The sheer perversity of the wireless industry came to light last week when one of our editors tried to buy a Samsung Sync, Cingular's new music phone.

To make a long story short, Cingular's telephone sales department told him he wasn't allowed to buy the phone, as he was migrating over from an old AT&T Wireless account. However, they'd be happy to cancel his account, get rid of his phone number, open him an entirely new Cingular account with a new number, and sell him the phone.

This idiocy was momentarily plausible because Cingular has done everything they can to alienate old AT&T Wireless customers, from charging them $5/month extra to continue using their old phones to spending two years doing a "network integration" that, for most of the time, created hideous problems with blocked and dropped calls. But a quick call to Cingular higher-ups dispelled that theory: they said that our editor absolutely should have been able to buy the phone, and suggested that our editor should have demanded to speak to the salesperson's manager.



A better theory comes from the experts at HowardForums, who point out that sales drones get big commissions on new accounts and little, tiny commissions on migrations. So the sales person was looking out for his wallet, not for his customers (or Cingular's business.)

Yes, there are plenty of great wireless salespeople (many of whom post to HowardForums out of pure desire to help customers), but the problem is, you have no way of telling whether the person you're dealing with is a passionate proponent of customer care and wireless excellence, or a venal monkey (such as the one shown here) out for his commission schedule.

Moral of the story: Double check everything a wireless industry sales person tells you. Anyone else have any appalling wireless carrier sales stories?