7 Confessions of a Cingular Sales Rep
The need for cell phone sales reps to cleanse themselves in the healing waters of the Consumerist is nearing an all-time high. Reps from all over the cell phone universe are flooding the tip line, a tidal wave of lost souls begging for redemption... Ok, not really, but a guy who works at Cingular just wrote us with some tips for the readers. Why should Verizon have all the damn fun?
• Avoid contract extensions by changing your rate plan at a store. "If you want to change your rate plan, do it in a retail store instead of on-line or over the phone. Officially after 1/2 of your contract is over a rate plan change results in a contract extension, but I've never once seen that rule enforced in the store."
• Features are your friends. "You can just about get about get a rep to do anything you want if you offer to get a text package or a data package, and they can be cancelled on-line or over the phone the second you leave the store. The same goes for accessories. Offer to get accessories if it will get you a deal, they can be returned no questions asked within 30 days. (Let me put it this way, if a customer came in looking to get a treo w/the data package and accessories I would have sold a Treo 750 for $100 after rebate)"
• Upgrade more often with a higher priced rate plan. "[Cingular's] upgrade policies are similar to Verizon's, if someone's rate plan has been 75 dollars or higher (including features, but excluding taxes) for the last three months, they can upgrade 1/2 way through their contract."
• Get the rebate in the store, and at home. "Try to get the rep to give you the rebate in the store, they'll be likely to do this if you agree to get accessories. You can get go on-
line and print out the rebate form from www.cingular.com and send it in anyway."
• Make the store compete with the website. "Remember that the retail stores can match prices for the cingular website, so check those prices before you go into a store."
• Get credit for your mistakes. "If you go way over on your text messaging one month, go into a store and ask if they can credit you the difference if you sign up for a bigger text package. They should be able to do this, and you can always drop your text back down after you've gotten your credit."
• Use the internet for $20. "Also, regardless of what kind of phone you have a $20 mediaMAX data package will give you unlimted access to the web that will not use your minutes, whether you're using a phone, a PDA, or even a laptop card."
Thank you, Cingular Guy! You make Cingular look slightly less evil. Not an easy task. If you work at Sprint or T-Mobile and would like to offer some tips for our readers, write to us at tips [at] consumerist [dot] com.—MEGHANN MARCO
(Photo: Maulleigh)
dohtem says:
Now we need a T-Mobile snitc... err, insider.
Great tips. The whole signing up for an additional feature to get sweeter deals and then cancelling seems to be universal.
virgilstar says:
One very important note about cancelling the data plan on a Treo or other smartphone... these devices are often configured to access the web automatically for e-mail and synchronization, so without a data plan you can end up being stuck with massive per/MB fees for data services that you didn't initiate consciously . If you're sure you don't want data on a Treo, you need to be very careful about editing the settings to disable data access. Several people over on TreoCentral forums have been badly stung by this.
Incidentally, you couldn't PAY me $20 for Cingular's data service. It is ridiculously slow compared to VZW/Sprint EV-DO.
LatherRinseRepeat says:
In the past I've always gone into the store to make changes to my plans. It's much faster and more convenient than calling the 800 number and listening to hold muzak for 20 minutes. Make sure you go to a corporate owned store, and not an agent/reseller store.
I haven't tried the tip about asking for the rebate in-store. It might be worth trying. From what I've seen, all phones that have a rebate only apply to new customers/activations, with qualifying calling plans.
Accessories.. Why bother? I've bought OEM Motorola car chargers for $10 on Amazon. Free shipping on orders over $25 and no sales tax. Cingular charges $30 plus tax for these things. And when you try to work accessories into the deal, they want to give your the cheap generic brands instead.
LatherRinseRepeat says:
@virgilstar:
Cingular offers 3G service now on select phones, and it's comparable to EVDO. But yeah, EDGE and GPRS is just dog slow.
dvddesign says:
It's laughable to want to purchase cell phone accessories from them period.
I found a hard case for my cell phone for $5 on Amazon, where Cingular only had a crap leather cover for $20.
DC Charger at the Cingular store was $20, Amazon sold me one for $1.01 including shipping.
wirelesslanai says:
The best tip I ever got from a Cingular rep (in whispered tones) was to go to eBay, buy an unlocked phone that will work with their network (he wrote down the specs for me) replace the SIM card from my old dead phone into my new, and NEVER sign another Cingular-slave contract again!!!
orielbean says:
One more tip about the Treos. The way to keep your smartphone from calling and using data time/space - create a new network dialup profile with a fake number, and make it your default instead of the National Access or whatever the phone company uses. My treo 650 had the bad habit of doing an Activesync and costing me money as I don't have the data plan. It is very useful if you have data, but expensive if you do not.
formergr says:
So now that I've learned about the existence of EVDO from the comments to this post, does anyone know whether T-Mobile offers it, what the quality is, and average pricing? I have AT&T/SBC/Yahoo DSL and they've never been able to fix it so that it isn't 1) super flaky, and 2) super sloooow (I barely break 100 kbps. Would love to dump their ass and switch to mobile-only for my laptop.
