Cell Phone Service, who do you have?

[SirNik73]

OK,
I'm in college, I've moved 5 times in the last 3 years! I'm never in one location, so a cell phone is a requirement. I live in Sacramento, but my family lives in Lake County, pretty much the middle of no where, so I need a company that will not just cover the city, but also the way out in the sticks. I was a very happy customer of AT&T Wireless, but then Cingular bought them out, and I was a very dissatisfied customer of cingular. so I dropped that for Verizon, because they had coverage in my home town, and they had free nation wide calling, and I've been traveling more... nation wide calling is now standard, and I'm getting more and more dissatisfied with verizon as the days go by. What else is out there? What are you guys using?

[Brock Samson]

im on t-mobile no problems at all...   

[MorePwr]

I'm with sprint, happily. but I hear t-mobile is real good too!

verizon used to be airtouch they changed names, but not customer service

[694spdRT]

I have ALLTEL because the big boys don't cover my area. Apparently the "Can you hear me now?" guys conveniently sidestep SW Wisconsin.

[SirNik73]

AllTel was the most appealing to me, so i checked out their site, but they don't have coverage in California... their map said they did, but when i went to the "pick a plan" section they asked for my zip code, and then told me they did offer service in my area. I tried my home town zip first, and then the zip for downtown Sacramento.. same answer... so no alltel.
T-mobile covers Sacramento, but only covers my home town in roam. but a friend i grew up with told me they gave her free roaming... so that might solve that problem. i have to look into it more, they didn't say anything about roaming in their plans, but they did say my home town was in the roam area.

[Shakey]

Rogers

[SirNik73]

Rogers

checked this out just for kicks, to see if the US companys are the only ones ripping off their customers, and Rodgers seems to be a better service then some of the companys i've seen here in the US... to bad i can't get that service.

[Mopar440+6]

I was also one of the "loved AT&T but got skrewed by Cingular" guys. So as soon as the contract was up I switched to Nextel. I've had Nextel since mid-2004 and I love it. There are alot of people that hate Nextel and say they don't have service anywhere but I can only think of a few times that I haven't had service...

[TruckDriver]

US Cellular, no problems

[SirNik73]

yeah i have a friend with sprint/nextel, and he has won every disagreement he has had with sprint. but as i feared, hey don't service my home town. i'm about ready to forget about having service up there, but if i'm going to pay for the service, then it should work there... i don't understand why some companys work there and others don't. i thought when you were roaming you were out of ther area covered buy your company and using another companys towers... with that theory should all services work up there... just in roam?


US Cellular was the first one to cover my home town... haven't realy heard much about them in years, i'll have to look into that one.

[2fast4u]

  Unicell

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Verizon for me.......here in NYC its the best over all other carriers IMHO

[NHCharger]

I've had Nextel for 6 years. Currently their service sucks ass. They haven't done any upgrades or added towers since they were bought by Sprint. They can't figure out how to merge the two systems together so their solution is to design a phone with both frequencies in it. Of course it costs twice as much. If there's no improvement once my contract is up I'm dumping them. And they have the highest rates.

[skip68]

I've got Nextel and it's not bad.  Sacramento has some bad spots and up hear above folsom it goes in and out

[ChargerRob]

T-Mobile 

[71charger_fan]

Mobinil, we don't have the plethora of choices in Egypt. It's either Mobilnil or Vodafone. Service is spotty. Count your blessings you have multiple choices. Back in the U.S. I still have a Verizon account; it was cheaper to just keep it than to buy my way out of my commitment.

[andy74]

sprint here, when i first started with them i lived in florda where they are the major player,since i moved to new york the service has gotten better-i have the no roaming charge plan,and 1000 minutes a month,free night weekend and nation wide long distance,costs me about 125 a month,with 2 phones,couldnt live with out it as i use it a lot for work and give all my customers the number

[Silver R/T]

Sprint

[Steve P.]

Verizon here. I have never had a dropped call and even when I'm in Vegas I have zero problems. 

VegasMike has Sprint. They are the MAJOR player out there and his phone service sucks.. Dropped calls all the damn time.

[chargerboy69]

Nextel. . . I have had them for 5 years. I do not have any problems with them at all. I get 1200 minutes and 2 phones for $79.00 a month. That works for me.

[squeakfinder]

Cingular here in northern Oregon and it sucks. As soon as the contracts up I'm changing. Can't hardly talk on it while inside a building.

[Mean 318]

I have had bad luck with Verizon!

[Arigmaster]

Funny... Thats what I do for a living. I build networks for all of them but use US Cellular as my service provider. They have the most complete network and best roaming agreements.

Lots of company mergers going on in the industry (pooling resources) but all that means is more work for me! Eventually it will come down to the equipment technologies each carrier uses as to who will come out on top.

[Charger Aficionado]

Sprint and they SUCK. 

[greenpigs]

Cingular here in northern Oregon and it sucks. As soon as the contracts up I'm changing. Can't hardly talk on it while inside a building.

Thats my plan also.

[SirNik73]

That's why I canned Cingular after they bought my AT&T contract... seemed like the network got worse not better. Then I got verizon... because "it's the Network" but in reality looking back at least the Cingular worked well outside, while standing on top of something tall, and not moving at all... and that is better signal then what I get with my Verizon phone! It only works when it wants to. I'll be on my porch of my apartment (2nd floor) and it will work great one day, and drop my call every time the next day... I don't understand how the signal moves and fluctuates as much as it dose. but what would I know, I only work for an electrical engineer, and design SCADA networks for City wide Water and Wastewater, establishing local 900Mhz Radio networks between all the cities water and wastewater sites...  in my opinion the quality of a cell phone call is going down as the providers try and push all this music and movies through their networks.... I what my phone to make reliable phone calls, simple as that... isn't that a novel thought.

