Cell phone providers all stink

Ultra thin cell phone

Is anyone actually happy about their cell phone service? As a T-Mobile user, all I can say is that I am complaining less than I was before. I hold very little loyalty to any one company and I think most people feel the same way. Other than T-Mobile, I have used Sprint and Verizon. Customer service is almost as bad as the computer industry. I have paid fees ranging from $30 to $110 per month for various plans and I have lived in three cities ranging from a farm town to the state capitol. I have yet to discover a happy fit.

In my quest for the best provider in my area I decided to review my own needs. I wanted email on the go. I also decided a camera would be useful since it would always be with me. I like having a PDA, so something that could replace that sounded great too. Over the years, I have tried many combinations of phones and service plans which I will sum up below.

 

1999-2000 - Verizon

$40 / month - ~450 minutes - Poor coverage - Bad call quality - Customer Service OK

Nokia 910 with Verizon - Phone worked great as long as you stood on a hill next to the tower. The analog calls did sound pretty good. Battery finally died. At least Verizon offers a loaner phone.

2000-2001 - Verizon

$50 / month ~450 minutes - Decent coverage area - Bad call quality - Customer Service getting worse

I upgraded to a new digital plan with promises of better service. I even paid the extra $80 for the tri-mode. Results: Still needed to be on top of a hill and dropped calls were the norm. I picked up a Palm VII for PDA and email. It actually worked pretty well, too bad I sold it. I added voice dialing to my plan and realized that wasn't very useful, although it has improved since then.

2001-2005 - Sprint

$85 - $100 / month - 2000 minutes / unlimited mobile web - Poor coverage area - Better call quality - Customer service stinks

Welcome to Sprint. I moved north 15 miles and got a two line plan with 2 Kyocera 2035s. I upgraded from my Palm VII to a Compaq Ipaq. Unfortunately, I had to talk to Sprint customer service when they forgot to activate my second phone and then charged me for a second phone. That somehow destroyed my plan in their computers and I spent the next 6 months (no kidding) calling them after each bill trying to straighten it all out.

Sprint could never figure out how to correctly put my plan into the computer. This resulted in everything from a $1300 bill when they lost my nights and weekends to voiding the warranty on the phone because they messed up by disabling and re/enabling it.

During the Sprint era, I upgraded from the Kyocera to a Treo 300, 600 and finally a 650.

The Treo 300 was a decent phone / PDA with mediocre battery life. It also got really hot if you talked for more than 30 minutes. The Treo 600 upgrade was great. Unfortunately I destroyed two of these by using the Belkin Tunecast II. The camera was mediocre, but the phone was pretty cool overall.

The Treo 650 was a nice upgrade, but I still think the phone could have been slimmer. I just didn't like carrying around and talking on such a large phone. Battery life with Sprint was also worse than with any other carrier I reviewed. I still wish they would have made a phone out of the original Ipaq.

2006 – T-Mobile

$39 / month - 1500 anytime minutes (no extras) - Better coverage than Sprint - Decent call quality - Customer Service OK so far

I finally got fed up with all the extras and went to a simple plan and a Motorola Razr V3. For the price, I can't beat the alternatives. I carry my laptop and MP3 player everywhere, so losing the PDA was not the end of the world. The Razr seems to be a decent phone, although it tends to drop calls more and more frequently than it did 6 months ago. It never works great in the basement, but the free roaming makes up for the difference.

Conclusion

Verizon has gotten better since I used it, but their prices really don't stack up well. I can say that I am pretty certain that customer service has not improved. My fiancé recently had a replacement phone go bad and they were more concerned about getting her locked into a new 2 year contract than replacing the replacement phone.

Sprint had decent service, but too many areas with no coverage. I had hoped the Nextel merger would have produced some synergies with coverage areas, but not in this area. If I thought I could handle their customer service, I probably would not have switched. Unfortunately, the plan I had 5 years ago is about $30 more per month now than it was then.

T-Mobile is somewhat better with coverage in my area due to their free roaming, but I have a lot of dropped calls. I haven't been able to determine if it’s the phone or the service yet. They don't offer the Treo phones, but without a data plan it wouldn't do me much good anyway. For basic service, however, I am getting less for less, so I guess I am ok with that for now.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend