Cingular or T-Mobile

[upsciLLion]

Which would you recommend and why?

 

[Mo0o]

Cingular , i like the rollover plan and the phone selection. They have good national coverage too.

 

[amol]

T-Mobile has great customer service, but in some areas, they don't have great cellular service

Cingular is great everywhere

 

[Tbirdkid]

Sprint!

 

[tami]

what's the matter with sprint?

i've been a loyal sprint user since 2000.

 

[amol]

Vodafone!

Well ... their American counterpart

 

[upsciLLion]

Afternoon bumpage.

 

[Ronin]

Cingular, imo. Had no problems since I moved from blue to orange, and I prefer their phone selection, too (I never did like Sprint's selection, even when I was a customer).

 

[BCYL]

Cingular for roll-over... I was an AT&T customer and got switched to Cingular... have to say service is significantly better after the switch, I get free roaming everywhere and they just added rollover without charging me more...

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Amol
T-Mobile has great customer service, but in some areas, they don't have great cellular service

Cingular is great everywhere

If you do not stray from the Interstates T-Mobile is OK for you.

If you do go far from the Interstates T-Mobile will not work.

Cingular/AT&T does have Towers everywhere.

 

[AtlantaBob]

TMobile wins. Cingular's customer service is bar-none horrible. I was with them for several years, but then they "accidentally" overbilled me for $100.00. Trying to get them to take it off was impossible. I was told to "shut up" by some prissy customer service worker, and their ass of a vice president for customer relations didn't give a crap about the initial overcharge or the way she acted. Would that they all burn (or rather freeze) in the 9th circle of hell. I can not say enough bad things about having to deal with their customer service. Their plans are good, but if you ever have to deal with them, I pity you.

 

[miri]

I like tmobile. One of the great things is that I can goto Europe and use my cellphone.

 

[upsciLLion]

The problem is T-Mobile reception (from what I have heard) sucks around here. Cingular's is great. However, it would totally be my luck to get dicked over about some error that costs me $50 or something. Rawr.

 

[Zenmervolt]

If you're rural, you'll pretty much need a CDMA carrier (Verizon, Alltel, etc) to get consistent reception. Even Cingulair doesn't have the greatest coverage (IIRC Cingulair is in the process of transitioning from a partial CDMA operation into GSM, which is odd to me since GSM is an older technology, but that's neither here nor there). Most other GSM services have a network designed to cover only major traffic routes and major metropolitan areas. This allows them to capture the maximum user base wtih the minimum number of towers and network maintenance. It's a great system from a business point of view, but it leaves rural customers with no real viable option outside of Verizon or Alltel.

My recommendation is a CDMA carrier like Verizon. I personally have Alltel and they've been exceptional, but they don't have a physical presence in WA, I simply had them keep me on my old plan when I moved.

ZV

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: upsciLLion
The problem is T-Mobile reception (from what I have heard) sucks around here. Cingular's is great. However, it would totally be my luck to get dicked over about some error that costs me $50 or something. Rawr.

If you call a T-Mobile store they can show you how good your cell coverage will be, and you can make a decision based on that.

For me, I had terrible experiences with customer service at AT&T AND Cingular (to the tune of something like $800 combined) and I would never go back.

 

[tami]

Originally posted by: upsciLLion
Afternoon bumpage.

you haven't yet answered why sprint isn't an option for you.

 

[skyking]

I live in the Seattle/Tacoma area and drive through E'burg on the way to Yakima and the Valley 15 times a year. T-mobile works OK for me on I-90, it is also great around Spokane and northern Idaho. Ther are places it sucks, but that is the case with any service.
I'd go for the best deal. T-mobile works Ok in your area.

 

[DaWhim]

Originally posted by: Amol
Vodafone!

Well ... their American counterpart

vodafone = GSM

 

[upsciLLion]

Originally posted by: tami

Originally posted by: upsciLLion
Afternoon bumpage.

you haven't yet answered why sprint isn't an option for you.

I'm playing hard to get. Is it working?



Sprint doesn't seem to be very popular here. A friend of mine has them and he's always having problems with his reception inside of buildings. Same with another friend who has Verizon. With Cingular I can be in the bathroom at work which is in the middle of the building and receive phone calls (and oddly enough a disproportionate amount of my phone calls are received mid-stream).

 

[Ikonomi]

Thing is, in some areas, Cingular uses the 850 Mhz frequency band, which tends to reach farther and is generally better at penetrating things like walls, parking garages, and tunnels than the 1900 Mhz PCS band used by T-Mo, VZW, and Sprint. That could explain why you get better reception with Cingular in the bathroom.

IMO, Cingular has better phones than T-Mobile right now. I haven't had a bad experience with Cingular CS yet, but maybe I've been lucky all these years. They are usually very, very helpful. We have had a couple billing problems, though. So... just keep that in mind. But we have never been overcharged.

Cingular has just updated their rate plans at 12 AM tonight, but the price structure isn't really what people had been predicting. Take a look at the site if you're interested.