Just a few months ago — late September or early October — I re-upped with my cellular telephone carrier, AT&T Wireless, for two years. As an incentive, I received a new cellphone. AT&T had sent out a mass mailing encouraging me to re-up by promoting a nice free phone deal, and I bit.

A month or two later, the acquisition of AT&T Wireless by Cingular Wireless was consummated. It had been in the works for months, certainly long before AT&T Wireless induced me to re-up by offering me a new phone. Since the acquisition, all of us AT&T customers have been assured that we have the option of staying with our current AT&T rate plan or switching to one of Cingular’s rate plans.

This weekend, on a whim, I decided to peruse Cingular’s rate plans. They had one that was very similar to my current rate plan. Cingular is partly owned by BellSouth, my local telephone company, and I hoped that if I switched over to the Cingular rate plan, I might be able to combine my Cingular service with my local telephone service, and get both of them on the same bill, a service I know they offer to new subscribers in this area.

So I started (on the AT&T Wireless web site) the process for switching from a AT&T rate plan to a Cingular rate plan. Imagine my surprise when, at the next stage, they asked me to pick out my free phone. Free phone? I just got a free phone four months ago! Surely this could not be right. I logged off of the web site and called customer service just to make sure I was reading this offer correctly.

Turns out that I was. Cingular is willing to cancel my old AT&T contract, with no termination fees, after just four months and give me a new phone, just for signing up for a new two-year contract with Cingular. The rate plans are very close — I don’t see what the benefit to them is, other than moving my name out of the AT&T computer and into the Cingular computer. And I was already on a “Next Generation” GSM plan with AT&T, so it can’t be that Cingular wants me to upgrade to GSM technology.

Does this seem odd to you?