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AT&T Wireless Phone "Upgrades" Aren't
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T Wireless is requiring customers in parts of California and New York and elsewhere to "upgrade" their phones and offering free replacements. The catch? In most cases the upgrades have worse features than the phones they're replacing."
Yeah, there is no Bluetooth on the new phones which is proving to be quite a hassle. It is amazing how ones life becomes adapted to a technology like Bluetooth that truly works, and then to have AT&T Wireless simply say, "sorry, you have to upgrade" simply sucks.
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In my area AT&T wants me to update my (TDMA) phone to a GSM phone...and in the proccess I loose about 60% of my home coverage area. Sound good to you? I don't think so. I switched from SprintPCS to AT&T BECAUSE of AT&T's coverage. I fear the day my phone dies, maybe by then the GSM coverage will be better in my area.
-Daniel
KD5UZZ
www.w5yj.org
I've got the Nokia 6340i and it's tri-band and has an IR modem for my laptop. Never dops a call and I can surf the web with my laptop while I'm driving. It's not color, it's a good size to use as a phone, and I don't have it internet enabled. Going forward, I see no replacement - I'd really like to keep the IR coupling and maybe add a camera. This is it for me. Not because AT&T goofed, just because the features that I want will no longer be produced in a single unit without paying out the ass.
I'm in Ann Arbor Michigan and had AT&T service with my T68i. Last year I had problems with dropped calls and my service meter would go from 5 bars to 0 when I would try to make a call. I got my handset replaced twice and it seemed to more or less alleviate the problem. This winter things got worse and worse.
:)
Finally I got fed up and switched to T-Mobile. I got a nice phone for $0, and get unlimited wireless web usage for $10/mo (which got me 4 megs on AT&T). Getting my number transfered from AT&T to the new account took an 11 minute phone call and 6 hours to process.
Most importantly my calls aren't having the same problems, and I can actually use my phone again.
The irony is that between the time I called to switch my number and the time that the number switched I got an SMS saying that they were sending me a new (bluetoothless, underfeatured) phone for free. Now I'll have two to put up on eBay
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Too often, upgrades really mean downgrades. I was recently forced to "upgrade" my Nokia cell phone to a "newer better" model.
The newer model as the number keys laid out in converging diagonal lines, instead of straight up and down like the old one, so I have to think about and hunt for each number key. I guess the standard phone-button layout was just not good enough for Nokia.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
AT&T is attempting to do good with this. I believe the "upgrade" phones run at 850mhz, providing better service to the areas the "upgrades" are offered. They're trying to offer better service to their customers without losing a lot of money on giving away expensive phones.
Weren't they bought by SBC not too long ago? Is this "upgrade" because they're becoming Cingular, which is GSM?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Shame the feature they remove is the Bluetooth and the serial connection, rather than the phone, sucky non-regular keypad or the colour screen.
I'm sticking with my 6310i until it dies, then I'll buy another one off eBay.
Beep beep.
According to the article, "The now obsolete phones will still work on the AT&T network, howeverthey will continue to have poor reception. Use them at your own risk."
So you can still keep your old phone, and it'll still work as it has in the past -- somewhat poorly, but not differently. Or, AT&T is offering free replacement phones that have improved reception but may not have all the features of your old phone. I don't see the problem here. If you want to stick with what you have, nothing is stopping you. AT&T is giving you a choice, which is more than most companies would do.
Just my two cents.
Up until November of last year me and my SO were att wireless subscribers. It was rather obvious that at&t wireless service couldn't really get any worse than it already was. Phone call quality always sucked unless the signal strength is at least at the halfway mark. That is if you were lucky to be in an area with any reception whatsoever. Their local calling areas were piss poor, and we got hit with roaming charges every month.
As soon as number portability kicked in, we bailed out for t-mobile GSM. The difference was like night and day. at&t wireless showed no signal in my home. The new phones (free t610 camera phones, by the way, with bluetooth, infrared, etc...) now show a good signal. No roaming charges, the call quality is now much better, and there are hardly any dropouts even if the phone shows only a single blip on the signal strength meter.
