Rumor Mill
Forcing Customer's to Migrate to Cingular
Heard a Rumor that sometime in April, {around the 6 month merger anniversary}, all of the legacy att wireless customer's will be forced to migrate to Cingular. Anyone out there have any insight on this ?
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Well, considering Cingular is going to lose rights to the ATT name and company in April, what can you possibly expect to happen? In all honesty, what does it matter? You'll still have your phone, still have your plan, and still have the same exact service. So don't fret, everything will be okay 😈
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I actually work at the call center for legacy att customer's -- so I am concerned that all of our calls will evaporate once these customer's are switched into the cingular billing platform.
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Well, wouldn't that just make you guys a Cingular call center? Therefore you'd still be receiving calls, just from Cingular customers and former ATTWS customers, right? Or is there more to it than that?
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I think there might be more to it than that . . . we are not trained to take Cingular calls or use the cingular customer service systems, Only the att systems. And there is no word yet that we will be trained to do that. 😢
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I see, I see. I see why you'd be concerned. But perhaps once ATTWS is completely gone they'll begin training ATTWS call center/customer service on Cingular's stuff and systems and all that. I mean, why train you on it now? Sure it would put you guys to work faster, but it's really not needed now.
The best thing to do is just wait and see. 😕
The best thing to do is just wait and see. 😕
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....errr.... my friend works at ATTWS call center in Bothell, I recently quit... they are already being trained. They set you up into groups and tell you which team starts training and so forth. He knew his training date 2 months before it took place... so the fact that you haven't heard anything raises suspicion to me. a) call center may close b) your center is backed up or behind c) you may be replaced by orange reps d) they forgot to tell you (yes, that happens occasionally). I don't know.. any ideas?
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Is your call center owned by AT&T Wireless or is it run by a seperate company, like Convergys? I am sure the contracts with these 3rd party companies expire they will convert to other types of calls (for instance the Convergys call center here in Lubbock, TX is training on new products).
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Dont worry, you will be trained. They just told us yesterday that we will now be cingular...now we are training today. Thats the life of a call center employee though.
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I also work in a call centre for AWS (West) Taking business calls. We are considered to be one of the best for AWS atm. Things are looking to good for us these days. Last 3 weeks call volume had gone down big time. Usually average around 40 calls per day depending on handle time. Now we are lucky to hit 20. Usually an hour wait between calls.. thats not fun. All I know is our centre just took a new contract in for General Electric so who knows. All ive heard is Cingular doesnt really like to use 3rd party call centres 😕
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unfortunately your right. cingular likes to use their own call centers and reps(they can control the quality).
If your call volume is dropping, it may be because cingular is rerouting these calls to company owned call centers... that sounds about right, but hopefully for you it's just been a bad month...
If your call volume is dropping, it may be because cingular is rerouting these calls to company owned call centers... that sounds about right, but hopefully for you it's just been a bad month...
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I also work for a 3rd party company taking former at&t wireless business customers calls. We are swamped with calls, currently I have 87 calls in que. I'm doing about 40-50 calls a day. I also have not been trained to deal with cingular systems, but we are constantly hiring and adding new services for former at&t wireless customers that we provide here. Although our overall quality as a call center is relatively high. The former at&t wireless custs will be around for at least for a few more years. Steps are in place to get these custs to cing rate plans eventually, but that will be a long process. So, do your job well and don't fret.
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they supposed to be evencually all together in one system ( CARE
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ATT_IS_DEAD said:
I think there might be more to it than that . . . we are not trained to take Cingular calls or use the cingular customer service systems, Only the att systems. And there is no word yet that we will be trained to do that. 😢
you musthave missed the team metting, your center is going to be the last one trained because its the largest one in N.A., they are gonna get the small centers first, and you'll still be doing the blue till end of the year,and then near year end they will start orange training, its only 2 weeks, look how long it took to get the gsm training in the center!
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Yeah, Mr. PIR . . . it took about 2 years for my center to be fully trained on GSM systems . . . Had a customer call in and read to me a letter that they received stating that on April 15th they would be moved to the cingular billing systems, but would not be forced to change the plan or get a new phone. I took it to mean that they were taking the customer's information out of Siebel and putting it over into TELEGENCE.
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ATT_IS_DEAD said:
Yeah, Mr. PIR . . . it took about 2 years for my center to be fully trained on GSM systems . . . Had a customer call in and read to me a letter that they received stating that on April 15th they would be moved to the cingular billing systems, but would not be forced to change the plan or get a new phone. I took it to mean that they were taking the customer's information out of Siebel and putting it over into TELEGENCE.
As far as that, the only ones should the customers who were suncom's that are being switched to cingular systems, nothing else has been indicated.they always give us advanced notice, i mean we got our ID's for migration in Sept, 2004 for Day 1 in november.
I'll believe it ...
(continues)
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I work for Cingular, nobody is being forced to go to cingular. However, you must understand that AT&T Wireless is no longer a company, so you will no longer be able to purchase att phones so you have the CHOICE to migrate to Cingular. April 15th is the day that Cingular will no longer be able to use the att name or the picture of the globe.
