Need input on phone companies

[jh225]

GOOD NEWS FOLKS  I think!!!!   My phone and internet broad band problems are solved and Cricket solved them. It does help when you go t one of the Company stores and just talk with someone. You can learn so very much more. Went Yesterday and spoke with a nice young mane named Brian. He explained to me that the purchase of cricket by AT&T was not a recent item as I had been told by folks. AT&T bought Cricket a year or more ago and have been very slowly and gently making subtle changes as to not shock folks. They wanted to offer a Prepaid plan like other companies with out contracts and decided it would be better to just buy a Prepaid company that to try and build one from scratch.

 

They already owned a company called AIO so they have began implementing and combining the two companies into one and it will be remaining Cricket and new company Is Cricket & AIO. They will be using AIO phone network so Cricket phones will not work so will have to buy a new phone which I did yesterday. I didn't want a flat screen smart phone at all and they are offering 1 flip phone and it was Get ready!!!  $29.95 and they took my old Cricket phone in on trade and gave me 25.00 trade in so new phone on new plan cost 4.95 plus tax. They also not only allowed me to stay on my original pricing which was 30.00 a month with all the options most phones have I wanted but after looking at my years of being a loyal Cricket customer y new month service is going to be $25.00 a month. 5 bucks cheaper.  So phone issue is solved

 

Than came the broad band issue. Brian said that the Cricket Broad band will be active till March 2015 and then will go off line and the new AIO Broadband will come on line. He told me to come in the store in February and bring my old Broad band unit with me. I can sign up on the new AIO 3 GBT program and pick up my new AIO BB unit which is $79.00 but they are giving a 45.00 trade in on the old cricket BB units so the unit will be $34.00 plus tax. He said the only down side to all of this is my month service will be going from $30.00 a month to $40.00 per month. With the $5.00 phone discount thats only a $5.00 increase but listen to this. I have been paying $30.00 a month for 2048 mbs per month and I will be going up to 4GB speed which have been on 3GB and my Broadband will be going from 2048 mbs to 2 GB. I have been running out of high speed about two weeks into each month and going to crawl speed for two weeks.  I won't be going to crawl speed ever again for 5 bucks more. I don't know about what half of this stuff means but it sounds good to me so I am thrilled...................... :cheers: :biglol: :biglol: :biglol: :drool: :drool: :drool:    Now will someone that is high tech enough explain this to me in laymen terms what the BB program is all about and is it a good deal of not????????

 

 

AIO was ATT prepaid and then acquired Cricket, they were then merged.  Both use ATT towers. Whoever told you all the above crap is totally different than what is all over the internet

Edited November 2, 2014 by jh225

[Guest carter]

I don't actually mind a contract, the problem I have is that these cell phone bills have exploded is cost over the past few years.  Hopefully people will start participating in a mass exodus to the smaller companies piggy-backing on the same network and the big 3 will have to start dropping their price to get people on board.

 

Sprint has pretty much topped the chart on ways to pin people down now.  Have a great plan you can get 4 lines for $100; but you have to sign a contract and lease a phone from them for an extra $15 or $20/month on each line.  If you buy the phone outright or want to use your own phone, then they charge you a monthly connection fee of $15 per device JUST because you didn't lease a phone.  Want to tether the data that you already paid for?  that's an extra cost too.  So now you're looking at $160 for that service + the $20/month you contribute so the welfare crowd can have their free cell phones.

 

Can't wait until next month when our $150/month contract is up.  Will be switching to that freedompop $20 plan asap.

not sure how long you have been with sprint... I have been with them for YEARS... back since about 2003-2004... when some of the first color screen flip phones just came out... then went away for a bit because a significant other worked for verizon... so had them for about 2 years or so... then we split and went back to Sprint... when sprint came out with the iphone 4 i was all over it...and it wasn't bad then, but just seems like it has gone down hill ever since...

 

it was after the iphone 5s and 5c came out that i finally made the plunge to get an iphone 5...and had to drive to Bowling Green to get it cause they had faded them out and that's the only place that had them in stock still... when i first got the phone back in April it was noticeably faster... then a few months later i notice stuff is getting a lil slower... i could sit on my stoop and get 4G but inside i wasn't... then it felt like even connecting to my WIFI was slower... it didn't get as good a signal as my iphone 4...

 

so months and months pass...and well i am fed up paying this 80+ a month bill for crap service... I am in kroger parking lot and call the CS and start ranting about how their network sucks and for them to look at the coverage maps compared to all the other 3 big carriers... Sprint has done NOTHING to improve their coverage... they still have the coverage lines along major highways and such... BUT the kicker is i had 2 dropped calls while talking to them sitting in Kroger parking lot lol then they call me back when i was inside and I am furious... so i tell her EXACTLY what i was going to do... Switch to Straight Talk since AT&T had the best coverage map... and it was almost HALF what i was paying for shotty service with them...

 

that night i came home and had an older HTC EVO4 which was the crapiest phone ever made...put that on my account... then put my iphone 5 up for sale, sold it within a day... bought a AT&T iphone and the rest is history...

