Cell phone carrier - who do you use?

Mike

Mike

Audioshark
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Joined
Apr 2, 2013
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Location
Sarasota, FL
Well, my Verizon contract is up next week. After a two year cell phone plan hunt hiatus, I'm raising my head up - like its some sort of groundhog day for peons who rely heavily on their smartphone.

I've started to look around and T-Mobile seems to have some interesting plans - including free international data roaming. This works well for me and my frequent trips to the Great White North. I also like that there technically is no limit on monthly data. If you "buy" 5GB's of 4G LTE and go over that, you simply drop down to 3G after you have exhausted your 5GB of 4G LTE.

I was previously with AT&T, but the repeated dropped calls drove me insane.

I have no real beefs with Verizon - my current carrier - other than their cocky CS attitude, confusing bills and high prices. ;)
 
I've used Verizon for many years and totally get your view of them. I use them because the coverage is the best of any for my area and where I travel. It does seem that lately they have been upping their game when it comes to service. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the other carriers taking customers from them. For example, they doubled my data plan for free, gave me an extra 1gb for Nov. & Dec., and just sent me an email saying that if I keep my current phone instead of upgrading that they'll knock $15 off my monthly bill. I'm finally getting something for being a loyal customer.

The only other thing to do would be to buy an unlocked phone and choose whomever you want to be your carrier. If you like to change phones often this isn't very economical.
 
AT&T and Verizon have the best coverage overall, miles ahead of any of the others. Because of a horrible CS fiasco with At&T years ago, I vowed I would never do business with them again, and won't. Yes, you can find cheaper plans, but maximum coverage is important to me. Verizon serves me well.
 
We have used ATT for a long time. We still travel overseas quite a bit and never have a coverage issue. Even though we don't use that much data we are grandfathered in with unlimited data.
 
I'm staying with Verizon. I travel and I had Sprint for years but when I started traveling the back roads of the Southern U.S., Sprint doesn't work worth a hoot on those little 2 lanes country roads. Verizon works great in those little two roads towns. AT&T whom I used to work for back in the day (not the cellular side) didn't work as well, horrid customer service....
 
The choice for most people is between Verizon and ATT. Which to use dpends on so many individual factors that you really have to sit down and look at each one's plans and line them up with how you use your phone. Be sure to look at things like data overcharges, personal hotspot charges, international coverage and rates, etc as well as investigating the service and reception for your most used geographic area.
 
Mike...VZ was down 4% yesterday at one point, dragging down the rest of the telcos with it, because it acknowledged the price war initiated by T-Mobile and Sprint was having an impact on its subs.

There is no question that VZ has the best network coverage but I would use the current price-war to your advantage. Call VZ up and let them know you plan on switching to T-Mobile or Sprint for their all-you-can-eat data plans and for $60/month and see what they will do to keep you as a customer. My guess is you can get them to slash your plans costs materially.
 
Verizon here as well. Been with them since the beginning. According to friends with AT&T, Sprint..etc, their coverage areas appear to be inferior to Verizon's, at least out here.

Mike, one thing you can do once you're on a month to month with VZ is to call then up and tell them you're considering switching carriers. They'll then offer you what they call their 'Loyalty Plan'. Essentially it's Unlimited Talk, Text, 2GB of data....$60mo. If you go over the data limit in any month, it's just another $10 for each Gigabyte thereafter in that specific month. I swallowed hard before I agreed to it, because I had been on a grandfathered unlimited data plan forever. But saving some $50 a month has helped soothe saying goodbye to unlimited. :)

That deal is for one line only though, so not sure if you're looking for a family plan or not.
 
We had Verizon FIOS for home and AT&T for cell. The idea was to split our coverage across the two in case on system had an outage or problem. We have since switched to Cablevision on Long island for our home internet and phone and TV, mainly because I just couldn;t take verizon's horrible cstomer service and billing issues. Just call them once and you will see what I mean.

AT&T for our cell service has been pretty good. No real issues that I can think of, except I wish it was cheaper. We used to have a very inexpensive international plan through them when we traveled, but now they have changed it to purchase pre-paid international minutes and data. So bu then use it or lose it.
 
Thanks Bob. I'm leaning toward staying with Verizon, but I get tired of their tricks and screw ups. Prior to going to canada last time, I called to ensure I was on the best international calling plan. They said I was, .20/minute. When the bill came in, it was way more than that. Then you know the routine. Call Verizon, wait on hold, argue, wait on hold, argue, etc.

I'm also learning that leasing the phone isn't so great after all. Maybe I'll just buy a phone and then I can do whatever the hell I please, whenever I please.
 
I use Verizon.

NONE of the carriers in my area have good service where I live.

A while back, I went to the Verizon store with my google earth longitude and latitude coordinates and told them my house has one bar if I'm lucky. Other carriers also have one bar where I live. A couple of days later, I went back to the store and they told me they had their crew check it out and they said service signal was fine at my house. That just told me that to appease me because they didn't send anybody out to check because they would have found that it clearly ISN'T fine.

It appears that where I live there are no local towers because the people here don't want them near their homes except for one friend of mine who said if Verizon pays him $50,000 they can put a tower in his back yard.
 
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