Communication breakdown

Yesterday my beloved four-year-old cell phone wouldn't get any bars from my house. I kept getting "No Service." It had five happy little bars just the day before. I finally got in my car and drove to where the phone would show a couple of bars.

I called the Cingular emergency number, what with it being the weekend, and got some asshole who told me that they no longer had antennas up supporting my phone. I have an AT&T phone from before the buyout. "You'll have to buy a new device," he told me. What the fuck is a new device? I kept my temper (barely), and told him I hadn't been told of this. "We've been sending you letters," he told me. My ass. I've gotten promos for phones that will play tennis with me and curse at people in Urdu, but I can't recall seeing any letters.

I called Cingular's regular customer service number this morning, from the neighborhood where the cell phone store was where I'd originally bought my phone. The nice young lady repeated that no, there were no longer any antennas for my phone in my area. I told her that I would be switching carriers, as Cingular had a horrible rep according to Consumer Reports, and asked her about my billing cycle, which was beginning today. She assured me that if I called today, they could credit my account.

The cell phone store's windows were papered over--no more one-stop phone shopping with sales guys who told you like it was, not what they wanted you to buy. I bought my AT&T account because the guy had gotten my same style phone for his mother. "Go down to the library and check out the latest Consumer Reports; you'll see they like the phone." I did, and he wasn't joking. So now I was without my honest salesman.

I walked down the street to the library to search the yellow pages for a new one-stop shop. All the work I had planned for today had been shot to hell, so I figured what the hell, I'm making a day of it anyway. I called a place with a generic-sounding name, and the woman told me to come in--she was within walking distance of the library, so I went over to her store and got myself signed up. I did get a free phone (doesn't play tennis or curse at people in Urdu), but I had to pay a $35 activation fee.

After I got home, I plugged my new phone in, set up my voicemail, and called Cingular one last time, to cancel my account and make sure my bill got credited. After a long, long wait, finally, a human. I explain to him what had happened, what the woman I'd spoken to earlier had told me, and that I'd switched carriers. "You were given misinformation; we still support your area. There must be a problem with one of the towers, but we're still supporting those old phones until February, 2008."

Great, then let me just switch back. I tell him I was told this morning that I could have my bill credited for the unused time, as it's the first day of my billing cycle. "That's at our discretion," he tells me. It was then I felt the dam beginning to burst. "It was also at the discretion of your fellow Cingular employees to give me 'misinformation,' as you put it. Had they not given me that misinformation, I'd be a Cingular customer until February, as I absolutely loved my old phone. Whose discretion was that, to tell me that the antennas in my area were turned off?"
Silence. Then, quietly, "I can understand your frustration. I'll fix your bill so that you should only get billed for today. Someone should call you to confirm this when this month's bill is going to come out. I apologize for any inconvenience."

There was a full moon eclipse on Saturday night, Baltimore time. Full moon eclipses mean endings. I knew something in my world would come to a close, but I didn't think it would be the relationship with my beloved cell phone. I loved that damn thing. My new phone is all pretty colors and beeps and boops when I hit the buttons, but I was perfectly happy with my old AT&T phone. I knew this day would come for a while now, but I didn't expect it to come as abruptly as it did.

I can't bring myself to throw the phone away, or even to recycle it. Not yet, at least. For now, it's packed in the box my new phone came in, along with its trusty recharger.

The new moon eclipse on the 18th means the start of something. I'm interested in seeing what that brings into my life.

In the meantime, I'll be writing long, passionate letters to the powers that be of Cingular, letting them know how and why they lost a customer.

Oh, and to add insult to injury--I tried logging into my account on cingular.com today to pay my phone bill from last month, and it wouldn't let me do it. I'm glad I switched carriers.