<p>Looking for a family cellphone plan for my daughter to use at Duke. T-mobile looks like it has the best deal, but I’m concerned about the quality of the service. Has anyone here used T-mobile with your kids at college? How did it work for you?</p>
<p>I haven’t used t-mobile with a kid at college, but we have both it and Sprint (which was all that came with the Treo). T-Mobile works fine almost everywhere (spotty in Scarsdale, our part of Vermont (in the mountains) and outside of the main town on St. John in Virgin Islands.)</p>
<p>Yes, it works horrible. (Sorry for the grammar). LOL, horrible sounds more emphatic than horribly in this case. Terrible reception. The largest cell towers tend to be for cingular & verizon. (Don’t know about sprint) When we can afford it, we’ll switch.</p>
<p>mathmom has had different results, so I would just check with Duke first to see which towers are where.</p>
<p>Our experience with T-Mobile has been fine.</p>
<p>We have T-mobile. All 5 of us at the moment. S1 is planning to switch to Verizon in the fall when his contract ends. T-mobile reception in DC hasn’t been great for him. The rest of us haven’t had any trouble. (In NYC and Atlanta. S2 is currently in California, and has been fine with it there, too.) So I guess it depends on where you are. I have no idea about Duke.</p>
<p>Been on the TMobile family plan since Sept '02 when eldest entered college. Found it by far the cheapest family plan for what was included at the time. Never had a reception issue with either of the kids at school. </p>
<p>I’m often in old growth highly treed areas, and I have found that I have occaisional blind spots, but they are not that frequent and by moving a few feet I can normally pick up enough of a minimal signal to send or receive a call.</p>
<p>We use T-mobile because I travel overseas and we found it was the easiest and cheapest to use. But in our area, it does not have as wide or good coverage as Verizon. When we went to VT, we found we could get no reception.</p>
<p>We live in the Chicago area and have found T-Mobile service to be excellent everywhere except the UP of Michigan (where only Verizon and some local cell services work). This includes Florida, Vegas, the whole way down I55 and I44 to Oklahoma City, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, NY, Kentucky, Nashville, Georgia, Arizona, etc. We have the family plan, 5 phones, 1500 minutes and unlimited texting and pay about $135-140 per month which none of the other plans could touch. That said, I sure wish I could have a Treo phone with this carrier but alas, no.</p>
<p>T-mobile has worked great for us. We left cingular - not because of price - but because of terrible customer service - which I have heard is worse now that cingular is AT&T.</p>
<p>I meant to say Sprint is terrible. Mostly t-mobile seems fine. My biggest complaint is that you can’t turn off text messaging even if you don’t want it.</p>
<p>I think Berurah’s son is at Duke. You might want to PM her for her opinion. We use Verizon and have loved it. When son travelled all over the US swimming competitively, Verizon service was top-notch.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I used to have T-Mobile, however the reception in a lot of areas is quite poor. I’ve since switched to Verizon.</p>
<p>We have used T-Mobile for several years. It’s been great, especially in major metro areas. Unfortunately, D is going to school in an area where there is no coverage … well, there IS coverage, but it’s roaming … so will have to change. We have been happy with T-Mobile, though.</p>
<p>Any thoughts about Verizon vs. ATT/Cingular? We will be deciding soon. Employee discount for both … I think Verizon comes out less/month. D will be in Greenville, SC.</p>
<p>AVOID T MOBILE LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!If anyone ever starts a class action suit against them, please contact me. They lie, have highly inexperienced, untrained staff, tell you something different everytime you call, overcharge, drop calls, TERRIBLE RECEPTION MANY LOCATIONS.
NEVER SIGN A SERVICE CONTRACT WITH THEM.</p>
<p>I’ve been using T-Mobile for over 5 years (ever since I got my driver’s license) and have had very few, if any, problems with them. I find their customer service to be very accommodating. My biggest qualm actually comes in the cell phone choices they offer. It’s important to note that T-Mobile doesn’t have roaming unless you are specifically on a regional plan, which most people don’t have. If you have a national plan there is no roaming, just areas where you can’t get service (which I have experienced only occassionally, mainly in rural areas. I’ve used it in MN/CA mostly but on vacation in Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, and Arizona I didn’t have trouble.)</p>
<p>My kids and I have a T-Mobile family plan. In general, it’s been fine, and I have had no trouble with the customer service. In fact, people bent over backwards to help me do something unsusual.</p>
<p>Reception-wise, I think it’s probably the weakest of the major plans. It hardly works at all in Maine, and there is a blind spot over my mother-in-law’s house on Cape Cod (I have to go about 40 yards down the driveway, and then the reception is fine). My daughter’s freshman dorm room was a 50-50 proposition, although the lounge in her dorm was fine. Every place she’s lived since then has been fine. There’s also about a 100-foot blind spot two blocks from my house on the only route to approach it from one direction; that’s annoying! Every network has its quirks, though.</p>
<p>Get the service that works best on that campus. I have had Sprint for years but it was bad at Harvard. Duke may have more than one good service, but don’t count on it. Poll the kids on the Duke board and they will know. It’s not worth the pain of having no reception in the kids room.</p>