I have been an ATTWireless / Cingular Wireless customer now for almost ten years. They definitely have pulled some bone headed moves in the past but the latest might actually push me to switch carriers. What is the issue you ask? Well it is really two fold.
1. I was an early user of the ATT Wireless Edge and UMTS service. They continued to work with Cingular until this month when Cingular mentioned that UMTS coverage in Seattle during September would be spotty at best and credited my account the charges for the month of September. I figured fine. I will use EDGE in the meantime.
2. I got a new laptop and had to re-install the software for my PC EDGE/UMTS PC Cards. I didn't have the old stuff anymore so I grabbed the latest Cingular Communications manager after spending a good hour searching for it on www.cingular.com. Everything appeared to be good until I got to PDC. I needed to quickly create a web site for the Seattle Code Camp coming up in October. I found however I couldn't create a website anymore in Visual Studio.NET 2003. In fact I couldn't even request an ASP.NET page off my localhost! I detailed my travails in a previous post. Today I hit the cingular forums and come to find out they have known about this for the last couple versions of Communications Manager and still haven't fixed it! There isn't even a response from Cingular to the thread!
I must admit I am more partial to Visual Studio.NET 2003 than Cingular EDGE/UMTS service. Might be time to start looking at the Verizon EV-DO service my friends have been raving about given the deafening silence coming from Cingular about network upgrades, etc.
The frustrating thing is that Cingular has an entire office building right next to the one I am writing this in. I have no idea what they do there so I am not about to start accosting the random employees smoking outside the entrance!