The Secrets of Cingular Wireless

by The iNSiDER

What is really going on with Cingular Wireless and the former AT&T Wireless?

I currently work at Cingular and thought I would share some secrets from the most evil cell phone company on the planet.

First of all we just rolled out new plans that cap your rollover banking so you can only store up to your plan's maximum amount of minutes instead of unlimited.  That doesn't really matter though because Cingular hopes you will use most of your minutes with nights and weekends, and mobile to mobile.  Hopefully your minutes will expire at the end of a year.

We have thousands of bad versions of the quad-band Motorola V551 floating around.  In fact, our former AT&T Wireless V551s work fine on the network, but instead of being honest Cingular keeps giving out these V551s with shitty reception under a no refunds policy.  We are not allowed to tell customers because this would cost the company heavily, one upper-management person said.

We love giving out a month here and there of unlimited time.  We thrive off those promos.  This is an industry trick that gets the (sucker) customer to get used to using a lot of minutes for when the promo runs out.

A good way to get free shit out of Cingular is by gaming.  We have the power to give you credits and send you free stuff and also top up your time.  You just have to social engineer it into your pocket.  This art is called gaming.  If you call our reps enough times you can get it.  Just make sure you make different inquiries so the 50 percent of reps who check the "memos" on the account don't see a pattern.

We get in trouble for using technical lingo.  For example, the word "TDMA" is not allowed.  We have to say "digital technology" even though GSM is digital also.

Our former AT&T Wireless service is better then our current service and it always will be.

We have a little meter on everyone's account called a "Churn Indicator."  This will tell us when you call if you want to quit Cingular.

We use two systems to take our calls: Care and Telegance, two shitty programs made in Visual Basic and they crash all the time.  We rely on a very shitty system for information when you call that is named CSP.  All Cingular stores have access to this too.  We hate taking calls from Cingular stores.  Those people think they are so great, but really all the bosses and upper-level management in our call centers and corporation think the people who sell phones in the store are little bitches on a power trip, and we laugh behind their backs and tell them to fuck off all the time.

We can make data changes, reset your password, and check to see if everything is provisioned correctly in a Java program called Snooper.  If our systems ever crash while you are on the phone with us we can't tell you because Cingular says that will make the customer lose faith in our company.  We crash all the time.

Also, Cingular is releasing push to talk technology because they are scared of being knocked out of the market by everyone else while Verizon actually has a better Push-to-Talk (PTT) system even by our own flowcharts.

If you ever threaten to leave us if we don't give you something, most of the time we can give it to you, including credits.  By order we have to save you from paying your Early Termination Fee (ETF) to go to another company, so when you want to threaten us, ask what the fee for your "ETF" is.

A common trick to get free time and credits at Cingular or the former AT&T Wireless (usually the same reps) is to say you have a lot of dropped calls.  You can just say everywhere you go the calls are dropping off.  Most of the time you can get 100 free anytime minutes or more, depending on how nicely you word it.  If a rep ever tells you that they are getting permission to add a credit from their manager, they are simply putting you on hold for a few minutes to pretend to do that to negotiate you down on your bill more.  This is a trick that is taught to all reps in Cingular training.

You can always get a discount on your account by calling up and saying you have a "FAN" number but you lost it.  A FAN number is a Foundation Account Number.  It belongs to a business.  General Electric has the biggest FAN account with companies like Universal Studios under it, but the U.S. Postal Service gets a nice 25 percent off their bill at a time.  Just find some number that is disconnected and tell them it's your HR department and that you work for a big company and they will attach their discounts to your account.  Remember you will also be entitled to two free phone upgrades a year which can get you really cheap devices and more.

Also, if you want Roadside Assistance, always remember you get it two months free every time it is added to your account.  So get it for two months at a time, cancel it, then ask for it again the same day with a different rep.  It will work like a charm so you always get it for free.

The cell phone company is a (((greedy slimy giant corporation))) that wants to fuck you over.  Why not get your own piece of the pie and fuck them too?  A few things to say to the reps while you're talking to them to mess with their heads: "Are you a blue rep or an orange rep?"  "Have you called the res or tech department today to see if all my features are provisioned correctly on this account?"  "How often do you call res desk for help?"  "What's your average hold time?  Do you sit in ACW a lot?"  "I hope your save team can stop me from paying my ETF."

Since writing this article I quit a couple of days ago.  So f*ck Cingular Wireless and the former AT&T Wireless.    am too cool to go back.