When I called to cancel at&t they lamely offered an upgrade to gsm. No thanks. Even if gsm is supposedly a better technology, I'm sure that at&t would find a way to screw it up, somehow.
Cingular wants to swallow up at&t? I hope they choke.
These are the models once carried by AT&T that are affected:
[...]
Nokia N-Gage
[...]
Aside from the inevitable N-Gage jokes, what gives? Considering the N-Gage just came out the past few months, you'd think it wouldn't have shipped with the old configuration.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Almost switched to AT&T a little bit ago, but then found out that all of their modem capable cell phones can only use that capability on their digital network. I explained I was wanting to use my cell phone as a regular analog modem, and was told it didn't matter. It was charged by the MB regardless, and to get more than 4 MB a month was extroidnarily expensive. Can you imagine you land line provider telling you that you would have to pay extra for using your line for a modem instead of voice? This wasn't a case of minutes or the like either.
I think even the old 270 was. Makes you wonder how much fact checking was done before posting the article.
Only a small percentage of users use bluetooth or international roaming, for those that don't a T226 is going to be fine. GSM850 penetrates buildings much better than GSM1900, so I for one would like to have it.
AT&T have just mishandled things by not conducting a survey first to figure out who really needed bluetooth/non US frequencies. Before all this publicity they could have made the survey ambiguous enough that everyone didn't claim to be using every T68 feature.
I just got the mail saying they're sending me a T226 yesterday, and their lack of thought/research is clear because: I pay extra for GPRS data service (which I use via bluetooth, I can't see many people using 10MB within the phone each month), and I also have international roaming enabled on the account, and have used it within the past couple of months.
I suspect they're going to quietly backpedal and give T610s or whatever to the higher paying subscribers who ask for them.
I'm a Sprint PCS customer with an ancient StarTac that is due for a replacement. I've got a great calling plan, and I'd like to keep it. I don't want a camera phone. I don't even know what Vision is or does, but I'm pretty sure I don't need it or want it. I don't want special ringers, nor do I want to email videos of relatives making cookies or taking baths to people across the country on business trips. I just want a phone that makes phone calls and doesn't drop them. I went to the Sprint store today. Everything they sell has cameras, games, ringers galore ... Seems like all of their plans include "Vision". When did cel phones turn into these freaking entertainment centers. I just want to make phone calls. What phone is for me?
I received a letter in the mail from AT&T Wireless saying that to take advantage of the updated coverage area and so on I need to upgrade my Nokia 3650 phone (which is a pretty powerful and recent phone) to one of the models offered, every single one of which was a lot worse than my 3650. I contacted AT&T Wireless over to the phone to find out why they're trying to get me to switch to a crappier phone and I was told that it was just a mass mailing and that my phone is fully capable of handling the updated network, thus, I am not required to "upgrade".
The article (I read it!) does say that to take advantage of the updated network I need to upgrade the phone, but the point is that it's not a forced upgrade and I can freely continue using my current phone. I'm going to try and get through to customer retention and get a more decent upgrade phone, though.
I just wanted to quickly say, that though I have not used the T226, but I don't think it's worth jumping all over Ericcson here. Sure, the T226 may be a P.O.S., but I don't think they would tell you it is the logical upgrade path for the T68. That'd be the T610/T616.
It appears to be AT&T who decided the T226 was an "upgrade" for T68 users, not Ericcson.
gameDB
I foolishly signed a 2-year contract with AT&T in 7/02 since it included a free Motorola v60 phone which I read can act as a modem. Unfortunately I did not do enough research and did not discover until I signed up that AT&T disabled data access on their model. My own fault I guess.
But now I have a 12 inch Powerbook that I'd really like to take on the road, and a bluetooth phone with data capabilities is a must. Until my contract expires in July I am stuck. I'm looking at T-Mobile with their unlimited data plan.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
OK, here's the deal. AT&T Wireless sends these users a card saying that they'll be getting an upgraded phone within the next couple weeks. This is ONLY in areas where a GSM850 network now exists. The T68i does NOT support GSM850. So, you've got two options - Keep using your T68i keep on whining and moaning that the service sucks, or use the T226 and use the GSM850 network and the GSM1900 network. Either way, you're not really REQUIRED to send the T68i back, it's just begged that you do so in the papers. They give you a postage-paid box to send it back in.
