When I wanted to get my husband a new phone two years ago, I just walked into a T-Mobile store and picked one out, expecting to pay the $130. The salesman told me that if I signed a year contract, he’d give it to me for free. Ditto for my daughters. I got them a free phone last December for signing a one-year contract. Of course it’s a $200 penalty if I want to cancel before the year, which is more than the phone costed. (That’s why they’ll stay with T-Mobile until December while we’re switching as soon as we get our new phones.)
I’m a former T-Moble customer. I was very pleased with their service and only left because I was able to get a better deal through Verizion.
While we’re at it, what about Virgin Mobile? (are they affiliated with T-Mobile?) I have been thinking about their $0.18/minute “pay as you go/no contracts” since I would hardly ever use a cell phone, but it’s nice to have in certain instances.
Well it appears T-Mobile is the way to go. I’m often convinced when posting things like this that the straightdopers are [for the most part] pretty honest. And we’re definitely going with these phones. I think they arrive on Monday 
I have two phones, my personal one with Sprint and my work one with T-Mobile. The difference between the two is profound.
Sprint has fantastic coverage and the quality of the sound on my calls is flawless. Calls are never dropped and I am rarely unable to get a signal.
T-Mobile on the otherhand is utterly atrocious. Using this service is like going back in time to the era of bag phones. Calls are dropped almost constantly, it’s nearly certain that in a given conversation you’ll have to have the person repeat themselves. I often have to replay a voicemail 2 or 3 times in order to hear a message in it’s entirety due to the message breaking up. Calls are frequently kicked straight to voicemail between coworkers for no good reason and often calls simply “fail” or elicit a error message. I never thought a modern service could be so terrible.
Its unclear how much of these issues are unique to Chicago and I cannot comment on customer service, but from a purely technical perspective T-Mobile is barely better than two cans connected by a string.
I know this is so passe, but LOL.
Funny, I’m also in Chicago and have had precisely the opposite experience. I used to have Working Assets Wireless, which basically resells Sprint service, and it sucked - dropped calls, practically no reception in or near my apartment, voice mails that didn’t show up in my in box for 2 days. I switched to T-Mobile, and have nothing but positive things to say about the sound quality AND the customer service. I’ve even used my phone quite successfully in Europe.
Well, I’m in the Chicago area, and I don’t know the details, but one of my friends at work announced today that she’s reached the end of her patience with T-Mobile and was going to cancel her service with them. My response to her was “Get Cingular. Everyone in my family has it, and we have absolutely no problems.”
Although that’s not entirely true. My brother who lives out-of-state doesn’t have Cingular, because he lives in a little Wisconsin town and his house happens to sit in a little Cingular blind-spot. But that wouldn’t affect her service or coverage. as I don’t think she’ll be visiting him.
I’ve used Sprint for a long time, I still have the same account and number from when I got my first cell phone close to 10 years ago, and in that time I’ve seen the full evolution of Sprint’s service. Their customer service needs a lot of work, it’s much better than it once was, but it’s not their best trait still. Their pricing was once really bad, nowadays with the fair and flexible package I’m happier with what I pay month to month. Your description of their coverage and service is similar to what I experienced a couple years back. There was a period where their voicemails had a habit of getting lost for a couple days and some big holes in their coverage. The sound quality has always been top notch and connection were strong when you had a signal, but finding a signal used to be iffy. They made a very public investment into their local infrastructure and the improvement was marked, it occurred probably 3 years ago. Since then I’ve had not a single issue with them.
To be fair, it’s possible that part of our issue with T-Mobile is related to the phones, but we have about 3 varieties and a couple people use new Razr phones they bought themselves and everyone has persistent trouble. It’s a sales company so we’re definitely what you’d call power users, taking and making upwards of 50 calls a day.
Oh no. I had Cingular and it was terrible.
I think we’re going to have to play rock-paper-scissors.
