I’m knee-deep in buying a new cell phone right now, and man, are cell-phone companies ever designed to be hostile to the consumer. For example, I challenge any one of you to provide me with a coherent explanation as to why Cingular has two “unlimited” data plans for mobile devices, one of which costs $20 and the other of which costs $40. (Let alone the BlackBerry-only plan that costs $30.) I’ve spent hours reading forums, and while I can now explain the technical differences between the plans, it’s still unclear why they have them in the first place. Their website won’t tell you why, and every customer service person I talk to tells me something different. It’s designed to be opaque.
Their bizarre pricing schemes and incentive plans lead to the strange cases of sites like Wirefly. You can get great deals on phones there, provided that you’re
- Willing and able to jump through hoops. It’s intentionally a pain in the butt because frankly, they’re hoping you’ll fail and they won’t have to send you your refund.
- Starting a new contract.
That means either switching from another carrier or letting your contract with your current carrier lapse and starting a new one, in which case your service is interrupted and you don’t get to keep your phone number. See, cell phone companies give sites like Wirefly incentives for recruiting new customers, but not for retaining old ones. This means that once your contract with a certain carrier is up, it’s to your advantage to switch carriers. Not for the standard freebie phones they give out, maybe, but for the whizbangy ones that nerds like me want.
The problem is that I don’t want to switch carriers. Cingular is the only carrier that gets good coverage at both my home and office. So by having made the decision to remain loyal to Cingular, I’ve put myself at a disadvantage. This isn’t just Cingular–this is standard across the industry.
What the hell is wrong with an industry that will give deep discounts to acquire customers, but will happily cede them to competitors once they’ve had them for a year or two? What kind of business sense does that make?
Grumble,
Actually Aram, we also do contract extensions for Cingular and Sprint, so you wouldn’t have to switch from your current carrier to get a deal. In most cases the phone price for an extension/upgrade is the same as for new customers, but that’ll depend on the phone. Just find the phone you want and then look for the button on the left that says “Current Cingular Customers…”
Drop me an email if you have any questions. ddennis at wirefly com
cheers, dd
Interesting. I didn’t notice that (and the in-store personnel get very huffy when one tries to leverage Internet deals, let me tell you.)
Actually, I ended up succumbing to instant gratification (plus a free Bluetooth headset) and buying one from a local Cingular store. But thanks for the tip–perhaps I’ll see you in 21 months.
(BTW, I got a Cingular 2125 smartphone–I’m sure I’ll have something to say about it later.)