Again I researched mobile phone companies and availability.
What I found was what sounded like a dream plan. $25.00 a month for unlimited texting, unlimited web/data and 300 minutes of talk time. Since my daughter uses her phone for mostly text messages - this seemed ideal for her. For me - it also seemed great - even though I might have to jump to the next level of cost to cover voice calling.
So, I went to the local Best Buy and purchased a $14.99 Keocera Jax and a $25.00 plan with Virgin Mobile. I tried it for a month. Everything was great. Text messages went out and came back quickly and clearly; call quality was excellent. I could make and receive calls anywhere in my home (which is something we had been unable to do with Metro PCS) and had the same luck with text messages. I was sold.
I saved up money and as soon as our month was up for renewal with Metro PCS, I went back to Best Buy and purchased two LG Rumor Touch phones and top up cards to pay for $25.00 Beyond Talk Plans for my daughter and myself.
Loved the phones. Things were good. Customer service was awesome. I thought it was a match made in heaven.
Then came the first weekend in September. All text messaging went "bye-bye". I sent an email through the website - and didn't get a reply to almost two weeks. I found out that there was a Virgin Mobile page on Facebook - went to it and found out there (NOT on the website) that there was a system outage. Joined the fan page on Facebook to get updates.
Yeah.
Right.
Updates were few and far between.
They said the problem was fixed by Monday - but my daughter and I had no text messages. I contacted VM Social support and THAT took almost two weeks to hear back.
I must say that now that I am working with someone - I'm at least getting daily emails.
HOWEVER....
The problems continue to grow...
*Text messaging is still sporadic
*Alerts that my daughter and I had been subscribed to prior to the outage (and are still subscribed to) are not arriving via text messages.
*Web access is spotty for my daughter and non-existent for me
*While I am on an all-inclusive plan ($40 per month for unlimited text, data and web and 1200 minutes of talk time...) I am suddenly being charged PER TEXT at the rate of .15 per plain text and .25 per multimedia text. (This started after I spoke with a "Tier 3" consultant Wednesday evening.)
*Coverage within the home is now spotty. I cannot make calls anywhere in the house (prior to this I was able to make calls almost anywhere in our home)and I need to be in certain locations of our home to send or receive text messages.
Annoying - absolutely.
Getting fixed - I certainly hope so.
Do I want to find a different carrier? At this point I'm not completely sure.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Mobile Frustrations
It seems I never pick "the right" mobile phone company.
Either that - or once I pick a good company - they go down the drain.
Over the years, we've used a lot of different companies for our mobile phone needs.
We started with a contract plan with Nextel in about 2000. After they started adding more and more to our already expensive plan - we canceled and tried prepaid - going to Trac Fone.
Trac Fone worked for a while, but the cost for calling was high...so we started looking again for a new plan.
We then went to ATT and loved it. The phones were good, the service great, the cost reasonable. When our son and daughter traveled to London, we made sure through ATT that they could call home and put international calling on the phones for the trip. What we had been told and what actually happened/we were charged for - were two different things. At this time, ATT became Cingular and their whole attitude changed. As soon as we could - we left ATT/Cingular.
I researched all the plans available at the time - and then contacted T-Mobile. Their customer service was wonderful and they set us up with a great plan for hubby and myself at a good cost and with OK phones. Time to renew to contract and we did - we were so happy with the service. We added on a phone for a child as well. All was good until the child got a "love interest" - suddenly - there were no more minutes on the shared minute plan - but T-Mobile never bothered to tell us (and this was before the days of being able to check usage online...). $600 in extra minute charges. I complained to T-Mobile's customer service and asked them why they couldn't send a text message to the main number on the account stating that all the minutes were used - or to cut the phones off. They had no answer, but did take off some of the charges. Next month, the same thing and I had, had it. I had already asked them to shut off phone service if the minutes got used - they said they would and they didn't. Having completed out one year contract - I canceled service. THEN - they tried to tell me I had made a verbal commitment to a two-year contract and they wanted to charge me an early cancellation fee for two phones. We are still fighting that one.
From there...the older kids - with jobs and income of their own - got their own plans under their own names. So I just had to worry about myself, the husband and two of the kids...
We were back to pre-paid.
We tried Net 10 - but the kids were into texting and since texts were charged on a per text basis - they used up their allotment quickly. Not good.
