I took a hammer to my new T-Mobile Nokia 6010 cell phone.

I will soon depart on a 3 to 6 month extended cross-country bicycle tour. But, unlike my 3 week warm-up trip, I will NOT be carrying a cell phone with me this time.

And anyone who is contemplating using T-Mobile services should read on:

The following events that led me to that decision are so strange and convoluted that I decided to completely type them out and post it, as an odyssey in itself:

My Cingular one-year contract was due to expire in a few days and I found no reason to renew it and keep paying $ 40.00 a month fee. So, I went down to the local Cingular store and tried to find a more economical plan. A quick check on the web indicated that purchasing a basic cell phone, outright, and then buying a prepaid time usage card, with a one year expiration date, seemed the most promising, for my new bohemian life.

Unfortunately, the Cingular store had no such plan. And my existing Cingular Samsung x427m was not usable with their prepaid plans.

So... I surfed the web and carefully examined various prepaid plans with the different carriers. I soon decided on, and purchased at a local Target store, a T-Mobile Nokia 6010 phone ($ 39.99) and a T-Mobile To Go 1,000 minute prepaid card ($ 99.99). Also, 145 additional minutes came with the phone.

When I logged onto the T-Mobile website to activate my newT-Mobile phone, I found that it had no provision for activating a store-bought phone, so I phoned T-Mobile. The T-Mobile rep took my information and activated my phone. I naturally wanted to keep my existing cell phone number, so T-Mobile ported my number from Cingular, into my new T-Mobile account.

After checking out and making a couple of test calls on my new phone, I called T-Mobile and activated my T-Mobile To Go 1,000 minute prepaid card.

But when I contacted Cingular, to close out my account, at the last date of my one year contract, I was matter of factly informed by the Cingular staff that my porting of the phone number had effectively amounted to an early cancellation of the contract, incurring a $ 150.00 fee. The only way to cancel this fee, I was told, would be to have T-Mobile port the number back to Cingular. And, unfortunately, the Cingular rep was not able to close out my account until the phone number was ported back to them.

After hanging up, I then contacted and explained the situation to T-Mobile, who informed me that I would have to contact Cingular myself, to have them (Cingular) contact T-Mobile, so that T-Mobile could release my phone number, for porting back to Cingular.

After hanging up, I then called Cingular and talked to a rep who then sent in the request, to T-Mobile, to port my phone number back to Cingular.

I then phoned T-Mobile back, and informed them that I had initiated the transfer of the number. The T-Mobile rep was unable to find the Cingular request for porting my number out to Cingular, but he assured me that he, and his supervisor, would personally handle the case until it was resolved. He told me that I would have to literally sit by my land phone to receive his call, which would be sometime Monday afternoon, or maybe Monday evening (it was Friday as we talked). I protested, but he informed me that I would not be able to call him directly, and that I would definitely have to be available for all of us to fully resolve the matter on Monday.

I was definitely interested in getting this matter worked out, but Monday afternoon came and went. So did part of the evening. And no phone call from T-Mobile. I called T-Mobile to follow up on the case, only to discover that my phone number had never been ported back to Cingular. And this time, yet another T-Mobile rep also informed me that I would lose all of my prepaid minutes when I ported my phone number back to Cingular. But he did find a "solution" to my situation, where I could purchase another $ 50.00 T-Mobile prepaid card, insert the new SIM chip into my T-Mobile phone, and T-Mobile would then add my original 1,128 minutes into the $ 50.00 card account. Not much of a bargain, I thought. And it would require a tremendous leap of faith, on my part, to continue any further. Would the unexpected $ 50.00 somehow turn into another weird $ 150.00 upcharge? And where did 12 minutes go that was on my existing 1,140 minutes? My minutes seemed to be evaporating. At this rate, some quick math made it obvious to me that my 1,140, or rather, 1,128 minutes would disappear in 3 months -even if I didn't use my phone.

I politely told him I needed to think about that one. I hung up and called Cingular. You have to understand that I had spent between 5 to 15 minutes on hold, on every call, back and forth with both carriers. The Cingular rep put in the request, again, for T-Mobile to port my number back to them. I also requested that I wanted to close out my Cingular account when the contract period ended, which was, at this point, the next day. The Cingular rep informed me that it would be very time consuming to do that over the phone and, since my Cingular account was active again, I would be able to finally log in this time, to the Cingular website, and easily put in the request.

Politely thanking her, I logged on the the Cingular web site, browsed around, and could not find anything there that allowed me to close my account.

Enough is enough. This experience was fast becoming too much like my recent job hunting experiences. And I was determined not to go any deeper in time and unexpected expenses, throwing good money in after bad. I took both the Cingular Samsung x427m and the T-Mobile Nokia 6010 cell phones outside and broke them up into little pieces on my cement driveway, with a hammer. It actually felt great. It was so complete, so final. A thousand pounds off my shoulders. I went back in and poured myself an ice cold beer.

But, concerning my Cingular account, I really didn't want to incur the $ 150.00 early termination fee, so I got back on my land phone and called T-Mobile to make sure that the process had been initiated to port my phone number back to Cingular.

This time, a very thorough T-Mobile rep, to completely nail everything down, set up a 3 way conference call with a Cingular rep, and we worked out the transfer of my phone number. I thanked the T-Mobile rep, and he hung up. I then asked the Cingular rep if she could also close out my account on the final day of the one year contract. She checked on my account and confirmed that the last day on the contract was the very next day, but I would have to call Cingular back, the next day, to do that.