Well, I had TMo for a number of years without complaint untill we moved into our new house. Right in the middle of the city and we couldn’t get a signal in our kitchen. We went with Cingular, then with AT&T (bought out Cingular) and when that happened our nights went from 7 to 9 pm. We didn’t catch it for a few months, never having a reason to check untill we went over minutes on a couple phone bills. By then they told us it was too late to do anything about the change.
So we were stuck with 7 pm nights.
As soon as the contract was up we switched to Cellular One (free incoming calls). Would have went back to TMo if the service in our Kitchen could be guaranteed. :smack:
9 pm nights.
We’ve had T-Mobile for about three years (changed from Sprint). I like the service, even if our house is not in the strongest signal range (per the map on the website, and from experience). I feel the signal strength map on the T-mobile site is accurate, to a point. I did spend a few days up north in an area that was supposed to get signal, and got none, but that is rare.
I did a sort of road trip this spring around Lake Superior this spring for 2 weeks and even in remote places had coverage most of the time. I was impressed. Also have had complete coverage in Ireland. International coverage with GSM phones is a big plus!
One reason we changed from Sprint was the fact they consistantly double billed us and trying to clear that up with their pathetic customer service was a nightmare. We have had wonderful customer service with T-Mobile.
Another happy T-Mobile customer checking in (gee, we could all call each other for free 24 hrs a day and chat!) Have been with them almost 4 years now.
I had Sprint once, reception was horrible and their customer service was even worse. T-Mobile has always been reliable…even when we went to Hawaii, no extra charges and connection was perfect even with calls from there to Germany.
Speaking of which, dear T-Mobile employees/salespeople…if I should take my T-Mobile phone to Europe…what do I need to do beforehand, will it work just like in the USA (I have the mobile phone international connection through Powernet so it is cheap) and what charges, or extra charges, am I looking at? I know T-Mobile has a big market share, at least in Germany, and was just wondering.
Had T-Mobile for three years now, and no complaints in SF, Riverside, New York, Boston, or Chicago.
I switched to T-Mobile over two years ago and I couldn’t be happier. A T-Mobile rep would have to come to my house and kick my cat to get me to switch to another company.
There are very few places where I lose signal entirely. I am a pretty low maintenance customer, so I have had minimal experience with their customer service, so I really can’t give an opinion on that (every rep is nice and helpful when you are buying something from them )
Another Happy T-Mobile customer checking in. We’ve been with them over two years, and aside from a dropped call and the occasional missing or late text message, had no problems with the service.
If you’ve never travelled before, make sure you call customer care to ensure you have the world dialling and roaming features on your account. You can look up roaming rates on the web site–it’s a per minute charge, which varies by country and none of your normal rate plan charges or minutes apply (e.g., mobile to mobile calls on a family plan will be charged the roaming rate even if you’re in the same hotel room.) Also make sure you have the international roamers customer care number, which is toll free from your phone wherever you are.
You want to be sure your phone is multiband, especially 900Mhz which is used over large parts of Europe. If you want to go really cheap and need to use your phone a lot while travelling, consider getting your phone SIM unlocked so you can use a prepaid SIM overseas. This is good if you’ll be doing a lot of local calling. Customer care can take care of it for you–takes up to a week to get the code back depending on the phone. You can unlock one phone per line per ninety day period.
While you’re travelling, if you don’t want random one minute charges, keep your phone turned OFF. Otherwise, there’s a one minute call delivery charge whenever someone tries to call you and gets sent to voicemail.
Hope this helps!
Very much so, thanks! My SO is going to Germany for about 6 weeks next year and we were sort of wondering how we could work out the cell phone situation.
We have the Razor phones…and will most certainly head to our local T-Mobile store (two blocks away) for info before he leaves.
I do know that cell phones (they call a cell phone a “Handy” in Germany…go figure) are quite pricey to use over there. Calling from a land line to a “handy” is more expensive for a land line owner than a regular phone call, so conversations are brief.