Yet another PPOT cell phone provider poll

[scottmandue]

Seems like we do this every six months to a year.

We are on T-Mobile = service is four out of five stars, signal is one or two stars, price is one or two stars.

We are paying $150 for three lines with data (plus $20 a month because our daughter HAD to have an iPhone).

Rumor has it that Sprint has great signal in out area... but really bad customer service?

What do you have?

[stomachmonkey]

Funny I was thinking of switching from ATT to T-Mobile.

ATT service here is great and I really have no complaints other than price.

Paying $200 for 3 devices. 700 minutes shared. 2 iPhones with unlimited data, yeah I use the data. 1 stupid phone for the boy, no data.

Add to that the separate $27.00 w/tax go phone for my daughter. ATT will not allow a smartphone on a plan unless you add a data plan. Go-phone SIM was the only way to let her use that specific device and eliminate the cell data portion.

[scottmandue]

I put AT&T on the poll just to see how they rated but that is a no go at out house... or in my little town by the sea. I have friends that are iPhone fans and they eventually dropped the (gasp) iPhone because they just couldn't get them to work in our area.

Our (wife and I) evil plan was to save money by cutting our internet and using our smart phones (Samsung) to cruise the internet. T-Mobile is fine for phone and text but their signal in our area is a little weak and make internet a PITA.

[Schrup]

We've avoided data fees up to this point. My wife & I use AT&T, she has texting & that's it. We spend about $80 a month for both of our phones. I'm not sure how many minutes, we don't use that much. We'll get our son a phone pretty soon, but I'm going to try to keep him off social media as long as possible.

[JavaBrewer]

ATT - 4 smart phones, 1 tablet, 1 dumb phone. 5 GB shared data plan, unlimited voice/text. $200/month.

[scottmandue]

Sprint supposedly has the best signal in our area (wonder if they would let me borrow a phone to test? )

Looking at their website (which, by the way, is clunky and slow loading... you would thing a tech company would put out some bucks for a nice website) their prices are about the same as T-Mobile, but I hear they have terrible customer service?

Anyone here a Sprint customer?

[badcar]

yea...I am a Sprint customer....for past 15 years. I will change with next phone purchase.

TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE.

I work in Bellevue and have LTE service, but my home and community are in a zone that is weak 3G at best...

At the time of my last phone purchase, I was fed (and I ate it up) a line of "huge improvements are coming" so I re-upped. Improvements did not come, I am stuck and in trying work twice with their customer service, there has been no positive resolution. I have to have a booster in my house to get calls....

I asked, after 15 years of loyalty and over $20k spent on their service, if they could buy me out of the phones based on the promises of improved and undelivered connectivity, so I may move to a provider that actually services my community and home......nope.

[JavaBrewer]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

Sprint supposedly has the best signal in our area (wonder if they would let me borrow a phone to test? )

Looking at their website (which, by the way, is clunky and slow loading... you would thing a tech company would put out some bucks for a nice website) their prices are about the same as T-Mobile, but I hear they have terrible customer service?

Anyone here a Sprint customer?

My experience with Sprint (8 years ago) was that signal was non-existent outside the major city centers and off the main highways. In San Diego County there were major gaps in coverage - my home had zero signal.

[GH85Carrera]

AT&T here.

In this area of the country they have decent coverage.

We have three iPhones. I am grandfathered in with the unlimited plan on mine and the other two each get 200 MB per month which is plenty for them.

The minutes are shared rolled over each month and we have tons of call time left over.

$145 per month.

[Embraer]

I just switched from Verizon to T-Mobile today. I was spending $130 a month with Verizon. Now down to $63 with unlimited everything. I'm not dependent on my phone, so I just couldn't justify Verizon's much higher price.

[Tobra]

I did not have any good experiences with Sprint. When they made it so you could change providers and keep your number, I did so. They tried to charge me a ton of fees that they had not business charging me. They kept the account open after I closed it and said they would not close it until I paid them for a bunch of invalid charges. I had keep a very detailed list of the times I had attempted to resolve the same problem with them. I ended up on the phone with some VP in charge of being a pain in the ass. She said she was trying to be reasonable, blah blah, will settle for only $400 and they would leave me alone. I rattled off the list I had, and told them I would pay them the $400 the day the check cleared for my time that they had wasted. I made 3 trips to their store to get the problem resolved, and spent literally hours on the phone with them. I told her I would settle for $1200, or whatever it was, then would send them $400. She said we could call it even, and that was it.

[osidak]

had sprint for close to 16 years - you couldn't pay me to go back.

currently with T-Mobile and have been pretty happy with them and neither att or Verizon can come close to my pricing.

