Cingular: From Cool to Cruel

Cingular: raising the bar on animal abuse

If Cingular provides your cell phone service, you’ve probably heard about the deal that will allow you to update your MySpace page right from your phone. Pretty cool, right? Well, before you sign up for it, you might want to consider switching to a new carrier.

It seems that the innovative folks over at Cingular also sponsor rodeos. In fact, they bill themselves as “the ‘Exclusive Wireless Provider’ for the largest rodeo-sanctioning organization in the world.” According to In Defense of Animals, the cell phone company—the largest provider of wireless service in the country— is in the pocket, so to speak, of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). And we all know how much fun rodeos are for the animals who are forced to perform in them!

Anti-rodeo org Showing Animals Respect and Kindness gave Cingular until Jan. 1 to give the PCRA the boot, and you can help them let Cingular know that supporting rodeos isn’t okay (Starbucks finally relented, so there’s no reason why Cingular wouldn’t too).

If you use Cingular, tell them you’ll take your business elsewhere if they don’t stop supporting rodeos. If you don’t, tell them you won’t even consider them when your contract is up. For more ways to put the spurs to Cingular, check out this page from IDA.

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• 1.

  Comment by frank language on December 21, 2006 10:13pm:

  Unfortunately, it's amazingly difficult to send an e-mail to cingular; last night I tried to find the right place on the website to enter my concern, to no avail. So I spent a while on the phone with a cingular rep, in which time he sympathized with me but appeared not to know about this little quirk cingular has as a company. He told me I have nine months left in my contract; if I discontinue with them now, I'll be penalized $10 a month, or $90. So he suggested I go for a lower-priced calling plan--I have thousands of rollover minutes on my account that I think I'll probably never use.
  
  I said that wasn't the issue; I repeated that I had been aware for awhile that cingular supported rodeos, but I think it's as worthwhile as supporting bullfighting, and I'd like to take my money elsewhere if they continue to support bullfighting--I mean rodeos.
  
  He offered to get his supervisor to call me, and I thanked him. His supervisor called within half an hour--amazing!--and told me the place on the website to enter my concern. Big deal: it was still a lot of hard-to-navigate multiple-choice questions, and I ended up as confused as ever.
  
  So I'm going to write them a letter and snail-mail it--but separately from my bill, since they're not set up to recognize correspondence enclosed with a billing statement. Doncha love modern life?
• 2.

  Comment by Jet BlackEye on December 22, 2006 2:45pm:

  For all the myspacers out there, why not go send Cingular a message on their myspace page (you don't have to be a friend to send a message!). I sent out a Bulletin to all the friends on my myspace telling them to this. This is what I sent...you should do it too!
  
  Cingular Supports Cruelty!
  
  Cingular is the number one friend on Tom's page.
  
  Why not go to Cingular's myspace page and send them a message saying their application looks great, but you won't be using it until they stop funding the rodeos!!
  
  Check out this link for more info:
  
  http://www.sharkonline.org/?P=0000000588
  
  Repost this as a bulletin and make a difference
• 3.

  Comment by frank language on December 23, 2006 12:58am:

  Thanks; I also posted a bulletin to my friends--over half of whom are animal-rescue types and vegans. One of them, Roland Vincent, spearheaded the recent "Boycott Flicka!" campaign.
• 4.

  Comment by frank language on January 8, 2007 1:06pm:

  Well, I snail-mailed a letter right to the president and received a call back today from someone in the president's office. So I suggest to anyone who's weary of the voicemail loop-de-loop: just write a hard-copy to
  
  Cingular Wireless
  Stan Sigman, President and CEO
  5565 Glenridge Connector
  Atlanta, GA 30342
  
  It will get read, and you just might get a call back from a good ole boy.