Yeah, the phone blows. You're the moron that bought a phone that didn't support GSM850. I've had a phone from the BEGINNING that did, and still do. A SonyEricsson T616. It's easy enough to get one cheap, too. It's called a contract extension. And don't whine about the contract either, you COULD go prepaid. ATTWS has some of the best prices in the business. Mod me troll is you like, but hey, caveat emptor. It's your own fault.
For anyone who thinks that camera phones are useless, my anectdote is being able to email pictures of my car's accident to my insurance agent while still at the scene of the accident. She then changed her mind and decided that I really couldn't drive a car with that front end and they sent a tow truck.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Sprint Spectrum, based in the DC/MD/VA area, was the first PCS license in the country, operating GSM1900 around 1995-2000. This was not, initially, the same company which is now Sprint PCS. As they were later deploying the new Sprint PCS network, using CDMA, Sprint Spectum continued to promise multi-city access, without roaming, on the Sprint network; since they were using two completely different systems, it was a very empty promise.
Eventually, other GSM providers popped up across the country, including Omnipoint (later Voicestream, now T-Mobile), PacBell (in some markets), and a few others. But Sprint Spectrum, later bought out or merged (?) with Sprint PCS, started to let their GSM network stagnate, focusing on building the CDMA network instead.
A class-action suit was brought against Sprint, charging that they promised their customers inter-city usage on the nationwide Sprint network, but never delivered. The result of the lawsuit was that Sprint was to provide their GSM customers with a PCS (CDMA) phone and a small rebate towards PCS service.
Well, it couldn't have played out better for Sprint -- they were able to move their customers to CDMA, had a legitimate reason to shut down the GSM network, and here's the best part: they provided old model, REFURBISHED phones to the customers who were being moved from GSM to CDMA. Conveniently, the slightly nicer models of the replacement phones were frequently out of stock, and if you wanted to get a brand-new model, you would be forced to sign up as a new customer.
Years later, I tried to get an old GSM phone from the Sprint Spectrum network SIM-unlocked. Trying to convince the Sprint PCS people that I had a Sprint-branded GSM phone was like trying to tell them the ocean was purple.
A buddy of mine at work here in Texas has had AT&T contact him trying to get him to "upgrade" his phone. They even tried to have one delivered to his house without his permission, but he wasn't home to sign for it.
After I read the article, it dawned on me that he might be one of those unlucky victims to recieve an "upgrade" to his T68i.
Sounds like they're rolling out this plan in more than just the areas mentioned in the article.
Interesting bit of postal law is that: If a company ships you something that you did not request, they cannot bill you for it. It is considered a gift at that point. This law was put into place to prevent companies from scamming folks by sending you a $1 product and claiming you owe them $20.
Now, UPS is NOT the US Postal Service so I'm wondering if this law applies to them. If so, then nobody HAS to send in the old phone. They can keep it and do whatever they want. If the law does not apply then I don't know... perhaps acceptance of the package would constitute acceptance of the terms listed in the letter you got.
Anyone else wanna play IANAL for me here?
Your phone may have the same problem mine did. I have the S46 as well, and found that it will grab the strongest signal available, sometimes grabbing TDMA/D-AMPS in areas where it should have been getting GSM coverage from AT&T towers. This resulted in some weird 'not able to call' errors, and the tech support folks suggested switching the phone to GSM only when in highly-covered areas (this problem was occurring in Hartford, CT). That resolved the issues. Now I generally leave it on GSM-only all the time unless I'm headed out into the boonies.
:)
This is also good to do because calls will only transfer in one direction. So, if you initiate a call while using GSM and move into an area where you lose GSM coverage, but maintain TDMA/D-AMPS coverage, your call will move seamlessly. Once you're using TDMA/D-AMPS, however, when the phone tries to jump back over to GSM your call will drop. That really pissed me off a couple times until tech support told me why and how to fix it.
Dan