Quicksand Fans

Hey gang!

Time to switch cell phone providers. Virgin Mobile is dirt cheap, but they seem to have one tower in New Jersey someplace and that's it.

Verizon seems to have the best service area, but they are pricey. Also, I have it on good authority that they are horrible to deal with from a customer service standpoint. Anybody have any comments either way?

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nachtjaeger wrote:Hey gang!

Time to switch cell phone providers. Virgin Mobile is dirt cheap, but they seem to have one tower in New Jersey someplace and that's it.

Verizon seems to have the best service area, but they are pricey. Also, I have it on good authority that they are horrible to deal with from a customer service standpoint. Anybody have any comments either way?

Had Virgin Mobile but quit last Feb. Is good around big cities but too many void spots in the country. They may have got better since.

Robert

Had mulitiple lousy experiences with Verizon customer service. Our company is headquarted in NJ so we use Verizon for business and while connection is good the human interface is on my short list with Comcast as worst outside of North Korea. My personal iphone is with AT&T or Cingular or whatever their name is this week. It was always good enough that I could at least get some connectivity at Fred's place even back in the old days. Dave will attest to my being able to communicate from certain desert lake areas, Canada, rural Illinois, and many others. With the advent of 3G phones I've noticed a dramatic improvement in reliability of connection and data rate. I hope to have internet access in rural central America with it when I'm there. I'm sure Verizon would provide all of this as well but with the issues I've had both personally and professionally I won't be dealing with them again.

Decent phones, good coverage, not the cheapest, HORRIBLE customer service. I'd go with ATT.

Thanks, gang!

My friends have verizon and they say nothing but good things. Great coverage down here in FL. I don't think they've dealt with customer service. I did look at their cell phone plans/rates when I switched providers a few months back. Their minute plans do seem a tad bit expensive for what you are getting.

I had T-mobile. They have the best prices for their minute plans. $40 for 1,000 minutes and now they do this loyalty plan. I was with them for a few years and they offered me unlimited minutes for $50. Coverage was decent. Customer Service was pretty horrible. They even lied when my contract expired and they said it was not. Even though I had proof lol.

I decided to go with AT&T. The IPHONE lol. I wanted that phone. As much as I love the Iphone though. I regret going with AT&T. Their plans are ridiculously expensive. Even with or without the Iphone. But their Customer Service is excellent. Its like First Class lol.

Anyways, I wouldn't count on judging anything with their customer service. I think by now its industry standard for a company to have a sub par customer service. I've dealt with Cisco-Linkysys, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PS3, Comcast, T-mobile etc.. and all have had pretty horrible Customer Service. Comcast taking the Cake.

That's the catch-22. Virgin Mobile is dirt cheap. You pay $20 every 3 months whether you use the phone or not. But that $20 just builds up in your account. We almost never use our phones (plus I have to carry a BlackBerry as part of my job) so that pay-per-minute and pay-per-message is the best deal. But we have NO bars just about everywhere, while the folks with Verizon and AT&T/Cingular have 3G connectivity.

We really want better network coverage, but the difference between roughly $15 a month (for two phones) and $90 per month is a big hit. And just try to figure out the plans- I read laws the New York Legislature comes up with, and they're more transparent. As Dilbert might say, you are practically guaranteed to make a sub-optimal choice.

All I want is a mobile phone that works. If I can receive and send texts on it, that's great. I don't need a camera, a music player, a dishwasher, a tooth polisher or any of the other stuff they build into them. I want a phone that won't die the first time it falls out of my pocket onto a concrete floor (or worse yet, in the toilet.)
I don't need 5,000 rollover anytime family share minutes and 500 texts per month. How about a reasonable fee per month ($20 per phone?) and so much per minute and per text? I'll even pay full price for the phones. We use like, NO bandwidth, so it would be like, pure profit for them.

nachtjaeger wrote:I want a phone that won't die the first time it falls out of my pocket onto a concrete floor (or worse yet, in the toilet.)

I have a G'zOne from Verizon and I love it! It is rated very high and a lot of my buds got them after our latest Afghanistan deployment. The black one was rubber coated, mine was orange. Soon after getting this it would up in the washer and went through a full wash cycle and lived. I had a friend that had a nextel i630 in 2004 <if I recall correctly> that found it's way into a porta potty. We were in an electronics repair school for the Army and just had a class on recovering from a water dunking; Disassemble the cover, dry excess water, rince in rubbing alchohol, reassemble when dry. His phone worked after that work, <and was decontaminated, lol> Being his roommate I always joked about if he was getting "crappy reception". Nextell was cheaper, but customer service over the phone didn't work out that well. Stay away from the Mall outlets, and go to the main outlet. They can take there time. I just got back w/ the wife; she needed a class on the new droid. We have good luck with them. There is a Sams Club north of Utica where verizon has a good customer service rep. Good luck no matter what though.

nachtjaeger wrote:That's the catch-22. Virgin Mobile is dirt cheap. You pay $20 every 3 months whether you use the phone or not. But that $20 just builds up in your account. We almost never use our phones (plus I have to carry a BlackBerry as part of my job) so that pay-per-minute and pay-per-message is the best deal. But we have NO bars just about everywhere, while the folks with Verizon and AT&T/Cingular have 3G connectivity.

You're preaching to the choir. I have the same problem (also have Virginmobile). Personally I just deal with the crappy reception, because even though it's annoying, to me it doesn't justify spending 3x as much on a phone I hardly ever use. Mine mostly gets used to order chinese food on the way home from work.