cingular This story is true. The names have been changed to protect the stupid and to protect me from lawsuits. So I moved to a new city and needed a local phone number. I'm way too much of a geek to get a landline phone so a cell phone was the way to go. I still have a lot of family back home so coverage was important to me. Everyone had great coverage here, but Cingular had the best coverage back home. I ordered a phone and plan online and waited. I waited for almost a week and didn't have a tracking number yet so I went back to the website to find out what was going on. Sure enough, their order tracking system was down. My roommate and I decided to get off our butts and go to a Cingular store here in the city. The salesman who approached us was perfectly pleasant but a little slow. We'll call him Spanky. He was all ready to sell me the biggest and best they had but I spoiled his plans by telling him I had everything picked out. Boy did that throw off his sales pitch. After about five minutes of stuttering about the optional insurance and data services blah blah blah, Spanky realized that I wasn't going to change my mind. He sat me down at his little desk/office/cubicle thingy and started pecking away at his computer. An hour and a half later he hands me my new phone with a beaming, glazed over smile and says "S'all ready to go! Hot diggity.” I go home and start putting phone numbers in and playing with the different features. While looking through the settings and do a double take when I realize that there were over 10 hours of time used on this phone. I dig a little deeper and find some pictures of a guy having a party in his apartment. Needless to say, I'm a little miffed. I call Spanky and he's dumbfounded. "I dunno how that coulda happ'd. Why doncha just bring it in an we'll have a look see.” He promises to transfer the phone numbers I already entered into a brand new phone and get it going for me. Long story short: He corrupted all of the phone numbers, I lost about 5 hours of my life, and I probably won't get the $100 mail in rebate because of it. My life has been drastically altered because of the lack of intelligence of Spanky, a four year Cingular employee that still tries to pawn used phones off to unsuspecting customers. -mac more rage or back to naner.org