She then proceeded to instruct me that I needed to turn both the Cingular and T-Mobile phones off. I told her that they were off. She then said "Now, turn both of them back on." I then informed her that the purpose of my call was to simply port my phone number back to Cingular. And that I had smashed both my cell phones, with a hammer, half an hour earlier.

There was a monentary silence on the phone. Then she spoke "You're kidding. Right?" I told her that I was not, that both phones no longer existed. I also told her that this simple transaction had, somehow, gotten more and more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive than I ever imagined. And I didn't have a cell phone 6 years ago and I can certainly learn to get by without one again. She had a southern accent, and when I asked her about it, she said she was in Georgia. I thanked her for her help and we both hung up.

I can maybe live without a cell phone, but my job hunting prospects on the road will be almost nil, without a phone number. Oh well, we all have to make hard choices. And there's no need for a cell phone, in a true bohemian life.

The next morning, I phoned Cingular and closed my account. It was surprisingly quick, simple, and with only a modest spill-over expense, to be billed next month and then completely closed out.

I did not bother contacting T-Mobile. I really needed to contact AmTrak and get on with my bicycle trip.

i'm not sure what to say...um...inspiring...an interesting read.

i guess if you wish, you could not always start fresh with a new phone/number/carrier, and learn from the past.

just a note on Cingular pay as you go Gophone plans

(pasted from the website under plan terms)

GoPhone Pay As You Go: Compatible phone required. Not all features work on all phones and in all areas. Pay As You Go cards and account deposits are nontransferable and nonrefundable. Amounts deposited into your account expire as follows: cards less than $25, 30 days; cards $25 to $75, 90 days, $100 cards, 365 days. Unused account balance is forfeited upon expiration

Well, you're right, Cingular does have a one year Go Phone plan.

But I, ideally, wanted to see if my existing Cingular Samsung x427m phone could be used with the Cingular Go Phone plan, and if they had a $ 100.00 pay-as-you-go one year plan that would provide 1,000 minutes (competitive with T-Mobile), which, I found out, Cingular could not provide.

And a quick check of the Cingular pay-as-you-go $ 100.00 one year card, found it lacking.

For example, one plan ($ .25 a minute) provides 400 minutes.

The other plan ($ 1.00 per day used + $ .10 per minute) would provide, say, 480 minutes, as long as only one call was made a week.

I opted for the T-Mobile $100/1,000minute card because it amounted to a $ 8.33 per month phone service, that I would rarely use in the field anyway.

But as I mentioned I don't really need a cell phone for my extended trip. I'm carrying a Palm TX + palmOne Keyboard with me, so I can type up email in my campsite and then quickly upload/download email via any wi-fi's I happen upon, almost daily.

It's just that T-Mobile and Cingular customer service staffs need to become more knowledgeable about their services and capabilities, as well as more reasonable and accommodating. For them to simply continue in the same mode is false economy, as their customers will simply persist in drowning them in email and phone calls until they're forced to finally get the job done right.

Both staffs are obviously spread thin, but that's the price corporations have to pay for rapid turnover and incompetence it causes.[/list]

cingular just changed their prepay$100 to 1 year not to long ago.. their montly plan is what I use.. the 10 cents a minute $1 a day was killing me. oh and if that samsung x427m phone is a GSM phone which I suspect it is you coulda either unlocked it or used cingular prepay.. well no matter now you broke your phones

we can now unlock ATT wireless phones (under certain criteria)

In my initial research, I discovered that Cingular could have unlocked my Samsung phone, if I boxed it up and mailed the phone to them. But the sales staff will never, ever, volunteer the service. I also downloaded some unlocking software, designed to work via my Samsung serial data cable. Yet another way to unlock my phone, I searched the web and found an unlocking code, specific to my model.

But, then I would only be trying to re-use a one year old phone. You know, those Lithium-Ion batteries don't last forever.

And if I was successful in unlocking the Samsung phone, it would require a SIM card, from a carrier, that was unlocked, to fully complete the unlocking process. I enjoy working with computers, and even hack digital cameras, but hacking a cell phone just doesn't excite me. I'm not really willing to take that on as another hobby -or a cult, as it appears to be.

But I spent, on and off, almost a week on the whole process (looking at prepaid services to the hammering) examining the different plans, rates, coverage maps, purchasing, setting up the service, etc. And that's as much time as I am willing to invest. I'm heading out on AmTrak to the east coast this Sunday morning, a week behind schedule, because of a darn phone that I really didn't need anyway.

And I'm irritated that all the service providers just don't simply have a list of all the compatible phones that they will unlock for you, and use it in their new service.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the service provider staffs are just not knowledgeable about their products and services. When I purchased my Samsung phone and Cingular service a year ago, I asked the salesperson to also sell me a magnetic car- top antenna for the phone. He just gave me a blank stare. The store manager also didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about.

Anyone who uses a cell phone for business purposes absolutely requires (whether they know it or not) a small, inexpensive, car-top antenna, if they're serious about clear and reliable communication, when on the road. I searched the web and ordered the antenna I needed.

Another forum member made a comment here that I should just start over with another wireless phone and plan. But that's what the carriers expect us to do: Keep paying more and more for their services. The endless process is not unlike the pea-in-the-nutshell game, where always the customers lose, while the wireless carriers roll their eyes at those who balk at additional costs, while grinning and winking at each other, as the next unsuspecting customer steps up to the table.

The fact is that I'm out of $ 143.48, and I'm going to vent, trash, and get my pound of flesh, before I head out.

I took a hammer to my new T-Mobile Nokia 6010 cell phone.

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