Cingular, Suncom and the Sony Ericsson Z500a
Cell Phones, Cingular, Suncom and the Sony Ericsson Z500a
Suncom was bought by Cingular. This means that anyone with a GSM phone with Suncom has to get a new Cingular Phone. Anyone that has a TDMA phone with Suncom, can continue using it with Cingular. Suncom customers can continue to use their old plan, but can not add any of the new cool features unless they switch to a Cingular Plan.
My wife and I both had GSM phones with Suncom. I had been waiting for Suncom to add features to the GSM service, but they never did. So after much discussion and study, we decided that we would leave Suncom behind all together, and go with Cingular Phones and plans. We did not want either of the two Motorola Phones that they advertised you could get for free. I read lots of reviews and information at
www.phonescoop.com
and decided that we wanted the Sony Ericsson z500a. I thought we would have to pay about $69 each for them, with a two year contract.
I called Cingular and kept calling back until I actually got someone at the local store. I asked a few questions, including if the
Arriving at the Staunton Suncom / Cingular store at 9:20 on Friday March 25th, we saw that there was already a line formed. They opened at 9:30. We were the fifth people in line. It was a jovial atmosphere, and everyone was talking about how the Charlottesville Suncom /Cingular store had hired security guards to help manage the crowds. I must be a bigger geek than I think, as I seemed to be the only one there that had read anything about any of the new phones, or plans.
Well, our turn finally came up, and after the people directly in front of us agreed to take only two of the remaining 4 z500a’s, we got our phones. We should have had two set aside for us, but they had just been too busy to deal with it. We knew what plan we wanted, what additional services we wanted, and were out of there with our cool new phones in about an hour. They said that we could dial out immediately, but it may be 24 hours before we could receive calls. It was actually about 4 hours when we started receiving calls.
Several days later my wife set up our online account with Cingular. Our information on that account listing is still not correct, our additional services never got added, and currently we have no minutes used. (Even though we have been using our phones like crazy) I did call them and get our Media Basic and Media Works plans added, but I am sure I will have to call them and get the bill corrected when it arrives. I am also waiting for my final Suncom bill, which the Cingular Folks said I would get.
Let me say here for the record that the people working in the Staunton Cingular store were nice, informative, friendly and efficient. They were working under very adverse conditions and seemed to be holding up very well. If you go and do any of this at the store, please be patient with them. They have been slammed with people waiting in lines for hours, and they are doing the best they can. Understand that they are out of stock of many things, and there is great misunderstanding about the entire Suncom to Cingular switchover.
I will soon post my review of the Sony Ericsson z500a, which I think is a wonderful phone, and a fun camera.