Rob
Torington,#2Consumer Suggestion
Sun, February 05, 2006
I am also one of the AT&T customers "divested" to Alltel (the highest bidder at the AT&T breakup table). And I also received an unexpected notice telling me that they were my new carrier. I even called Cingular to verify. My issue was that Alltel didn't support GSM and all 4 of my plan's phones were GSM (including an expensive TREO). After many calls and emails I had just about given up. I got no help from the Feds or my own state agencies. All I really wanted was confirmation that my equipment would be replaced with similar phones and my coverage would not deteriorate (Alltel is new to this area of the US). I finally stopped by the Alltel store in town (I'm lucky since they took over the AT&T store and the next closest Alltel store is 970 miles away). The manager there had plenty of P.O.'d AT&T customers who had expected to be switched to Cingular (who has great coverage in CT), but was willing to listen to my issue. I was given exactly the choice I wanted. I can get a TREO or PPC6700 for my old TREO and the other three phones would be upgraded to camera phones at no charge since they didn't have an exact replacement for the Nokias (I took the PPC6700 - it is so cool). If I wanted out of the contract, just switch the lines to Alltel (no phones) and invoke the 14 cancel option (no equipment=no calls=no fees). The last issue was coverage. The store was offering a "national" plan that still had roaming charges, so I was told to handle the switch through a special conversion phone number. My new plan is a little more expensive, but I am happy with the service from my local store so I'm staying. If you asked to opt out and were not told how to do it, you may have a good case to get out at a reduced cost at this point. Try a supervisor and keep your cool. Good Luck.