 

Since i have been on Straight Talk running on AT&T service...i have YET to drop down to 3g data... its all been on 4G LTE data... no trouble with texting, making/receiving calls, and loading anything with data is amazing... You get 3GB of data a month and I'm not a super huge heavy data hog so i think i'll be fine... even my WIFI is tons better, and i boil that down to it being a AT&T GSM phone...

 

I have a feeling someone is going to be buying Sprint out very soon... probably Verizon being they're the only other CDMA company... or Sprint will just go under... you deff do not get what you pay for and what they advertise... Have no idea what sprint has been doing while all these other companies make their networks huge and booming and Sprint hasn't expanded at all... Plus the iPhone it feel was made for GSM...it works best on that network type... and Verison is all 4G LTE now so it works well with them also im guessing...

Edited November 2, 2014 by carter

[bersaguy]

Well it is like I said in a post earlier. My Grand son and I went to a Verizon phone store to get him the hottest new phone out according to him. You would have thought this phone the best thing since sliced bread and Whiskey. We get there to the store and my grandson tells the clerk what he wants and the clerk smiles and goes in the back and comes out with this miracle phone of all phones according to my Grandson. It had only been out and available for about 10 days so he hands my grandson the phone and then said I don't know why you didn't get such n such a phone and I grand son said what kind is that and the guy looked at him and said the one they just released to replace that one you just bought. MY grandson said but this one has only been available about 10 days and the guy said yep. Ain't technology great.....Needless to say I had to almost drag my grandson out of the store because he wanting to literally go around the counter and beat hell out of the clerk for not telling him about the newest phone before he bought the one he had. I talked with a friend that has been in the Computer Service business for a long time and he keeps my old machines working and he told me that they already have at least 20 to 25 new note books, I Pads, Laptops and phones made and ready for release and upgrading and designing new stuff 24/7 so anything you buy today is obsolete before you even buy it. That is why I don't own and I pad, Lap top, I Phone, Smart phone and I told the guy at Cricket Store on Friday, if they did not offer a very simple Flip phone I won't do business with them and I got a little cheap flip phone that will do everything I want it to do. for 25 bucks a month. Unlimited talk, unlimited long distance, Call waiting, Voice mail, unlimited text and the phone talks to me and tells me who is calling so I know if I want to bother answering it or not. I'm happy plus it works off AT&T Tower network and had great reception and I have yet to open it up that it does not have 4 bars on the tower. My old phone struggled to get three but most times had just two and would drop calls. I have gone to 5 places that I could not get service on my old phone and had no problem with this one.  I am hoping my switch with the new WIFI Broadband for my computer is as smooth................... :up:  :up:  :up:    

[Sam1]

not sure how long you have been with sprint... I have been with them for YEARS... back since about 2003-2004...

 

Was with sprint up until until 2012, then they changed their discount policy - we were getting 25% from my work.  They dropped that to 20% then they dropped it to 20% of the voice lines only.  Then they dropped it to 20% of the voice line on the first phone on the account only.  So my 20% discount saved us a whopping $10 or so on a $160+/month phone bill

 

Sprint has always employed top notch bean counters to design their billing practices and could care less what the customers think.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Sam1

[Guest carter]

Was with sprint up until until 2012, then they changed their discount policy - we were getting 25% from my work.  They dropped that to 20% then they dropped it to 20% of the voice lines only.  Then they dropped it to 20% of the voice line on the first phone on the account only.  So my 20% discount saved us a whopping $10 or so on a $160+/month phone bill

 

Sprint has always employed top notch bean counters to design their billing practices and could care less what the customers think.

exactly! ya the last time i upgraded with Sprint was in April and they switched their plans so you hardly get a discount anymore--$50 something for phone and $30 for data and only got the discount on the phone service... we just got a new work discount thru AT&T which is 25% but I'm not switching...sticking with good ol cheap Straight Talk... Same AT&T service and I'm willing to bet they can't beat the price...

[bersaguy]

AIO was ATT prepaid and then acquired Cricket, they were then merged.  Both use ATT towers. Whoever told you all the above crap is totally different than what is all over the internet

Well, the crap above was told to me by the employee/ Manager at the Cricket Store and for some  strange reason I tend to believe him more than what I read about a lot of stuff on internet because we know everything you read on line has to be the truth.......... :ugh: :ugh: Right???   How come I never saw AIO advertised as a Prepaid program from AT&T advertised on Television Commercials for AT&T if they had a prepaid and if they had a prepaid why pay 1.19 Billion for another one? You may be 100% correct. I just know they gave me a great deal on the phone and plan I wanted and just hoping when they switch to the new broad band in March 2015 I get a good deal then also..................... :up: ...............jmho

[Sam1]

Looks like there may be a little bit of a price war starting up.  Seen an advertisement this morning for Verizon that you can get two phones with them now with 10gb of data (shared) for $110.

 

That's $50 less than what we pay and 3 times the bandwidth.

 

 

<edit>

 

Called Verizon to check on this and they are mirroring that "financing" scam Sprint started to do.  The $110 plan is ONLY if you make payments on your phone, you cannot buy the phone outright and then get the same rate.  So instead of getting a new phone for $199, you have to make 24 monthly payments of $25 and that $199 phone ends up costing you $600.  Two phones on that plan end up costing $160/month + taxes, not $110.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sam1