Cell phone companies

[satyrlovesong]

I've been a happy Verizon customer since 1999. Ok, technically I started with AirTouch and Verizon bought them, but either way I've been fairly happy with them. When I was doing all that travel for teaching they let me change my plan every month depending on where I would be, and they have been supportive and helpful at every stage

Comments

[teamnoir]

I did a bunch of research about a year ago. AT&T is rated worst. Verizon is basically rated "least sucky" but hugely expensive and doesn't support data.

T-mobile supports data well and has reasonable plans. They get comparable reports to verizon for customer service by consumer reports studies, except that verison reports are consistent while there's more variance in T-mobile reports.

I'm using T-mobile and have been relatively happy. My plan includes two phones, one of which is a blackberry, and the other is used periodically as a bluetooth modem for my laptop.

I hate sprint, for historical reasons we needn't go into. But people who have reception problems in rural areas usually do better with sprint than with any of the gsm carriers.

[teamnoir]

On second thought, if you really don't use your phone much, then I'd suggest you look at prepaids. On a monthly basis, these can be much less to maintain than subscription phones.

[chainmaile]

Your pretty much on the best plan for you.

Btw, I *work* for VZW.

You can actually get the month free for signing a year extension on your contract, and still get your new, hopefully free phone. Just make sure you get the promo first. That's what I did for people all day today.

If you do stay with use, I'd suggest, at the least, adding a 250 message package to your plan if you find yourself sending/receiving over 50 TXt/PIC messages in a month, otherwise you are spending $.10 per TXt each way, and $.25 each pic. We've also got some other TXT plans that might work for you.

If you are having trouble with reception on your phone, trying hitting *228 and then hitting 2 when it tells you to, to update your phone with the local towers. We actually suggest doing this once a month for the best reception.

We're expensive, but I think we are worth it. Not saying we don't have our trouble, but I switched from Metro to VZW when I dropped the same call 3 times in 5 minutes while talking to a client.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[cedyeus]

When I first moved to Davis, I had Sprint, which got terrible reception out in west davis where I was living. Switched to Verizon but found that while my phone would claim to have signal, I would drop calls so frequently that it was getting embarrassing to try to use. So far I've found that Cingular/ATT has the best signal strength in the Davis/Sacto area. Hell, I even get reception on the 2nd floor of Olsen, much to the irritation to many a professor.