I'm looking to get 2 cell phones for the family.
I have a no-contract deal with Sprint, with an old phone that is on its last leg. And besides, other than the price on the plan I have, Sprint SUCKS! Trying to get a human on the line can take anywhere from 5 min to half an hour, and they are usually unable to help me if any in-depth knowledge is involved.
So now I'm probably going to do a one-year contract with a free / low-cost phone
We will possibly go with one of those shared-minutes plans, with long distance included.
Each service provider seems to have phones made just for them. Are there any that you can transfer from one company to another? Or is your current phone worthless if you switch companies?
Another thing I'm wondering is - which companies are ones to avoid. I would put Sprint in this category.
Which ones allow you to carry over unused minutes? Cingular supposedly allows this, but I've heard they are not so good otherwise.
Are there any good consumer sites covering what kinds of questions to ask, what good features to look for, and what to watch out for and avoid?
Whic companies in your experience have really goo customer service?
Get this: I caught Sprint adding a late charge because they posted my payment several days AFTER they had received it, and the posting date was a day or two AFTER it had cleared my bank!!!
So I wrote them a letter protesting this, and I got a voicemail back a month later from someone with a name like Lameesha who sounded as if she made it all the way to eighth grade. She wanted to straighten me out about payment posting. She said they don't credit my account for up to ten days, because they have to be sure that checks clear their customers' banks and haven't bounced!! So I got a credit for the late charge but they will only do it this one time.....really generous - we'll screw you and the first time you catch it, you can get credit, but you're out of luck after that.
The neat part about it is, you're paying for the month in advance.
OK, I'm getting off track.
What else should we look for? While they have some fancy higher-priced phones (Nextel has a "Swiss Army" phone with a bunch of survival information stored in it, etc.), I'm tempted to avoid extra features of unexplored value.
Also I heard that some companies are lousy at that direct-connect technology.
Your advice, please.