[Tfug] New phone/provider...

[Adrian]

On Wednesday 08 February 2006 16:56, Claude Rubinson wrote:
[snip]
> I just went through evaluating new phone/plan combinations and large
> reviews (see, e.g., Consumer Reports for a report from just a couple
> of months ago) consistently rate Verizon first and T-Mobile second in
> terms of quality, customer support, etc.  T-Mobile is definitely more
> geek friendly.  Cingular (the other GSM provider) consistently is
> rated last.
> 

That seems to pretty much jive with what I had read in other places as well. 
For GSM, Verizon has the best coverage, the others all work fine in town, but 
fade into roaming or out of service outside populated areas. Then again... so 
what... 99.99% of the time your in a service area, and the other times its a 
short distance to one. T-Mobile is the only company that will unlock your 
phone, just requiring a fully paid phone or 3 months good standing, and will 
let you use most anything to connect.

The only good thing I can say about Sprint is that they have coverage 
everywhere in the US... Then again I have lots of bad things to say. I just 
got off more than an hour long call with them on why my phone no longer 
works. Customer support -> tech support -> advanced tech support. In short, 
they said:
1) Nothing is wrong with my phone (despite the fact it work fine before).
2) The fact that my phone hangs up in data mode calling Dakotacom must mean 
that Dakotacom's modems are bad (despite the fact I can call the modem no 
problem in voice mode).
3) They had "never heard" of using anything but Sprint as the ISP in data mode 
and it has never worked any other way.
4) I should be dialing #2932 (the Sprint Vision number), despite the fact I 
don;t even have a Vision phone or plan.
5) They can;t support me because I don;t run Windows and you have to run 
Windows to use their dialer program.
6) I need to buy a Vision contract and pay $$$.

Adrian