[NYPorsche]

AT&T here - about $180/mo for 5 lines with unlimited talk/text and 10 gigs shared data. We go through usually 7-9 gigs a month, so that has been plenty for us. I like the shared data too because the heavy users on our plan change month to month, but I don't have to worry about assigning allotments to each line.

I've been with AT&T since 2001, except for a 2 year stint with sprint a couple years ago. I tried out Sprint, but they sucked - both on coverage and customer service. Since returning, I've been very happy with the service.

The trick with the new AT&T family share plans is that you get a substantial discount on the plan if you aren't using a subsidized phone. The base bill is $100/mo for the base data/talk/text plan and then $15/mo for each line on that. If I were to buy a subsidized phone, that would up the bill to $40/mo for each line. In lieu of this, I bought a galaxy S4 off ebay for ~$200, took it to the store, they gave me a new sim and I was all set.

Regardless of which company you go with - ask about an employer or group discount plan. Most companies offer something along this line to many employers, universities, alumni associations etc.

[scottmandue]

I have been chatting with some people in my neighborhood and they suggested... wait for it... boost mobile! Anyone here ever try a Kyocera phone?
Yes, I am that cheap!

[NYPorsche]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

Sprint supposedly has the best signal in our area (wonder if they would let me borrow a phone to test? )

Looking at their website (which, by the way, is clunky and slow loading... you would thing a tech company would put out some bucks for a nice website) their prices are about the same as T-Mobile, but I hear they have terrible customer service?

Anyone here a Sprint customer?

Probably more of a local issue, but I found the sprint coverage here outside of the metro areas to be lacking (not as bad as T-Mobile coverage, but a good step below AT&T/Verizon).

The other thing to watch out for - a few years ago they added a $10/mo/line "premium data charge". So their advertisements all said they would provide you with xx service for $yy, but the fine print at the bottom noted that it required subscription to the premium data package. Long story short - although my plan pre-dated this, they added it about halfway through a 2 year contract without notification. That practice right there lost me as a customer forever.

[TimT]

I just finally kicked Verizon to the curb (great coverage though)... was paying about $100/mo for 450 min talk, 2Gb data... I rarely came near the limits..

Just signed on to Cricket (Att) $45/mo Unlimited talk 3Gb data... and the coverage is almost equal to Verizon...

EFF Verizon... I called to try and get a cheaper plan and they said I needed to sign a new contract. Never again...Verizon devices cannot be used on other carriers, and vice versa, unless you unlock root etc..

did I mention EFF Verizon?

[on2wheels52]

Have been with Verizon since they bought Alltel. No real complaints, 3 phones plus our internet run $230/mo.
Jim

[Paul_Heery]

Originally Posted by NYPorsche

AT&T here - about $180/mo for 5 lines with unlimited talk/text and 10 gigs shared data. We go through usually 7-9 gigs a month, so that has been plenty for us. I like the shared data too because the heavy users on our plan change month to month, but I don't have to worry about assigning allotments to each line.

The trick with the new AT&T family share plans is that you get a substantial discount on the plan if you aren't using a subsidized phone. The base bill is $100/mo for the base data/talk/text plan and then $15/mo for each line on that. If I were to buy a subsidized phone, that would up the bill to $40/mo for each line. In lieu of this, I bought a galaxy S4 off ebay for ~$200, took it to the store, they gave me a new sim and I was all set.

Regardless of which company you go with - ask about an employer or group discount plan. Most companies offer something along this line to many employers, universities, alumni associations etc.

We were actually considering switching from AT&T and I was in the process of investigating other carriers. Then, I read this post and revisited the AT&T options. I found the AT&T mobile share value plans to be very cost competitive and we made our decision based on that and that it is also "the devil you know".

We have three smartphones on AT&T. Two of those are Google Nexus 5 devices that I purchased outright last year so they are not being subsidized by AT&T. The other phone is my wife's iPhone 5 which will be under contract until March.

Under our previous contract which I canceled this morning when I made the switch, we had 700 shared voice minutes, unlimited texts and 2GB of data for each Nexus 5s and unlimited data for the iPhone. On average, we were using about 5GB of data per month. All in, it was costing us about $170 per month for our coverage.

Under the new plan we now have 10GB shared, unlimited voice minutes and unlimited texts. The new plan is $122 per month. They charged $15 per month for each smartphone. The extra data available will eventually be used as my wife wants to get an iPad Air Wi-Fi + Cellular version which will only cost us an additional $10 per month on the plan. I also expect that I will be using my Nexus as a hotspot more often now as that is allowed under the new plan.