I've Been Switching Services........

John Rogers · 05-16-2015, 09:37 AM

I hate doing this mainly due to some worry that I'll miss something and the new services will come back and bite me in the butt, but in the past several months I decided to try some new cell, phone, TV and internet services. This may help some others if you are considering changing?

First was the cell service, that was with AT&T for 6 or 7 years and for unlimited everything was $134 or so a month with really no issues. A couple months ago on a rainy Sunday I was watching the NASCAR race and Sprint kept saying "we'll cut your bill in half" so I decided to go and see if they would. I took my AT&T bill and after waiting a bit got a person (office manager) who took a look and said heck yes we can help you out with no trouble. So I filled out the application which also had a credit check run and my score came back the number I was expecting and the lady said whoa we can do even better? One of the things you do is turn in your old phones and get theirs so she said well we'll give you a refurbished iPhone 5s for my wife for no charge and for your line an iPhone 6 or 6+ for $50, no contracts, etc, etc! The monthly cost was $66 for unlimited, etc, etc so I signed up, paid the $50 for a new iPhone 6+ and so far have been happy. Oh yeah, they waived all setup and connection fees and a week later I got a $150 Visa gift card with a nice note thanking me for signing up!

A couple weeks later when our home phone and internet bill came in, the phone part was $75 for unlimited U.S. and Mexico and Canada calls and I remember Sprint said they'll match AT&T for $19.95. So I went back out and switched again and so far the new bill is much smaller, same service, etc, etc.

Finally, this month, DISH raised my bill by another $5 and we have had them since 2000 when we used a portable receiver and dish at the various race tracks which was handy. I called and they couldn't help, sooooo I call AT&T about their Uverse setup and also faster internet as I had been running DSL (3Mbps speed) which was okay. Their setup was about 50 more channels, several receivers and 45 Mbps speed for $75 a month less total for two years and then it will go up but still be $25 less! So this past week I decided to switch that over and found we needed a new phone line run as they use 4 wires and our 1960 phone connection only had two! It took the line man about 2 hours to string a new phone line and the inside fellow about 3 hours to get everything connected and working. The main issues were my 8 TV sets and the multiple WAPs and signal boosters I have but in the end all is much better. The Uverse seems to have a better picture, still 1080P and all in HD and the internet is actually 48 Mbps so it is a tad faster than advertised! The only issue is they would not waive the setup fee of $99 but I guess I can't complain too badly overall??!!

Sorry if this seems a bit long but I figured this may help others thinking about this stuff and as I found, there is a real battle going on now for customers so you have some pretty good choices.

biosurfer1 · 05-16-2015, 04:58 PM

You might want to double check that $50 iPhone 6 with no contract. It's possible but I highly doubt Sprint or anyone for that matter is selling non-subsidized iPhone 6's

John Rogers · 05-16-2015, 05:23 PM

I did more than a double take on the iPhone as the price was a shocker for sure! The office manager who was helping me ran the credit check and my score is just at 760 she said and that made me "valued customer" as she put it? While I was there doing all the stuff they disallowed two families for that cut you bill in half and getting any sort of freebies without at least a year contract?

biosurfer1 · 05-16-2015, 05:49 PM

hm...might have to go check that out then. Thanks for the info

John Rogers · 05-16-2015, 07:30 PM

Back in the day......when Sprint first started started out in our area, San Diego county, the manager of one of the first stores was out oldest daughter's best girl friend. She also worked at a club named "Pacers" in San Diego and was dating the district manager! So when we wanted cellular service she got us a pair of free phones and numbers xxx-3000 and xxx-4000 which seem to be hard to get? It helps to know folks in high places I guess.

Evans, Marv · 05-16-2015, 07:58 PM

Good commentary. Verizon is the only service we've ever had. We don't use much of it, and our service was way more than we needed. The wife spent 30 to 45 minutes negotiating with them a month or so ago and got the number of minutes reduced and the bill cut from about $125 to $56. So bugging your carrier for a service more reflective of your needs is another option. Where we live (past Alpine), we don't get a cell signal. When/if they ever put a cell tower around here, we're getting rid of the land line, although it's only $60/mo. Also Uverse just became available, so we might be looking into that.

John Rogers · 05-17-2015, 08:18 AM

It is rough when you live in the "sticks".......The AT&T Uverse folks told us we could get up to 4 receivers for the various TV sets but I wanted just two. One feeds the main set in the living room and the other feeds the other sets that have been wired with coax for about 10 years. My daughter who is staying with us to help care for my wife wanted her own but I figure she'd run up a big pay movie bill so I said no way. I will say the picture on the second box is way better than the one we had on the second Dish network box and it feeds 1080P out the TV out coax connection which the dish box did not do. They sell a RF use anywhere remote which is similar to the one Dish has but the signal is better.

So far the biggest issue is having to learn the new channel numbers but I did setup my and my wife's favorite listings so that helps a lot. My daughter was playing some of the games they have the other morning at 4:00AM and woke the dogs so we know that works too. I downloaded the Uverse app for my phone but so far have not set that up yet?