Phone carriers

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by 820327, Jun 12, 2016.

  1. alright so im looking at getting a new phone and carrier within the next week and have been thinking about all the different carriers out there. Now im not one for making a thread like this but i am not familiar with any carriers other than at&t (just that ive never had an issue with them besides going over data for the month and getting charged an extra fee) and getting real feedback from a community like EMC would allow for more accurate "data" than looking around on the internet because there is no telling what reviews are real and which are fake. Im curious as to what carriers you guys/gals have and what you think about them or just what carrier you would prefer. Any and all feedback is welcomed and much appreciated. thanks

    by the way i have done plenty of research on which carrier offers what services but who knows other than people that have dealt with them if they really offer what they say they do.

    -numbers
  2. I have Verizon and they've been pretty great as long as I've had them. Service is good, the prices are good for what you get, and the customer service has been really efficient in my experience. I had a situation where I just called to get my international options changed and the lady ended up giving me an extra discount on top of my government discount and giving me extra free data for a year.
  3. My Dad, Brother, and I are on the same plan with Verizon we have 20GB to share between us. I've had no trouble with Verizon and great coverage for my area in NW Indiana, LTE just about everywhere I go in NW Indiana :D. I like speed testing the towers as well. You'd be looking at down speeds of 30-80 Mbps and up speeds of 10-40 Mbps. These speeds to vary on the area and can be lower than the ranges I have here, however I've never had trouble in a major city with speed because Verizon probably gave the LTE towers a huge boost in the major cities such as Chicago, IL.

    Verizon also offers a free service where you can check how much data you have left for the month. You dial #DATA (#3282) and a machine will answer at the other end, that machine will send you a text message with the information. That's the service I use frequently because my brother gobbles up the data with his videos and I want to know how much data I have left before the cycle ends :p.
  4. Att does that last thing also
  5. that is sarcasm right about the pizza and all? lol i was curious about metro pcs as well but cant find much info anywhere though i have heard from one other individual that it is great and has the same option as tmobile when it comes to streaming music all you want through spotify/pandora etc without using any data.
  6. Sprint, because we can here you now.
  7. Sprint you get service in alot of places and the unlimited data plan is amazing! They have the latest phones and their customer service is amazing.
  8. Personally, I'm with Walmart Family Mobile.
    They're okay. I pay between $45 and $50 a month for unlimited talk, text, and web with 2 GB of "speed boost". Basically, it lets you use up 2 GB of data for your web surfing and then your connection slows down after that. If you connect to a wifi source, it shoots back up though. Overall, they're pretty good. The signal feeds off of other towers when traveling, so it's a decent choice.
  9. the music/video streaming how is it when your out and about? what i mean by that is, is it slow/fast/or in between? that is the main thing between t mobile/metro pcs that i like though i was curious on the speed of streaming
  10. I'm going add my favorite here and well... be aware that some heavy personal bias follows. Also: what works for me (in Netherlands/Europe) doesn't have to apply to you.

    I've tried a few carriers in the past and eventually stuck with T-Mobile. At first because this is a German operator and I happen to visit Germany on regular occasions. And being able to use certain T-Mobile facilities there (and cheaper roaming) was a major pro for me.

    However, all this changed dramatically in the past years and right now I have totally lost the intention of even bothering to look for other carriers (provided that T-Mob doesn't become too excessively expensive).

    Here's the thing... T-Mobile cares for its customers, or at least they did.

    Remember the massive earthquakes in Japan a few years back? The major one stuck on a Friday evening (local time). How do I know? Because I saw it. A few weeks before those events I discovered that my gf's grand parents (not really, but she calls them as much) had recently purchased a PS3. And I knew that it also had the PSEye because my gf told me how much they liked "EyePet", a PS3 game I once suggested. Seems a visiting (grand?) child really enjoyed that one.

    So then it suddenly hit me: it should be possible to set up a video chat between those two devices. (in case you're unaware: the PSEye is basically a camera with a build-in microphone, which makes video chatting ideal). My gf e-mailed instructions their way and it worked. Great fun (I really enjoy seeing her talk to her family while I can't understand one word which is being said) :p

    That weekend the idea was more or less the same: a quick chat session and right during that session the quake hit. Let's just say that it wasn't very pleasant to see. Also didn't take long for the video to shut down completely. And it's kinda weird how you can go into auto pilot. First thing my gf does is grab her cellphone and she called. Not to have a whole conversation but to see if everything was still ok. Only problem was that the batteries gave out, which caused some severe frustrations.

    Next thing I know is I grab my cellphone and pushed it in her hands. Immediately wondering wth that call was going to cost me. Using a cellphone is more expensive than a landline. And using a cellphone to call Japan while you're in the Netherlands....

    Anyway, all turned out to be alright. The family had to sleep outside during that evening but the next day the damage to the walls was already fixed.

    So the next week I got a message from T-Mobile: because of the events I didn't have to pay anything, all calls to Japan (1 in my case) were ignored; free of charge.

    From there on I never had any intention to look for another carrier again.
    TomvanWijnen and 607 like this.
  11. Wow! Thanks for sharing the story!
    Yeah, T-Mobile seems quite great to me, too.
    I use KPN though, because it's the only "carrier" (I didn't even know that word) I know of that provides unrestricted prepaid. I can upgrade as rarely as I want, and I somehow get free credit too.
    I upgrade with €10,- like once in two or three years, and then get €5,- extra for free. :p
    Yeah, I don't call or text a whole lot... :rolleyes:
  12. Just say no to Sprint.

    Long story short, I suffered with Sprint's terrible internet for years. I recently switched to Verizon and it was 10x better. (10x is actually an understatement if you compare my real world throughput rate.)

    Now, when my youngest cries on a long drive, I just stream video to my phone from youtube.
    OriginalScuf likes this.