The Boston Globe reports today that Cingular is entirely unable to back up its heavily-advertised claim that it has the fewest dropped calls. Cingular referred the reporter, Bruce Mohl, to a research company called Telephia, and Telephia refused to provide any information about the study. So, it seems to be based on a statistically significant steaming pile of horse crap.

My own study certainly backs up the horse crap hypothesis. My Cingular phone only works if I actually climb a Cingular antenna tower, of which there seem to be a total of nine in the continental United States. Fortunately, the towers are only 11 inches tall.

I exaggerate. My Cingular phone also works if my phone is within shouting distance of yours. In fact, I’d like a rebate for the total minutes I spend yelling “Can you hear me now?” into my phone. If the terrorists were smart they’d use variations of “Can you hear me now? How about now?” as code, thus slipping by any covert government eavesdropping programs.

Plus, how about pain and suffering damages for the hours of sleep I’ve lost because my stupid !#@$%-ing phone — which has an automatically-set, atomic-quality clock in it — insists on beep-booping in the middle of the night to tell me that it’s lower on power.

And I shouldn’t pick on Cingular. Yesterday I went to the local Sprint store to check on how much they charge to use one of their phones as a modem. The brochure the clerk showed me contradicted itself in every line: The $39.99 “unlimited data” plan actually gives you 40MB before it starts charging on top of the $39.99. But, you can get a “special offer” of unlimited data for $59.99, except in the fine print it turns out to be unlimited up until 40MB. When I asked the clerk about it, he claimed to be entering a tunnel, and made static-y noises.

Is there a single person in the US who does not HATE her cellular company? [Tags: cingular cellphones advertising horse_crap]

Categories: Uncategorized dw