Cell phones forum: ATT + Cingular Merger Problem 4 Replacing Phone

Whereas I don't have an answer to your questions, I would like to caution you that a similar event happened to me AND that at the end of the contracted time they extended my bill by 7 months because I had been without service but they reactivated. BE CAREFUL THESE PEOPLE ARE THIEVES!!!!

any rulings yet?

I called Cingular today and very nicely and sweetly asked when my contract ended. Woohoo! Somehow they goofed. I have three phones and one ends on Oct 23rd, another on the 24th, and the last one on the 25th. AND I WILL BE FREE!!!

How are you doing?? Long time, no arguement. No bad feelings I hope.

We were just talking about how Cingular is going back to AT&T. HOWEVER, they (the bad guys) are just changing their name, and they can do that, because they bought AT&T. I had stated that perhaps they did it because of all the people that they messed with and they're hopeful to get a few of them back by fooling them. At least that's my theory about the whole thing. It cost them to do it too. Money they could've given their stock holders. And business is business and the little guy is the little guy. Hard to get your voice heard in this new era of poor customer service. Take it or leave it.

The AT&T name is a great name and always will be.

Alright everyone. Here is how the whole merger thing has actually played out. Whose running things is actually a bit confusing. Originally AT&T was the largest company and the first cell phone provider. They were broken up into baby bells back whenever because of antitrust laws. Two of the companies that came out of this split were Bellsouth in the east and SBC in the west. AT&T still had its corporate name as well. Bellsouth opened its own wireless division called bellsouth cellular and then bellsouth mobility. It was weak so they formed a joint venture with western U.S landline leader SBC and Cingular was born. It was really great until, dieing and bankrupt AT&T negotiated with the two parent companies of Cingular to sell them the AT&T wireless division on the condition that 60% of the AT&T management keep their jobs. This worked out because most former Bellsouth and SBC employees were former AT&T employees. Cingluar was the only branch that was all new. So what happened was Cingular got stuck with 60% of a management staff that was driving AT&T under. Not a smart move, but Cingular automatically became the largerst wireless carrier because of it. So anyone who was pissed when Cingular took over AT&T and thought Cingluar was screwing over AT&T customers... suprise, it was AT&T management screwing over their own customers. Cingular is more AT&T than AT&T is Cingular. Then, SBC went and bought out AT&T's landline division, basically buying the entire company and decided to keep the AT&T name because it was better known. Then they merged with Bellsouth to form the new AT&T. Since cingular was a joint venture between the two and the two merged they are now wholly owned by the new AT&T. Essentially, Cingular stopped existing when they acquired AT&T mobile and is now completely gone. Cingular operates under all AT&T policies and has for years. Which is frustrating for me because everyone talks about how much better AT&T was. Its the same people folks. It came full cirlce. Had cingular been left alone they would be the best company in wireless not just hte largest. I hope this clears up some confusion! In my opinion AT&T is the worst thing to happen to the U.S.

Again for clarification. It really wasn't cingular making the changes. Top cingular employess did not agree with the changes made after the merger. Most cingular employees were replaced with former AT&T employess up to 60% of the upper level management. That means everyone in corporate. Though these changes were made under the cingular name, those of us who worked at cingular before and after the merger will tell you that they preferred the old cingular (orange) to the new cingular (blue). The blue/orange struggle within the company is between the at&t management and original cingular management. I have always been an orange employee true to the original cingular ways, but all of the top managers in my region are at&t leftovers. Its hard to grasp what is actually going on over there, but the name means nothing now. The joke for employees has been for years that we work for at&t. Now the name reflects it.

Hey Bird,
No bad feelings, It was never about that. Just trying to keep the fight from being to one-sided. When you're out gunned by a giant like Cingular, you don't take prisoners.

I'd still like to see the script one day if you ever find yourself in a position to let the cat out of the bag. Just out of curiosity, ya know? Lets face it, the party's over.

