Went to the local Verizon store yesterday, and I'm now a former Sprint customer. It was a little pricey, buying 3 new smartphones, each being the Motorola Droid Razor Max HD. However the plan we chose cost less than what Sprint was charging, AND certainly waaaay less than our bill would have been after June 4th.
If you're a Sprint victim, you should be aware of this. As of June 4th, they are changing their roaming rates(?). What this means for me, is that everywhere I use my Sprint phone, I would be on Out-of Network Roaming. My $250 a month bill would probably soar to over $500 a month. What a sneaky way to get a rate increase without getting the FCC approval. What an under-handed, back-stabbing way to treat your customers. I know this will not affect everyone, but in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, it will. These are the areas that I run. The maps they provided showing the changes, clearly depicted I would be using Out of Network Roaming 100% of the time. There's times where I talk to my brother, who is also a driver. We can talk for hours while we're truckin' down the highways. Most of the time he's running the east coast, while I just bounce around in the middle of the country. The cost after June 4th, alone would be prohibitive.
So as the first paragraph stated I'm a former Sprint customer/victim. Verizon has 4G service in one of the small communities in the county where I live. I can actually use my new phone at my home, inside even. The only way we could use the Sprint service, was be in the correct part of the house, the right corner, and hold your phone perfectly still, while standing on your left-leg, with your right-arm, well you get the point.
Next with Verizon's Nation-Wide plan, no roaming, and I can tether to my laptop, no extra fee. We choose the 4gig Shared, but none of us care to view video via our phones. I don't surf the internet, just use it for looking up places, Google Maps, and visiting this forum. I don't have to do 34 resets on the road. I might be out the entire work week (M-F), but 10 hrs to get some sleep, eat, and clean truck, or whatever is not that much time to play around on the internet. I take my laptop, but do photo editing, or video editing. So this seems to fit us well.
So far the only "Con" is having to get everything into my new phone. Having to back to the Play store, download and install all of my apps. The transfer of my "People" (contacts) for my phone didn't do a good job. I had them in groups and the groups didn't transfer, so I must redo all those.
Summary, after having been a loyal Sprint customer for the last few decades I can say that they really, really suck!!! I wish there was another carrier for our local land-line (home phone). Sprint has the monopoly in this area for that. If there was, I'd dump them in a heartbeat. I can't just quit using the old land-line, because that's the only means I have for broad-band internet, DSL. I don't live in town where I could change to cable, I use Dish for my TV, no cable to where I live. So for now, I'm stuck with that aspect of Sprint. Maybe I'll find another house to move to where I can tell Sprint what part of my anatomy to kiss..
Dumped Sprint for Verizon
Discussion in 'Cellular - Voice - Data' started by Eaton18, May 26, 2013.
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As a long-term Verizon customer (since 2001), I've been unhappy with some of the changes they are making too. For example, they always had a "new every 2" discount, where I'd get an additional discount on a new phone when I upgraded and renewed my contract...in other words, I'd get my new phone cheaper than the 2-year contract price because I was a current customer. A customer loyalty incentive you might say. Now, they are charging a $30 "upgrade fee" in order to get a new phone. So, rather than saving $50-100 when I upgrade, I've got to dig into my pocket for an extra $30. I asked them what incentive I have to stick around..."ALL of the carriers are doing this." They told me I'm still getting off cheaper than somebody off the street, though, because they have a $35 activation fee to pay, where I only have a $30 upgrade fee.
Gee...thanks.
They are also talking about (in the future) transitioning to customers paying full retail price for the phones (like T-Mobile) and not having contracts. I asked if they were going to be reducing the monthly cost of the service to compensate the customers for the higher initial output and they looked at me like I was insane. Right now, sure you get the phone cheap....but they make up that "discount" over the life of the plan. They are doing away with the discount, but keeping the monthly price.
It is getting to the point where I'll probably drop my cell service. Frontier is going to be bringing broadband internet to my area in the next couple months, and when that happens I'm dropping this Verizon Wireless air card that is plugged into my computer. It is slow, and expensive. For example, in this last internet session, the "Max RX Rate (kbps) is 1,398.81....I used to surf the web at higher speeds 15 years ago in college using dial-up. I could get both broadband internet AND a land line phone at the house for what this air card is costing me...and once I have a land line? I really only need a cell phone for emergencies. One of those pre-paid phones would suffice and be considerably cheaper than any contract. Heck, $50 can get you "unlimited talk, text, and web" with a lot of these prepaid phones, where with a contract plan you've got to pay the $40/month fee for having a smart phone...PLUS your minutes....PLUS your texts....PLUS your data....friggin' ridiculous.
They are all in a race to see who can screw their customers out of the most cash...so at this point, I don't really think it really MATTERS which carrier you go with other than making sure their service covers the areas you'll be running in. Personally, I'm a bit torn...part of me wants to drop cell service completely....the other part of me wants to get a smart phone (never had one). Being able to search for numbers for local parts stores wherever I might be would have come in handy....far less intrusive than calling anybody I know who might be near a computer and then trying to explain to them what I need them to search for....but seeing as how I spend my work days driving, and get home every night where I've got a computer with a decent sized monitor, I'm not sure how much ACTUAL use I'd get from the phone. That just seems like it'd be an awful lot of money going out every month just for the rare occasion when it might come in handy.Eaton18 Thanks this. -
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