In 2004 I moved to a city where my AT&T TDMA phone was permanently roaming. I didn't pay roaming charges because my plan with AT&T covered my roaming charges.

In 2004 I moved to a city where my AT&T TDMA phone was permanently roaming. I didn't pay roaming charges because my plan with AT&T covered my roaming charges. Months later, AT&T set up a single TDMA tower in my area. Because AT&T phones were service provider locked, my phone and hundreds of others like it were forced to use that single tower. Overnight my phone went from having perfect signal everywhere I went, to just short of useless. Every single AT&T representative that I talked to swore up and down that the reason I was getting poor service was not their fault, that the problem was with my phone and that I should get a new phone. Since this happened just as AT&T was moving from TDMA to GSM, I am guessing that this was their way of forcing their customers to move to GSM. I can understand the business case for moving customers to GSM, what I can't understand is why AT&T would do so by using trickery and lies. I will always remember AT&T's shady tactics and blatant deceit and will never give them another cent of my money - I will purchase an iPhone the second it is officially available on another provider.