Which cellphone provider do you use? I’ve been with at&t forever. I am getting fed up with their billing practice. In the past, they had a dubious service that they bill you for unless you decline it. If you didn’t know there’s something you needed to decline, you were on the hook. It wasn’t much and I caught only months after. This time, they added a ghost line to my account. I called in December to get them remove it and adjust my bill. The phone call lasted over an hour because they said to remove it they needed to know if it was a phone or iPad or whatever. . Since it was a ghost line, nobody knew. I of course had no idea what it was for. They finally adjusted my bill and they said they cancelled the line. Except the line wasn’t cancelled. Back on the phone again for another hour with the customer service. It was infuriating. Time to shop around. Is Verizon better?
Verizon because it has the best coverage where I live. Other providers have a lot of holes in their coverage up here. I haven’t had service issues but they aren’t cheap and I feel like we pay a premium.
I looked at the price. Verizon price is not bad compared to what I pay to at&t.
Consider prepaid service.
We’ve been with AT&T for decades. Their billing practices have always been confusing but since their merger with DirecTv it’s gotten a lot worse.
Verizon. I’m happy with the service and coverage, they also do a good job when I go into the store for something.
First, make sure your phone will work on the Verizon network.
We were AT&T customers for many years. We switched to T-mobile in December and have been quite pleased.
I used to have T-mobile. They make it easy for going overseas. Their coverage is not good in my area.
They also try to sell DirectTV so bad. While I was on the phone for more than an hour to resolve my billing issue, I heard them 7 times trying to sell their other services including DirectTv. I don’t understand the tactic. A frustrated customer trying to resolve an elementary issue that shouldn’t have been in the first place. The best they could hope for would be I don’t drop them entirely, certainly not add more services for more frustration.
I’m pretty convinced that ATT is the best. I’ve looked at it a lot over the years and keep staying with ATT. You can usually talk them into a lower rate if you call and tell them you are going to have to switch because it is just too expensive. You keep the same data etc.
Verizon is the best so long as you have coverage in your area; even so, I believe that Verizon has the most extensive network in the US. T-Mobile has improved recently. AT&T and Sprint are the bottom of the barrel; Sprint regarding service reliability & AT&T regarding billing issues.
If you or others on the plan travel regularly overseas, you need GSM service, offered by AT&T and TMobile. I haven’t looked into other services for that reason. My son tried to convince me to shift to TMobile for apparent cost savings, but within a few weeks he told me he was frustrated with TMobile’s customer service and inconsisties between what he was being told In the meantime I figured out that I could get a 10% discount on my AT&T plan with my AARP membership, so not much difference in cost overall.
I use AT&T’s web site an app to monitor our plans and also make changes when needed-- or I use chat and get a transcript of any communications with AT&T. I do think that the billing is confusing as heck, but I like the fact that I can make changes online on my own any time I want. It was also a pleasant surprise recently when I wanted to move up to a plan with more data to know that the change could be made retroactive (to avoid overage charges on the old plan – but the new plans don’t have overage charges, they just throttle data use if you go over. They do have unlmited plans as well but I’m saving around $10-$15 each month by sticking with a 15 gig plan – actually 10 gig, but my AARP thing comes with 5 gigs of “bonus” data and rollover, and our family usage historically isn’t particularly high.
It’s a very competitive market so each company is perpetually offering something to entice customers away, but I don’t think any of these companies win any prizes when it comes to customer service and billing practices. I did have a great experience with Ting wireless recently – that’s a discount service that can be big savings for people who don’t use much data – but I was only using them temporarily as part of the process of porting out a landline number that I needed to convert to mobile in order to keep it.
I was with Sprint for years…no real complaints except it lacked coverage in certain areas which I discovered T-Mobile covered just fine. So I finally made the switch in December as well. I was incredibly surprised at how easy the process was–we kept our phones and our phone numbers and was up and running within minutes. So far I’ve been happy. And at $160/month for 4 lines unlimited everything and includes a subscription to Netflix, it’s hard to beat the price.
As for overseas travel, Sprint and T-Mobile have the most generous plans and are included. We used the Sprint one and it was seamless. We did spend a little bit because I wanted to upgrade data from 2G to 3G. I’m pretty sure T-Mobile is the same way. I haven’t looked lately, but I think ATT and Verizon charge quite a bit.