[defiance]

Alltel - Because I work for 'em

Yeah, sorry about the no service in your area thing...  Basically, we provide service there through a partnership, so our customers have signal and they don't pay roaming, but we're only allowed to sell service where we physically own the towers.  Same applies to all the other carriers, they are limited to selling service where they physically own the network.  Except MVNO's, but I won't go there.  Anyway, at this point, we've got the largest geographical owned network in the US, but it just happens to be more focused on rural areas...

We're trying to change that as opportunities present themselves, but FCC regs limit how many carriers can provide service to a given area, and there's no major city where the spectrum isn't already all owned. 

Anyway, though, we're finally really stepping out and making our own brand image...  My circle has been a huge success for us, and our goal is to follow it up with something even better

Speaking of which, suggestions are welcome-  I'm a marketing analyst, so I can write this off as "research"

[DarkAngel0816]

I have never had a problem with Cingular.  I was impressed for I had no issues even when I was in South Dakota...in the boonies it worked great.  I did upgrade my phone so that could be the issue...if your phone is still the one you had with AT&T.

Sprint sucked when I had them.  My boyfriend has Alltel and they sucked too.  He has military orders showing his move to Indianapolis...where there is no coverage area and they refuse to let him out of the contract.  If he uses it here...he roams and pays top dollar.  So until the end of the contract he is paying on a phone he cannot even use.

[defiance]

If he's on national freedom, he has coverage in Indianapolis.  Doesn't cost any more than home usage.  Nat. Freedom plans start at $39 (500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights/weekends, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile), and our rate plan pricing has dropped so much in the past year or so that if he's not on it, he'll probably save money by switching to it.  Plus, we do anytime rate plan changes, so there's no reason he couldn't do that.  Even better, if he switched to a $59 or higher plan (National Freedom has 900 anytime minutes at that point), My Circle gives him any 10 numbers he can call (and recieve calls from) unlimited.  I just switched to it and you quickly realize (or at least I did) that if you pick your 10 numbers well, you VERY rarely call or get calls from anyone outside that list.

Having said that, yeah, I work for them - in marketing no less - but I work here because I really love the company

Also, if even that's not enough to convince you (or him) we're worth staying with, I'm guessing that the person he showed his orders to was in a retail store - sometimes the stores have pretty high turnover; maybe you'll talk to the wrong rep.  It's most certainly not policy to hold individuals to contracts when military orders conflict with them.  You might give customer service a call and I bet they'll straighten it out.  If they won't, PM me and I'll see if I can help...

But like I said earlier, we've got some pretty cool things going on, so ...

[DarkAngel0816]

If he's on national freedom, he has coverage in Indianapolis.

Nope...they hit him for a 400 dollar bill when he used it last month.  Hell he would roam when he was in his coverage area...inside his home.  They even reconfirmed no coverage with his plan...he has until Feb for the contract to be up, but even so with military paperwork they should have let him go.

[defiance]

sorry, my edit didn't go through until you'd posted

he's on national freedom?

[DarkAngel0816]

lol that is okay...no he is not on that.  All I know is he roams like crazy.  He did get a Cingular phone...but it sucks he has to pay for that one that is just laying around shut off.

[defiance]

Ah, Ok - If he does want to use it, switching to NF will give him coverage, and for a pretty good price (see above ) ... but I understand, once you've had a bad experience most people just want out...

If you want, I'd like to try to help - no guarantees, since I'm WAY outside the customer service part of the company, but I can certainly try, and I hate to see someone dissatisfied and angry with us.  I probably can't do anything about the roaming charges since he wasn't on NF at the time, but I can at least try to help out with the contract issue.  If you'd like me to, PM me the cell number and I'll see what I can do.  Of course, I understand if you don't want to do that

[DarkAngel0816]

Check your pm's.

[SirNik73]

defiance, my home town (Kelseyville CA) only has Verizon, Edge Wireless (cingulare), and US Cellular. get alltel up there and i'll be one of the first to buy it.

[79LilRed]

lol that is okay...no he is not on that.  All I know is he roams like crazy.  He did get a Cingular phone...but it sucks he has to pay for that one that is just laying around shut off.

Thank you sweetie for the help and input to the members here. I am DarkAngel's b/f. She is absolutely an incredible woman and I love her dearly. Anyways, I had Cellular One which got bought out by Alltel then when I moved here to Indy I switched to Cingular based on what DarkAngel and her family had told/suggested to me. So far, I've had good luck with Cingular. Alltel was about the worse since they still do the roaming charges bit not to mention my calls would always drop seemed like every five minutes when I was in town where I previously lived. Anyways, Cellular One wasn't bad at all IMO. Cingular has been the best to me and my g/f so no complaints thus far. Best to ya.

[defiance]

lol that is okay...no he is not on that.  All I know is he roams like crazy.  He did get a Cingular phone...but it sucks he has to pay for that one that is just laying around shut off.

Thank you sweetie for the help and input to the members here. I am DarkAngel's b/f. She is absolutely an incredible woman and I love her dearly. Anyways, I had Cellular One which got bought out by Alltel then when I moved here to Indy I switched to Cingular based on what DarkAngel and her family had told/suggested to me. So far, I've had good luck with Cingular. Alltel was about the worse since they still do the roaming charges bit not to mention my calls would always drop seemed like every five minutes when I was in town where I previously lived. Anyways, Cellular One wasn't bad at all IMO. Cingular has been the best to me and my g/f so no complaints thus far. Best to ya.

Hey - hope the info I gave helps out - if it doesn't, or if I can help in any other way, let me know.  sorry you had a bad experience

[79LilRed]

Check your PM defiance. Thank you for your help.