We tried ATT/Cingular Pay As You Go. This actually seemed to work well for us. Hubby barely used his phone, so topping his phone up every two months was good. Putting an unlimited text option for $20 onto the big text child's phone worked too - except then she only had $5.00 for calls for an entire month. The other child - used calls more - but $25 didn't go far enough for him. For me - most months, the $25 worked well - but when I was working - even $50 wasn't enough to cover my calls and text messages. At over $100 a month - this was getting too pricey for us.
Considering that by this time my husband was permanently disabled and we were living on a fixed income (disability payments) - we qualified for a government assisted phone. It is a Trac Phone and my husband uses it. He gets free time each month, and sometimes I need to put more time on his phone. When we first got the phone, I took advantage of a promotion available at the time, that doubled all purchased minutes for the life of the phone. So he is set for phone time and is happy.
Also by this time, the older of the remaining children now had a job and so got his own phone from Metro PCS. Researching again, I went to Metro PCS for the younger child and my phone needs. For the $80 a month we were spending - we got much more in a mobile phone than we had ever gotten before.
But then troubles with service and the phones started piling up. By the third phone replacement I was fed up. While at the store the sales person told me "deal with it" and he didn't care if I went to another company - I took his advice and left Metro PCS for what I thought was greener pastures....
Either that - or once I pick a good company - they go down the drain.
Over the years, we've used a lot of different companies for our mobile phone needs.
We started with a contract plan with Nextel in about 2000. After they started adding more and more to our already expensive plan - we canceled and tried prepaid - going to Trac Fone.
Trac Fone worked for a while, but the cost for calling was high...so we started looking again for a new plan.
We then went to ATT and loved it. The phones were good, the service great, the cost reasonable. When our son and daughter traveled to London, we made sure through ATT that they could call home and put international calling on the phones for the trip. What we had been told and what actually happened/we were charged for - were two different things. At this time, ATT became Cingular and their whole attitude changed. As soon as we could - we left ATT/Cingular.
I researched all the plans available at the time - and then contacted T-Mobile. Their customer service was wonderful and they set us up with a great plan for hubby and myself at a good cost and with OK phones. Time to renew to contract and we did - we were so happy with the service. We added on a phone for a child as well. All was good until the child got a "love interest" - suddenly - there were no more minutes on the shared minute plan - but T-Mobile never bothered to tell us (and this was before the days of being able to check usage online...). $600 in extra minute charges. I complained to T-Mobile's customer service and asked them why they couldn't send a text message to the main number on the account stating that all the minutes were used - or to cut the phones off. They had no answer, but did take off some of the charges. Next month, the same thing and I had, had it. I had already asked them to shut off phone service if the minutes got used - they said they would and they didn't. Having completed out one year contract - I canceled service. THEN - they tried to tell me I had made a verbal commitment to a two-year contract and they wanted to charge me an early cancellation fee for two phones. We are still fighting that one.
From there...the older kids - with jobs and income of their own - got their own plans under their own names. So I just had to worry about myself, the husband and two of the kids...
We were back to pre-paid.
We tried Net 10 - but the kids were into texting and since texts were charged on a per text basis - they used up their allotment quickly. Not good.
We tried ATT/Cingular Pay As You Go. This actually seemed to work well for us. Hubby barely used his phone, so topping his phone up every two months was good. Putting an unlimited text option for $20 onto the big text child's phone worked too - except then she only had $5.00 for calls for an entire month. The other child - used calls more - but $25 didn't go far enough for him. For me - most months, the $25 worked well - but when I was working - even $50 wasn't enough to cover my calls and text messages. At over $100 a month - this was getting too pricey for us.
Considering that by this time my husband was permanently disabled and we were living on a fixed income (disability payments) - we qualified for a government assisted phone. It is a Trac Phone and my husband uses it. He gets free time each month, and sometimes I need to put more time on his phone. When we first got the phone, I took advantage of a promotion available at the time, that doubled all purchased minutes for the life of the phone. So he is set for phone time and is happy.
Also by this time, the older of the remaining children now had a job and so got his own phone from Metro PCS. Researching again, I went to Metro PCS for the younger child and my phone needs. For the $80 a month we were spending - we got much more in a mobile phone than we had ever gotten before.
But then troubles with service and the phones started piling up. By the third phone replacement I was fed up. While at the store the sales person told me "deal with it" and he didn't care if I went to another company - I took his advice and left Metro PCS for what I thought was greener pastures....
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