mike1731 says:
Trivia question -- in my area (Wichita KS) the Cingular stores I have gone to are actually operated by a third party sales organization. If I go into them asking for account type questions, they get baffled and then give me the 800 number to dial in on. Is there somewhere to find out where (if) there are company owned stores in the area?
pkx says:
You let the MediaMAX secret out of the box! :). One thing to note is that the MediaMAX plan gets you a private/NATd IP address while the PDA/laptop tethering plans get you a public/routable IP.
danmcg says:
The idea is that you would buy the accessories in the store to get a deal on the phone. Then return the accessories. Great. You can get them for cheaper online. That is the point. They can give me whatever crap they have in the store if they agree to knock $50 off the phone. I'll pay $200 for the accessories as long as I can take them back a day or 2 later and save the $50 on the phone...
mxyzptlk says:
T-Mobile only offer GPRS nation-wide and EDGE in a few select locations. EVDO is unique to Verizon because they are a CDMA carrier, unlike Cingular/T-Mobile who are GSM carriers.
jonnypage says:
A bell Canada confessional is in order! I need to know the juicy details about how to hack them!
uofmpike says:
If I bring in an unlocked Blackberry can I get Cingular service without signing a contract?
SteveXo says:
Are you sure the mediaMAX option works for a laptop connection? I have the mediaMAX feature for my smartphone, but I can't use it to get web access on my laptop. I tried to set it up that way, but Cingular wouldn't give me the information I needed to set up the connection unless I paid $75 a month for the tethering package. If this is incorrect, can anyone point me in the right direction to get the details I need to set up a connection?
sam-i-am says:
There are a few corrections, or rather clarifications that you should keep in mind:
You can often do an exception upgrade after 6 months. Also, if they won't give you an exception upgrade, ask if you can get a VIP upgrade. Worked for me. All cellphone subsidies are designed to be paid of within 6 months, so it really doesn't hurt them to let you upgrade (except they have to subsidize a new phone).
The 6 month exception upgrade thing might have changed recently.
Also, VERY IMPORTANT: The mediamax 200 will give you unlimited internet for $20, but you have to make sure you're using wap.cingular for access, not isp.cingular. If you use isp.cingular on a $20 plan you will be charged per k/b (although they will probably reverse the charges).
Every phone I've seen come pre-configured for wap.cingular, and even if they upsell you on a more expensive plan, they never switch it to isp.cingular, so you're really paying more for nothing unless you happen to research thew difference online and reconfigure your phone.
blindInTexas says:
OMG!!! wtf... the last time I talked to an instore rep about our phones, this was back about the time that Singuhellar bought out At&t, I was told by an INSTORE REP that they would not honour the web price on 2 phones, well happy horseshite and cover me in butter, and that the store locations were atounomous from the webstores. We HAD to upgrade our phones because they were not on the new fancy GMS ,GMRS abcdefg or whatever network.
I'm so pissed right now that I could go down to the store and cause such a fuss that I'll be dragged out by my ankles..
btw... IIRC Cingular offers a military discount according to the adds on Military.com. hmmmm might have to look into that too.
P.S. RAAAAWRR!!!!
P.P.S. As an after thought I am going to go over my bill. to see what other mad charges Cingular has added to my acount.
sam-i-am says:
@SteveXo: Of course they aren't going to tell you how to do it - but a little online research goes a long way.
Not every phone supports tethering on every platform, but I've been tethering happily for months on my $20 mediamax200 plan.
You can often do it over bluetooth or USB to windows XP, and bluetooth support is spotty with OS X. Samsung phones seem to work the best, in addition to windows mobile 5 pocket pc phones.
idano says:
Here is another morsel that I just experienced with Cingular -
My wife and I were having trouble with our LG C2000 so we had them exchanged twice within a week noting that the phones were worse then the original phone. The ended up sending us 2 brand new Samsung C417's with car charges for free overnight.
Now I have 2 brand new phones for the rest of my contract (which they did not renew - I only have 14 months left of my 2 year).
virgilstar says:
For tethering, there are several 3rd party software solutions (e.g PDAnet for windows-mobile devices). However, Verizon strictly forbids tethering on their regular data plan. You just have to be a bit careful, so you don't go over their "unlimited really means 5GB/month" limit. If you intend to rely on tethering a laptop as your primary internet connection, and use it for streaming video etc., you might get in trouble with them.
dohtem says:
I don't use Cingular and I haven't verified this but I heard (perhaps on HoFo, I can't recall where) that if you set your phone to let you manually chose which network you want to use, it'll give you a list of available networks. Set it to use T-Mobile (or any other GSM provider) and it will roam on T-Mo's network.
Now this is good for getting out of your contract. If you have free roaming, you don't get charged but Cingular still has to foot the roaming bill. So just go crazy with the roaming and in a few months, they'll call you and suggest you find a different provider that better suits you.
People claim they have gotten out of contracts this way without paying a penalty.
Ben: Can you get your insider to confirm or deny?
Thanks.
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