I was trying to get the data kit for my Motorola V400 working with my Cingular Wireless Internet Express service, but kept getting failures to connect. After tinkering with it I finally bit the bullet and called Cingular support. After a while on hold I finally got a live person, but this guy was somewhat clueless about the data connect kit and I finally asked to be transferred to the data group. After another 15 minutes or so on hold I got connected to a tech who knew what he was doing. After confirming a few settings, he had me power-cycle the phone and it started working. It turns out that when they added the Wireless Internet Express package they forgot to add a "data line" to the account.
Anyhow, the techs were friendly enough once you got through to them. The problem was that they were running Cingular commercials while I was on hold. This is somewhat annoying in and of itself, but I've come to expect it. The problem is that I spent 30 or 40 minutes on hold listening to the same four ads. They could have at least done me the favor of running some different ads given that they have to know their hold times are long (which is obvious since they repeat that "your call is important to us" message every minute or so).
One thing I found curious from the ads is that their road-side assistance package is less expensive per month than their cellular phone insurance ($2.99 vs $3.99). I guess the ads managed to penetrate my brain through sheer repetition.
Now that the data kit is working, though, it's pretty handy. It lets me connect my laptop to the internet directly through the phone using GPRS. It doesn't use any airtime minutes, but instead charges on the basis of amount of data transferred. I don't know if I'll ever have to use it, but it's handy to have as a just-in-case backup or for use when traveling.
Posted by Aubrey at April 13, 2004 09:21 PM | TrackBack