My Mom has been in “cell phone hell” as she puts it on her blog, trying to get her Motorola MPx220 to work with her AOL mail so she can read and write email from her cell phone.
She bought the phone at a Cingular store, and they made it sound pretty easy, but she’s struggled with the phone and various software to no avail. She has read what AOL has to say about it, and talked with their tech support working on getting her mail via IMAP server, but their instructions don’t work on her phone.
Any ideas? Any Cingular bloggers out there? Cingular tech, Cingular blog, Cingular sucks? Motorola bloggers? Motorola tech support, Motorola blog, Motorola sucks? Any of you guys checking feeds on those words? We’ll see – but if you are – please let me know what she can do with this thing.
Yes, she’s had the phone for more than 30 days, but whatever your sales people at the Aventura Mall Cingular store in Miami, Florida told her seems to have been patently untrue. Perhaps they thought she meant she wanted to use AIM on her phone, and they simply made a mistake.
Whatever.
If anyone out there has a clue, please let me know here or email me: ryansholin(AT)yahoo.com
Otherwise, she’ll just sell the Mpx220 on Ebay and buy a Blackberry or something.
Hey Scoble, if you don’t get your Scoblephone back, don’t buy one of these. It does feature the Windows Mobile 2003 OS, so maybe I should find that team on Channel 9 and bug them.
UPDATE: Other people battling with Cingular over this sort of thing (the Mpx220 sucks and the software/firmware sucks and they don’t take it back, or charge an arm and a leg for the exchange): Fighting With Cingular, Trading in the MPX220 for a Scoblephone, Cingular Sucks! with lots of comments.
MORE: More people, same problem, different Motorola phone on Cingular service. Where are the Cingular reps in these forums? Do they care what people are saying about their product?
MORE: It looks like Cingular is going to take the phone back – we’re looking now at phones that might actually work (without the non-functional IMAP4) to simply read/write aol mail. Every cheap cell phone I’ve ever had did this – and certainly on the old AT&T network – so why can’t Cingular?
OUTCOME: I don’t have all the details of how it went with Cingular yet (did they charge her anything to exchange phones?) – but Mom said screw Motorola and screw Windows Mobile 2003 – she upgraded to a Treo 650, and is now officially Cool. Suddenly I’m looking forward to her next visit. Moreso, I mean.
ENDGAME: Check out my Mom’s afterthoughts on the experience – in the end it seems like Cingular, Motorola, and AOL all failed to provide her with any answers, but one guy at the store in Aventura managed to send her home happy. I wonder if he blogs…heh heh…
Comments
3 responses to “Hey Cingular, help out my Mom”
Thanks for the advice and sorry your mom had such trouble with the phone.
Uhmm, why is your mom still using aol? If its an email address she has had for ever, I can understand that, but other than that anybody that uses aol, well as they say needs to get off the bike with training wheels.
Heh – a fair question Mark.
She’s been a member there since 1992 or so, and I’m pretty sure she still gets free access in return for hosting photography chats there on and off for years. She’s got plenty of other email addresses for professional purposes, but she needs access to everything from her phone – why would the Windows Mobile OS make it SO hard for the average user to do this sort of thing? Anyway, she bought a Treo and it does everything she needs and more, no Windows OS necessary.