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nelsadam said:
I work for Cingular, nobody is being forced to go to cingular. However, you must understand that AT&T Wireless is no longer a company, so you will no longer be able to purchase att phones so you have the CHOICE to migrate to Cingular. April 15th is the day that Cingular will no longer be able to use the att name or the picture of the globe.
Exactly, thats also why they took them off the bills in march, and thats why they only use the cingular in all advertising and commercials!
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To Mr. PIR,
I was an old blue customer, just changed to orange, new phone etc..., coverage changed for worse, was covered in states like nd, sd, ne...on tdma, now I lost coverage on GSM,
orange solution was to reverse migrate, Help
I was an old blue customer, just changed to orange, new phone etc..., coverage changed for worse, was covered in states like nd, sd, ne...on tdma, now I lost coverage on GSM,
orange solution was to reverse migrate, Help
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That agreement could be extended considering SBC is now in the process of purchasing AT&T. The original agreement was setup because AT&T wanted to again use the AT&T Wireless name to market a new service as a reseller. I would not be surprised to see that extension (if the April 15th date is accurate).
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In a way, customers will be forced. If thier phone breaks, they will have no choice but to get a Cingular phone. That is basically the way that it is now. But we will not send them anything in the mail or so forth telling them "Uh, you HAVE to switch to Cingular if you want to keep your service." At some point and time, everyone's phone will go bad and they will have to get a Cingular phone.
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Yea, Cingular is "breaking kneecaps".
File FCC form 475
Hard as it is to believe, the FCC does not have an ongoing broad investigation into the practice. They are just taking it one complaint at a time.
File FCC form 475
Hard as it is to believe, the FCC does not have an ongoing broad investigation into the practice. They are just taking it one complaint at a time.
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Ummm, I'm not sure where you got your info from but I work for the former at&t wireless. I currently have phones avail for sale to former at&t wireless custs. They all suck except for the silver v3 and the audiovox smt 5600 but we have phones. Even if we didn't, whats stopping a consumer from going on ebay and purchasing a gsm 850 mhz phone and slapping their active sim card in the device. Nobody is being forced to do anything. The only thing in place to make the cust want to mig to cing is the fact that we just expired our best rate plans. You can move up and down the price point, but you can't move out of it. You then have to choose a rate plan with absolutely no promos, i.e. 39.99 for 450 mins. Our rate plans mirror cingular minus the rol...
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You will NOT be forced to move over from AT&T until; at least 2007. Possibly 2008. My Aunt just signed another 2 year contract with AT&T. My Mom & I have been trying to get her to migrate to GSM. But my Uncle bought her a digital phone several years ago & he passed away about 4 yrs. ago. She can't bring herself to quit using that phone; until she is just made to. We live in Bastrop, La. We do business in Monroe, La. And I know for a fact it will be that long; before you have to switch to GSM. My Mom & I were told a little over 3 years ago by a Cingular agent; that they were going to start sending out letters about 2 weeks later; letting everyone know they were going to have to SWITCH to Cingular/GSM from AT&T. We decided to switch that day;...
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Everyone is not going to be switched at one time to Cingular. There will be ATT customers for many years to come. People will gradually upgrade and move to cingular. Being as there are no phones available for att customers through cingular, people are being forced to "upgrade" to a cingular plan and phone. Until they do that, they will remain on the att side.
Eventually all reps, both cingular and att will use a very similar system that will allow them to access both sides of the company in one program.
As they whittle away the excess stores and call centers they will combine systems to allow reps to access everyone's accounts the same way.
But who knows with Cingular, they rarely do what makes sense. They are the biggest...
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Eventually all reps, both cingular and att will use a very similar system that will allow them to access both sides of the company in one program.
As they whittle away the excess stores and call centers they will combine systems to allow reps to access everyone's accounts the same way.
But who knows with Cingular, they rarely do what makes sense. They are the biggest...
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But who knows with Cingular, they rarely do what makes sense. They are the biggest but they are following every move verizon makes as far as plans and packages go... except unlim txt messaging.... make sense????
I do agree with that, after verizon changed their rate plans we changed ours to almost match. The rate plans suck now with both verizon and cingular if you ask me.
I do agree with that, after verizon changed their rate plans we changed ours to almost match. The rate plans suck now with both verizon and cingular if you ask me.
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well get ready for another change.... cing is going back to 9.99 add a lines... and eliminating the 59.99/2 line plan...
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Ok so bumped, so here goes. The new plans seem to be working alot better than the old 14.99 add a line ones. Customers seem to like the fact that the prices reflect two phones on the brochure.. They think they are getting something for free.
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I am a present AT&T customer. If I migrate to Cingular, I cannot maintain the same low rate that I now enjoy. I would have to join Cingular at their rates.
That's IF I migrate to Cingular and not to VzW with the Nokia 6256i which has a fully enabled BlueTooth which would allow me to transfer files for free.
-Lorna
That's IF I migrate to Cingular and not to VzW with the Nokia 6256i which has a fully enabled BlueTooth which would allow me to transfer files for free.
-Lorna
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