I am going through a little cell phone transition. Cingular has purchased AT&T which means that our local Suncom also ends up being Cingular. My first try at switching my phone, I was met at the local store by guard who said only two customers could be in the store at a time and told me I had to wait outside. This was a few weeks ago and it was cold so I told him that I wasn't that interested.
Later I went back to the store to confirm that I had to give up my trusty Nokia 3650 which works on my computer and car. They confirmed its fate and also told me that I if I wanted one that worked with my car which requires a special profile, I would have to order a Nokia 6620 off the web. The Apple website also indicated that the 6620 would sync with my Mac. I went home and placed the order for my second expensive cell phone in one year and got it earlier last week. That's when the problems started. I called to activate it and got a nice friendly agent who told me to turn the phone off and then back on, wait a few minutes and I would be all set.
I tried that, and found out that I could call out on the phone but not receive calls so I called back. Another Cingular agent told me not to worry it sometimes takes 12-24 hours. Twenty four hours later I tried calling myself again and still couldn't receive a call. I called another agent who made a big deal out of making sure the other Nokia phone was turned off. Of course I had followed the instructions and it had been off since before I activated the new phone. She then told me sometimes it took 24-48 hours. This time I was doing it from the phone while driving down I81. She said she would call me just to prove it worked. Of course I got no call but I was becoming an expert at Cingular's phone tree.
That was Friday so I decided to wait until Sunday before trying again. I was using Glenda's theory that it just needed to rest some. Of course the phone still didn't work. I decided to turn my old phone on in spite of the instructions to keep it off. It turned out that I had a couple of important voice messages that I had missed. I called again and got a Cingular agent who made the mistake of telling me that it wasn't Cingular's fault, that the fault was Suncom's. Of course I ripped her up and shredded her since I was perfectly happy with my old phone. By this time I had figured out that the new Nokia 6620 would not sync with my Mac until the Tiger upgrade so I was mad at Apple and Cingular.
On Monday, I made one more effort to get the phone going, and I hit pay dirt. I found a Cingular agent that understood the problem. Wherever she is located, Megan Klein, is a gem that Cingular should be proud of and actually put in charge of training all the other reps who were so clueless in solving my problem. Megan immediately called some people and figured out that someone had put the information in wrong and my phone wasn't scheduled to be working until April 28, this coming Thursday. She fixed the problem and called me on my new phone in less than ten minutes.
So my new phone still doesn't Sync with my Mac and I have feared trying it with my MDX but at least it works as a phone though it has no phone numbers in it. I would have been fine if someone had told me upfront that I should just use my old phone for a few days, but obviously all the agents before Megan were poorly trained and didn't really understand the process. Megan has probably been around long enough to figure things out.
Perhaps this is a good time to say that experienced employees that know how things really work are worth their weight in gold. Some companies and one specifically comes to mind, have yet to figure that out. They think employees are just widgets that can be easily replaced. Unfortunately it you do that you end up with customers who have to be rescued by the rare people like Megan who do know how to make things work.
Of course I did try to call my friend Bob, only to find that his phone will no longer take calls from phones whose identity is blocked. I course I didn't block my identity. Don't you love new technology that you didn't even want?