Are you staying on after the merge? Profits are up, churn is down, and when they change the name back to AT&T, all this will be forgotten. you could do worse.

Lampie

There are always sour grapes when it comes to big companies merging. It's done all the time. MBNA bought out by Bank of America, Lee Memorial Hospital buys Southwest Regional. And the beat goes on. I hear loud and clear the blue/orange stuff. Heck, at my job alone I've had 3 different supervisors in the last 14 months and they are currently looking for a 4th. Roll with it. What else can you do as an employee?

BUT WHEN IT COMES TO selling your product and competing against many other companies that have what you have, there's not much else to offer but customer service. The customer doesn't care who bought who and who merged with who, they want what they were told they were going to get and they don't want to fight, continually, for what was promised. Cingular, AT&T, might go the wayside like Pan Am if they're not careful. And the customers? Well, they'll just go on over to the next company, Alltel, Verizon, Nextel/Sprint. Only the strong survive.

Don't believe me? Take a good look at the airlines.

Slow down there kausa. This isn't the astrology board.

If you want anybody here to believe what you are saying, you need to back it up with facts. The revelation that you are (were?) a Cingular employee who has "always been an orange employee true to the original cingular ways", makes you less credible in this thread, not more. The fact that you have never posted on CNET except for the three posts above does not give your words more weight. It gives them less. What position do you (did you) hold in the company? I'm not asking for your name and address, but are we talking sales, accounting, data management, board of directors? You seem to be privy to information the average employee doesn't have.

I have not read on these boards, or on the Cingular employee boards for that matter, any employee discussing problems with "Blue" management vs. "Orange" management. A Google search gave me no clue as to where your "60% of AT&T Managers" theory came from. Where should I look for specific terms of the merger agreement?
You stated that "The joke for employees has been for years that we work for at&t. Now the name reflects it.." Maybe I'm not entering the right search terms for the employee boards? I'm not finding it. There were quite a few mentions of "Blue Code", but they all refer to former AT&T customers, not Cingular management.
There have been many Cingular employees posting here at CNET, and on this thread, yet you are the first to mention what could be considered by many, an important point. I'm not saying it isn't true, I'm just asking you to back it up.

As for your numbers...
You said that "cingular made $356 million dollars in profit last year with 59 million customers." Now I will admit that the term "last year" is a bit grey when you are writing on New Years eve. A check of the Cingular Quarterly Financial Statements (on their website) shows that Cingular's financial fourth quarter and year end, is on December 31st. The financial report for 2005 didn't get released to the public until January 24, 2006. (I guess it takes a while to count all those beans, eh?) Does your job give you access to the numbers early? We can be good friends if it does, but please, don't post them, just e-mail them to my uh... Hotmail account.

You probably meant 2005, right? My tough luck.

Q-4 of 2005 ended with 54.1 million cellular/PCS subscribers, (not 59), an increase of 5 million over 2004. Q-4 broke a record by adding 1.8 million in just those three months, with a record low postpaid churn of 1.9%.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $48.86, down 2.2 percent from the same quarter of 2004. This is due to the saturated market, better calling plans, low revenue customers entering the market, and cheaper phones being offered in order to stay competitive. (Sort of like a car dealership, or an airline, I guess.) Cingular thinks they will eventually replace the shrinking Cellular/PCS profits with the increased ARPU from data services (up 63% over 2004, to $4.71 per quarter). In the fourth quarter of 2005, Cingular had nearly 24 million active data customers, and delivered 72 million multi?media messages and 6.1 billion text messages.

Here's the big one. Reported net income in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $204 million. That's not the number you want. The real number is the normalized (OIBDA) net income of $811 million. That's for the quarter, not the year. For the year, it was 333 million reported, and 8.39 Billion normalized (OIBDA). That's BILLION.

That comes to $155.25 per customer, per year, normalized net profit.

So, let's talk about 2006. Third quarter report. I'll just put out the numbers, and let you do the math.

