Well, today after work I called Cingular/ATT to try to work out the whole cell phone thing. If you know anything about programming, lets just say I was caught in an idiot loop. First call was to the customer service department. I got a real nice girl, only after several beeps and types in a lovely voice mail system. I tried my best to explain that we are relocating and need to change our phone numbers. "Where are you moving to?" Saint Thomas, USVI. "What is your new zip code?" This is where it starts getting tricky. Rather than explain we really don't have an address yet, I just gave them the zip code for the Mafolie Hotel. “That’s in Puerto Rico”. No, that’s in the Virgin Islands. “oh, it’s in the Puerto Rico region”. Then I tried to explain that I wanted to keep one of our numbers from here as it has been my business number for ten years and I am not quite ready to give it up. I was trying to talk them into giving me two numbers, one for here and one for there. I got the first of these responses. "That's handled by the relocation department, you need to call 800- I just passed you off” (or something like that). So I called the relocation department, explained the whole two numbers, different area code thing all over again. "We might be able to do that? Let me look the account up again. I see you have a commercial account. You need to call the other 800-I just passed you off ". This nice lady did manage to actually transfer me as opposed to having me call and work through the system again. The commercial customer rep was very nice and informed me that I couldn't have two area codes on one bill. Well plan B, my partner here has a calling plan with the same company, so we are going to transfer my phone to his plan and let the company pay the bill. Deb gets a new phone, IPhone for her birthday, and a new number the week before we leave. Then when we get situated on the island I will have to add a line to hers and put a VI phone on for myself. Isn't that as clear as mud? It only took 45 minutes and three different Cingular/ATT employees to work out this addition to the grand plan.
After finishing this, the new tenants for our house came over and we ironed out the lease. That went pretty well…..a few tweaks on Microsoft Word and we have an agreement. One more thing to take off the to do list.
Now it’s time to do a layout for a kitchen that I have to finish before leaving town.
Jay
After finishing this, the new tenants for our house came over and we ironed out the lease. That went pretty well…..a few tweaks on Microsoft Word and we have an agreement. One more thing to take off the to do list.
Now it’s time to do a layout for a kitchen that I have to finish before leaving town.
Jay
2 comments:
I feel for you. If only I could download the info I have gained after living on STT for two years directly to you than I could save you a lot of pain. However, it is the joy of discovery, no? :) The Cingular service is a separate entity on island. If you keep a stateside address (which I highly recommend for any number of years you live on island), you can keep your stateside cell and just set up a new account on island. FYI, internet and catalog orders may require your credit card to have a stateside address to bill you even if they recognize the VI statecode... Good luck with it all! Teresa
welcome to the nightmare that is cingular in the USVI. if you ever figure out how to get the iphone working with a USVI (340) area code then i beg you to let me know! i've been working my hardest to get apple & cingular/at&t to release the iphone down here, but with little luck - the iphone cannot be activated with a 340 area code number and since there is no way i can change my current phone number to a stateside number (business reasons) it looks like i won't be the proud owner of an iphone anytime soon. you CAN activate it down here as long as you want to activate it w/o a USVI area code - it must be an area code from anywere in the U.S., go figure.
there may be a way to hack or modify the iphone in order to use it on at&t network down here, but i'm not wild about that just yet. if steve jobs knew i (and others down here)were thinking of hacking his iphone to use it on the at&t network i'm pretty sure he'd be extremely upset, what with his revenue sharing deal with at&t being compromised only to use the phone on the same network!
anyway, if you find some loophole i'd be more than interested.
-matt (lion in da sun)
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