Some of you may be aware of this others probably not. Cingular/AT&T and T mobile provide a 12 month warranty on your cell phone purchase with a service contract. If they replace your phone under warranty the replacement pnone is only warranted for the greater of 90 days or the remainder of the 12 month period, upon which they will inform you that the warranty period has expired and you would need to purchase a new phone, along with renewing your contract and possibly even add an addition service to get the new phone (this has actually occurred to me in March and my wife last week). What they don't tell you is that the replacement phone is actually warranted by the manufacturer for a period of 6 months to 1 year depending on the phone, and that the manufacturer will repair or replace your phone (yes the one the cell service insists is out of warranty) at their discretion if your ship it to them. Needless to say upon discovering this little monster of a cell service scam the president of sales and marketing for Cingular/AT&T was extremely willing to allow my wife and I both to terminate both of our two year contracts without the $350.00 penalty, and transfer our phone numbers to the carrier of our choice. We investigated them all thoroughly and settled on Verizon, the only carrier to indicate that they inform their clients that though they may not replace the phone automatically, the cusomer should contact the manufacturer to determine the warranty status of their phone. Further they were th only cell service to indicate that if the phone was indeed not warranted they would replace it for a fee of $50.00.

Gmead