I can sit in my living room talking on the phone with 5 bars showing - without even moving the call drops and comes up network failure or no network service or network busy?????

Earlier this year AT&T put out a press release promoting a new cell tower and coverage in Royal Oak. The also opened a new store in Royal Oak. Sadly, the reality is that AT&T had more dead-zones than the local cemetery. Buyers remorse - don't do it, don't switch, don't buy their phones!

The entire Ferndale / Pleasant Ridge / Royal Oak area seems to be in some kind of shadow for AT&T Cingular. It's difficult to receive calls, difficult to make calls, even with 3 bars showing for reception quality. I'm amazed at how driving up and down Woodward, or even across 696 or 94 my reception completely disappears. Meanwhile, my wife has Verizon and seems able to make and receive calls anywhere she is.

I get perfect reception, even in my basement. I have an old Cingular plan (2 years old) but do not want to upgrade yet until they shut me off. I am a little upset with their voicemail coming in late (sometimes 2 to 6 hours) but all the plusses make up for that one little minus.

I was an ATT GSM customer and used to be able to get a signal by manually setting my phone to use the Cingular network. The exact minute the available networks switched from ATT, Cingular, T-Mobile to ATT /Cingular, T-Mobile my reception dissappeared. I have had 100% of my calls dropped since then. I can maybe get 10-30 seconds of a conversation in before it drops. After ~50 phone calls to Cingular (kept dropping) I was able to explain the problem. They told me my phone was obsoleted when the merger occurred. They then said that I must buy a Cingular phone and switch to a cingular plan, which is more expensive than what I had with ATT. The best part is how they play a message when you are on hold that says, "if you are an ATT customer, relax, you will not have to change phones or plans or sign a new contract as a result of this merger" and then the first thing the customer service person says when they pick up is, "you have to get a new phone, new plan, and sign a new contract as a result of this merger and you have to pay $150 if you want out of your current contract."