He might have to because if they are going to spend billions of dollars on the network, which they are spending $7B this year, and then another few billion on re-banding from the Cingular name to the AT&T name, which they will, then perhaps they could pass that onto their customers. Or if they don’t, they will seek a lot of problems both material and perhaps declining subscriber level and churn levels, especially of those events and the GSM migration situation for both prepaid and post paid TDMA subscribers still on the network. They will also face more expenses because they did not decommission many of the towers on the TDMA network. ( I outlined this on my post about Cingular, you can read it if you want)

Hello Moto said:

nextel18 said:
Their current business model is fine? To who? Not to investors, because we are very upset that Cingular did not do that great with total net ads, although they did improve on overall churn, missed badly with voice ARPU, and improved with data ARPU. Their subsidy costs, acquisitions costs are bothersome to their management and to the investors, since I am one of them, I have a say. In addition, indicators are the same too. Cingular needs to improve drastically on many of the metrics. Perhaps rolling out UMTS/HSDPA will help to attract customers over but they need to do a better job. Their business model is not fine.

that should have been AWE
they had the MO

...
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Who cares if they had the most profitable quarterly result? The question is now; can they continue on that momentum? We shall see. Another question is, will they continue to lead Verizon in the race for first place? With the recent quarters, it looks like Cingular is slowly losing its number 1 spot.

So many approved the merger is because more than 70% of the shareholders were institutional and they thought to get a quick $15/share which was a very nice premium to the close when the merger was announced. ( I was actually a shareholder of AWE also)

In addition, same thing with the BLS and AT&T merger and the institutional shareholders, because if they wanted a quick buck they would have said yes, which they did, and there are obviousl...
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I agree 100%. Pricing online is set by market, so why not offer the same prices that our stores offer.

Hell they can even kee the older phones (6010, x427, etc) that they have on their for free........

But you can't buy your satellite receiver or cable TV converter at it's cost without an agreement. You can either lease it for $5-$10 per month or you can sign an agreement and get it for free or subsidized.

My stuff isnt leased, but now we are really splitting hairs, the point is the phone is a requisite for service, regardless of how retarded the customer is and how hard they threw it at a wall or their kids head they still need it to pay the bill, selling equipment at cost is really the least a cell phone provider can do. They are not motorola, they are not supposed to make money on phones.

The least they can do? This isn't a charity here. Profit isn't evil.

I stand by my original premise. You don't get tires at cost from your dealership because you purchased your car there. You need tires to keep driving don't you?

A phone at or close to cost is a damn good deal and I think those who disagree are just not very forward thinking individuals.

Profit isn't evil, but it is not cohesive with customer service, companies can pretend the customer matters all they want, its only a business tactic.

I have no idea of the change in policies for your customers i was just making an observation.

I work for us cellular, we pretend we care about the customer a lot, but i know corporate is full of sh*t.

Cingular, as do most companies, value their customers. We value their business and wish to give benefits to those customers that bring us a profit.

Many times people here subsitute caring for valuing and those additional qualities and characteristics that accompany caring.

thats all just corporate brainwashing though, the value is in the money, not in the people, if you dont pretend like you value the person you dont get the money, so you pretend to value the customer.

The only customers I care about are the hot girls that come into my stores! I care about them a ton! 🤤

I call B.S.

As an owner of Cingular stores I value and care for most every customer that walks in my door. We go out of our way to help customers in many different situations because in the end without them we are not going to keep our doors open.

Now I also subscribe to the Southwest Airlines philosphy of my internal customers (my employees) come first. I will not allow customers to abuse my employees, no matter the situation. I will ask them to take their business elsewhere if I find they are taking advantage of the situation of being verbally abusive with my people.

Capitalism requires customers who will pay for a service. It is not corporate brainwashing to say you value the ones who make you a profit.

we agree to disagree then, i understand that my opinion on this would not be well recieved by owners or managers.

i appreciate your value of your employees though. A Lot of companies make it clear that the customer matters more than the employee.

If I don't have or can't keep good people at a fair compensation my business does nothing for me or my family.

large companies dont take that position though

Successful ones do. Look at Southwest Airlines.

Southwest has a good business model all around, how they treat their employees probably does not impact their finances as much as say only operating lucrative locations and already being the model for "no frills".

I would disagree and you might find it a good read. Check out many of the interviews and reports on Herb Kelleher (sp?) and Colleen Barrett.

Putting employees first has a significant financial impact on a company, most notably being in training, recruiting and retention costs being significantly lower than the competition. Furthermore happy employees are inspired employees. Many of the innovations Southwest has used to lower costs have been employee inspired.

Having employees who consistantly buy into managements philosphies also can lower cost by increasing operating efficiency.

It all starts with happy, inspired employees. Everything else comes from that beginning.

maybe thats why us cellular has 8 customers and we are striving to piss them off and port out.