Well, this was years ago, right after the Ma Bell breakup, but I got Sprint right after that. Every month I would get a bill. Every month I would pay what they said I owed. And every month I got a bill saying I hadn’t paid the entire bill and they were going to charge me for the late payment. This went on for three months, until I finally canceled with Sprint and moved on to another carrier.
I have had sprint for >10 years. Customer service has always been good for me. Not terribly fast, but no inordinately long waits and once I talk to someone my problem gets solved. To date, I am a fan. TMMV
This is very valuable advice, as I also live in the Twin Cities.
And so, based on your info, I will not be switching to Sprint regardless of the savings.
The Fi is not available everywhere. I would have to move my address 50 miles south or west, 150 miles north, or 100 miles east to be eligible for that plan, even though I have decent (barely) cel coverage right now.
I live in LA. It’s available here. I’ve just been under a rock, is all.
Consumer Cellular has been very helpful when I’ve called.
Coverage has been good so far. They use a lot of AT&Ts towers.
I get 250 mins talk, unlimited texts, and 1.5GB data for about $34 a month. That’s reasonable. I’ve never used up my data. I rarely use more than 900mb away from home. Most of my web use is at home with Wi-fi.
Out of interest, why do you hate them? They can be quirky, but my impression is that everything they commit to doing works extremely well and costs either nothing or a modest amount. When our benevolent Google overlords put all the cable & wireless companies out of business and run all global communications technology I think the world will probably be a better place.
I don’t hate them, but I want to because, I dunno, vague feelings of them being creepy and intrusive. I can’t even go to Target in peace without Google asking me if I want to check in. No! Stop following me, Google, and stop asking me to write reviews for every place I walk by.
But they’re just good at stuff, and every time I try to use the nightmare that is Waze, for example, I remind myself Google does the same thing, but about 100x better.
I don’t even care if Google is watching me shower. Make a not-shitty product and I’ll live with it.
Now that’s funny, because I consider Waze a superior product to Google Maps. Also, Google owns Waze.
I do feel the same way, to a certain extent. Google is good at everything. I don’t hate them, but I did recently read about the fiasco that was Google Books and how they basically digitized thousands upon thousands of books without bothering to get copyright permission first. They ended up settling with the authors for an unimaginable sum of money, but it was clear from Google’s attitude that they felt entitled to that data, and basically all of the world’s data, for the good of humanity blah blah blah. If you listen to anyone speak on the company’s behalf they are totally in creepy Big Brother Loves You territory.
The American people’s increasing comfort with continuous surveillance is an interesting subject by itself. I recently heard a Reply All podcast about the guy who invented pop-up ads. His invention effectively ushered in a flood of internet advertisements, but more distressingly, the aggregation and commodification of consumer data. He said his greatest regret is that his invention likely prevented the monetizing of internet services (the old fashioned way, like paying for a site piecemeal) and made the American public so accustomed to surveillance and data mining that we didn’t collectively flip our shit when Snowden broke the news about NSA surveillance. He feels at least partly responsible for the fact that we didn’t care.
Google Books is the best friend writers ever had, and the Author’s Guild suing Google over it was breathtakingly stupid. I’ve bought numerous books because I now know that the information I need is inside one that Google digitized. Libraries don’t have to see permission in order to put a book on a shelf, and Google Books is just a library for the 21st century.
Another happy Fi customer here. In addition to all that has been mentioned before, Fi is wonderful for international travelers. Your data plan is valid in 135 countries with no additional charge. Admittedly, in some countries it might be 3G instead of 4G LTE, there are no data roaming charges. Plus their international calling rates are crazy cheap - and no need to “sign up” for any plans either. There is just one plan.
Do you live in a big city? I ask because what fed me up was Waze’s godawful lack of understanding of how streets and traffic actually work. Routinely the app would direct me to turn onto a major street during rush hour just before making a left turn, even though the left lane has been jammed up for blocks and is impossible to get into from where they’ve directed me. Or the app would somehow think I could go through a major straight from a side street at 4:30 PM. No, Waze, I cannot just drive through Olympic Blvd. at this time of day without a light. It also has an annoying habit of asking me to take 9 different roads instead of 1 in order to save 2 minutes. Stop it, America! Google Maps is a little guilty of the last one, but not as bad.
There’s a rumor on the internets that Waze has implemented an “avoid difficult turns” feature, but I uninstalled the app a long time ago due to fuckery. It might be better now.
Waze is wonderful for highway driving, especially if you’re a leadfoot.