support (most of it on hold playing the
extremely annoying advertising messages over and over and over and
over ad nauseum), this condition continued until I left LA on the
morning of Saturday, March 20 for a week at home. I had reached tier 2
support and had been given a roaming ticket number.
When I changed planes in Memphis, the phone worked fine. The entire
week in Tallahassee, it worked fine. I called tech support -- twice --
to check on the roaming ticket; they said it had been closed but
refused to attempt to locate any information on the action taken.
(Later experience, described below, would show that no effective
action had been taken.)
On Tuesday, March 23, I swapped the phone out (for the second time)
due to the problem of it turning itself off (up to a dozen times a
day). In retrospect, this was a mistake, because it conflated the two
problems. However, the new phone worked fine in Tallahassee. It also
worked fine in Memphis on the evening of Sunday, March 28, when I
again changed planes on my way to LA.
When I reached LA, the problem returned full force. No "Cingular"
signal, only a sometimes "Cingular Extend". I tried in a number of
locations near the airport and at my hotel a couple of miles north --
an area where the GSM signal is so strong you can float in it. I was
actually able to call my voicemail, but could not place ANY other
calls, not even to Cingular customer service. I contacted after hours
support; the level of competence I encountered is indicated by the
rep's suggestion that I walk around to find a better signal -- in an
area where you have to be in a steel and concrete bunker to avoid the
signal.
The next morning I took the phone to a Cingular store across the
street. They got the same results, the only difference being that
Cingular tech support didn't assume they were dolts. After an hour and
a half, they claimed that my phone had not received the proper
downloads -- "over air activation" -- after I swapped it out. They
sent me out to stand under a Cingular tower, claiming that there I'd
be able to receive the downloads, whereas near a Verizon tower I could
not. That evening, another rep on the phone gave me a different
location for the tower, with identical lack of results.
Tuesday morning (March 30) I called again and asked for one rep to
stay on the problem until it was fixed. The rep agreed to be my
contact. She came to the same conclusion, that my phone needed
downloads, and said that yes, getting the downloads outside my home
area was hopeless. I shipped the phone to her office in Ocean Spring
MS, where she checked it out, verified the downloads, and swore that
everything would be fine now. Due to a couple of shipping foul-ups, I
didn't get it back until yesterday, Wednesday, April 7.
And it still isn't working. Exactly the same symptoms. I'm waiting for
the rep to contact me. I've been without west coast roaming service
for a full three weeks now -- which for me at this time means I've
been without a cell phone for three weeks, since I only have the phone
for travel and am currently traveling to, duh, the west coast.
It appears that Cingular simply has no system for elevating problems
which can't be solved at the regular tech support level. My guess
would be that this is a problem with authorization in the roaming
system.
Non-destructive suggestions welcome. ;-)
Edward Reid
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