Argh ... Cingular
Last Tuesday I lost my phone. That’s painful enough by itself, but resolution was even more painful.
I figured I’d just walk into an AT&T Wireless/Cingular store and buy a new phone. Well, I’m a legacy AT&T Wireless customer; apparently, that gives them the right to extort me (actually, it does). Right now, I pay roughly $100/month for 1000 minutes, unlimited nights (starting at 7PM) and weekends, unlimited mobile-to-mobile and unlimited data. If I wanted to buy a new phone in a Cingular store – AT&T and Cingular phones are SIM-locked *differently*, and there is no stock of AT&T phones on the east coast – I’d have to switch to a Cingular contract. This was going to cost roughly $150/month, but no unlimited nights and weekends, no unlimited mobile-to-mobile and nights starting at 9PM.
My only other option was to call customer service and wait 48 hours for a new SIM card and phone. That wasn’t going to work, given my travel and work schedule.
Ultimately, I managed to convince the guy at the store to dig up an old AT&T SIM card for me (which he initially denied having) so that I could put it in an old Smartphone. The silver lining is the ease with which I can recover from loosing a phone – just point the Smartphone at the Exchange server and sync. All done.
Now the question is how to get a new phone, and which one to get… I guess I’ll be buying unlocked phones online from now on.