As for phones…yes you need to make sure your phone can switch (and is unlocked). Going from ATT to Verizon you will most likely have to get a new phone. ATT and T-Mobile use one system while Verizon and Sprint use another. However, for us it worked out fine because the iPhone 7 for Verizon/Sprint covers both (but oddly the ATT/T-Mobile version doesn’t!)
With phones, you can have:
A. GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile, most outside the US), CDMA (Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular), or both. Note: some GSM phones may not have all of the four bands, so they may not be usable in all GSM countries.
B. Carrier locked or unlocked. Most sold through carriers are locked to the carrier.
C. Carrier-specific software pre-loaded or not carrier-specific software. May allow for carrier-specific features more easily.
The most portable between carriers (including when traveling to be able to use a local carrier) would be a dual GSM/CDMA unlocked phone.
Note that there are other carriers that resell service from one or more of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, and/or US Cellular.
I’ve been with each of them over the years. I liked Sprint the least because of poor coverage. I liked the coverage of Verizon but didn’t like the inflated plan prices. I was OK with AT&T but dropped them because TMobile had the best rate packages and also included allowing you to use your phone as a hotspot–I love the $60 for 2 lines unlimited text, voice, data, plus free international data and texts for folks 55+ (tax & fees included). We brought our own phones so we only pay for service and pay nothing for phones.
S and I have iphones and D and H have android phones (OnePlus). We’ve been with TMobile now from years ago, then tried all the other carriers and are now back with TMobile for several years since stopping our iPhone 5 that we got with Sprint at BestBuy awhile back and switching to OnePlus One.
The big thing is to find out how your reception is. If you don’t catch one or more of the carriers, they won’t work for you. We currently all live in locations where TMobile works and it also works well enough when we travel.
We have ATT prepaid multi-line plan.
My two oldest kids have the $45 plan with 6GB data, and my youngest and I the $30 plan.
So normally that would cost $150 a month.
But when you add extra lines on the multi line plan, you get discounts and we also signed up for auto pay and that saves another $5 per person.
So it costs only $100 a month for the 4 phones.
I’ve been very happy with T-mobile after switching from Verizon 4 years ago. I travel frequently to Asia and Europe . Using my phone overseas is seamless. I have noticed a few pockets in rural areas in tge US where coverage isn’t as good as Veizon was, but for where I travel coverage has been fine.
I used to have T-mobile when I traveled extensively. No coverage in my area. at&t did one more thing to me. When they are canceling the ghost line from my account, they canceled my phone line instead. Got back on the phone. Another hour later, it got fixed. I spent grand total of 4 hours to address the stupid mistake. They are worse than dealing with the government bureaucracy.
I have had AT&T for years but recently had a very bad experience with them and have been researching my options. We have three lines eligible for upgrades. Someone got into my account and ordered three new iPhones for those lines. Fortunately I received an email about the upgrades before they were sent. If I had not, they would have received and activated the phones and my phones would have been deactivated. Apparently this is happening quite often with AT&T (don’t know about other carriers).
My issue with AT&T was the customer service after the hack. Regular customer service answered my call pretty quickly but told me to call the fraud line. Two agents gave me the wrong number for the fraud line. When I found the number on my own and called the fraud department, I was on hold for three hours waiting for them to pick up. I was fortunate as many people have waited for the fraud department to answer and then were disconnected when the fraud department closed for the night. Fraud was able to stop the transaction, but blamed me by claiming my phone must have a virus. All scans have shown our phones to be clean. We already had a PIN, which is there way to try to prevent fraud, but it obviously didn’t help in our case.
I have been looking at Verizon, but I will look at T-Mobile after reading this thread.
Sadly, have heard most/all carriers are being targeted by thieves, especially porting phone lines, since security for this has been very lax. Once the phone line is ported in 2-factor ID, it’s a lot easier to get into financial and other accounts.
On hold for three hours! I should consider myself lucky to waste only an hour although it took 4 calls to get it resolved. at&t customer service does not inspire confidence.
What do they have to do to get a new line on your account?