Highest?ever reported net income of $847 million, an increase of over 280 percent from the same quarter in 2004. Normalized net income was $1.2 billion. (remember, that's for three months, not the year.)
58.7 million cellular/PCS subscribers at quarters end
ARPU increased to $49.76 for the quarter. Continued growth in data ARPU contributed to this increase in overall ARPU. In the third quarter of 2006, Cingular had 28 million active data customers, and delivered 138 million multi?media messages and 10 billion text messages.

$6 my gass! (burp)

Now that that's out of the way, here's my real point.
The swill this guy is selling is a repackaged version of what NLiz was trying to make a point out of. Everybody say it with me.

THERE IS NO AT&T. Cingular bought them, their FCC licenses, and of course, Us. Cingular let the leases lapse on towers AT&T didn't own when they were bought. Cingular changed the carrier signal in select markets so the AT&T phones wouldn't work any more. Cingular claimed there were no AT&T branded phones left, when there were. Cingular used extortion, lies, and poor service to get AT&T customers to buy new phones when they didn't need them, and sign new contracts when they didn't want them.

If you must go there, fine. I'll accept your premiss without proof. Cingular agreed to let people with low moral fiber, poor judgement, and bad teeth, run the cellular network we depend on and pay good money for. When the AT&T idiots that they hired broke our network, Cingular refused to fix it unless we paid them extra, even though we didn't hire them. Fair enough?

Even if Cingular hired every single employee AT&T had, That would only be half of Cingular's new workforce, but so what? Did Cingular's board of directors step down? No. How about the CEO? No. The CFO? No Maybe the CTO? No. The only one to step down was the CMO (chief morals officer). He was never replaced. Trying to put the blame on AT&T is clutching at straws. Should we ask every Cingular employee where they worked before they got the job with Cingular? It's even money that we'd be able to blame McDonalds for our problems with that logic, so can we put that piece of fluff behind us once and for all?

Keep sending them Cingular, I don't mind. It just brings the thread back to the top.

Birdman, how come you never mentioned that the Blue Man Group had pulled off a bloodless coup, and was running the company?

Alicia, don't worry about it. Two quotes come to mind.

1) Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
and
2) If you think hiring a professional is expensive, Wait till you hire an amateur.

Red Adair

See Ya!
Lampie The Clown

I orginally purchased a Motorola MPX200 through ATT and since have had a Moto V600 and MPX220 finally ending with a Treo 650. The phones after the orginal MPX were purchased directly or through Letstalk.com and were shipped LOCKED dispite my paying full retail price. I gave one of the phones to my wife who uses a different carrier and we cannot get it to operate on her SIM card. We have called Motorola, Cingular, T Mobile and ATT and everyone states it is the other persons problem.
I am of the opinion that the AG of New York should look into the practices of these wireless providers the with the same depth that he looked into the brokerage firms. I smell something rotten

I have 3 Cingular phones model 3395 Nokia and are very good phones. All you need to do is purchase a SIM card from Cingular and register the SIM and your phone starts to work, it's that easy. I've been with Cingular for 6 years now because of the good customer service and honesty. Remember I apply a lot of common sense when dealing with them and am a very reasonable person. If you are interested in the phones I have you can e-mail me at red91058@aol.com. Call Cingular and confirm the purchase price of a new SIM card

No, only the SIM is not compatible between Cingular and AT&T phones. Don't confuse the issue. The phones do use the same networks.

That's not what I said. You cannot use a Cingular SIM in an AT&T handset and you cannot use an AT&T handset with a Cingular calling plan. No simple explanation but neither scenerio is possible.

I am sorry if I did not respond to your inquiry more politely, wasn't trying to be difficult. My best suggestion would be to try getting your current (or future) handset unlocked and use a new Cingular SIM card.

Only minor problem would be certain features such as text message or internet might not work properly without manually configuring settings in the phone. I do hope that is a more reasonable alternative for you. Good luck.