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Featured Replies

I’m tired of paying $165 for two Verizon lines with max family plan discount. I am thinking of switching to visible by Verizon, because their service(Verizon towers) is good in areas I go. It will be $70ish a month for two lines in their unlimited plus plan. 
 

any experience with these carriers? Recommendations?

Edited by BurntOrange&White

Just now, BurntOrange&White said:

I’m tired of paying $165 for two Verizon lines with max family plan discount. I am thinking of switching to visible by Verizon, because their service is good in areas I go. It will be $70ish a month for two lines in their unlimited plus plan. 
 

any experience with these carriers? Recommendations?

Its all the exact same shit. You get tier 2 experience on overloaded networks and deprioritized. Only time you will ever notice is at huge sporting events or very large festival type things where it's oversubscribed and even then you will just be the last person not uploading anything because no one is uploading anything. 

 

after my divorce, I did the pre-pay thing with "Boost Mobile", and if I'm being honest, it was 100% fine.  

Go with Mint Mobile we switched a couple of years ago. Saves us a shit ton of money. No coverage issues. 

I used Visible for a couple of years, no issues. My GF used it for all of 2024, no issues either.

When I booted my son off of my Verizon account, he went with Visible.  He seems to like it fine, but he owned his phone.

My parents recently switched to consumer cellular. It’s been ok. Not horrible, but not great.

Definitely using the “old” networks, usually have reception,  sometimes not.

Sometimes that call is bouncing around a min before connecting. Tells me a lot about their routing. 

1 minute ago, chainsaw said:

what the fuck is MVNO

My Very Noxious Odor

Have the AARP Consumer Cellular deal. $29/mo and 5 gigs of data which is plenty for me. I mainly wifi. Less than half of what AT&T was gouging me and no coverage issues.

  • Author
6 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

We use Spectrum mobile and have had zero problems. I believe they use Verizon.

$30/mo unlimited.

image.thumb.png.7223be3e83f3817eeb933fb0cf49f882.png

 

Requires Spectrum internet But if you get the two phone lines it knocks the internet price down so much. All this for $100/mo. Currently pay $85/mo for ATT 1gig internet so 250/mo for phones/internet down to $100/mo 

 

 

May go into a Spectrum store and talk.

Edited by BurntOrange&White

Right. I forgot about the internet requirement, we set ours up so long ago. Can't complain there either. It's been consistent.

If anyone in household or related is over 55, look at TMobile 55+ plans. They're really cheap and you aren't with an MVNO. Their cellular home internet is cheap as well for 55+. Only the account holder needs to be over 55, many other users can join the family regardless of age.

  • Author
On 2/19/2025 at 11:37 PM, gofuckyourself said:

Right. I forgot about the internet requirement, we set ours up so long ago. Can't complain there either. It's been consistent.

Ended up switching over to Spectrum Mobile, they paid off the remaining balance of my wife's phone as well as mine which was about $975. All I had to do was purchase a 3rd line to get the pay off feature(cheapest phone $80+$20 by the gig plan+Activation fee for $126). So all in all not bad to spend $126 to pay off $975 balance. All I have to do now is call and cancel the 3rd line now that payment has went through and our new monthly bill for Internet/Cell is $100 vs $250(ATT Internet/Verizon Cell). 

 

 

Note regarding that cancellation: They're refunding me $76 of that $126 because I canceled and returning within the 14 day return window. So basically only spent $50 to pay off that $975.

Edited by BurntOrange&White

But then you’re stuck with tmobile, aka sprint.
Fuck no. 

I’ve seen this sentiment a few times recently and am curious about it. I know years ago sprint used to suck such as when I lived in Hyde park but would have to wonder around my back yard to get it to work

But I recently switched to T-Mobile a few years ago and it’s been great. Better than dealing with att
1 hour ago, Updawg said:


I’ve seen this sentiment a few times recently and am curious about it. I know years ago sprint used to suck such as when I lived in Hyde park but would have to wonder around my back yard to get it to work

But I recently switched to T-Mobile a few years ago and it’s been great. Better than dealing with att

 

Here's Sprints guiding "philosophy", you may find it very similar to that of one Mack Brown: "Fuck you, pay me."

 

First, why would they buy out T-Mobile, but keep their name?

That's easy. Because Sprint had completely trashed their name by the time they bought T-Mobile. So they keep the name, and voila, the emperor has new clothes.

Now, back before sprint bought out Nextel, and really before Nextel was a big deal or was just becoming a big deal, sprint just loved to fuck people over. One such example revolves around day/night minutes. Remember those? Remember how they worked? 7a-7p: daytime minutes, which you had a limited amount of; 7p-7a: nighttime minutes, which at the time were "unlimited." The kicker here is that if you were on a call before 7a, it was nighttime minutes, and would remain nighttime minutes until the call was completed. Even if that call went beyond 7a.

So at the time, I was driving back and forth about 75min for work. I'd leave just a bit after 6, and about 6:20 I'd call up a buddy of mine and we'd chat during our commutes. We'd both arrive about the same time to work, about 7:25-7:30. Ok, no big deal, right? Take advantage of those nighttime minutes, right? Even if it's only 30 minutes, right? At the time that savings made a difference.

Now the fun part. I started noticing our call dropped every morning. I altered my routine just enough to see if a different tower would make a difference. It did not. So I called Sprint to see if there was an issue, or at least let them know there might be one. No big deal right? Yeah, they didn't give a single fuck. So for 6 months, every morning, and the occasional Saturday morning, I documented every single call. When it started, when it dropped, and where I was at the time. From time to time I left earlier/later enough to be on a different tower. Nothing made a difference, and by 7:03 in the morning, the call would drop. However, it never dropped on a Saturday morning.

Once again, I presented Sprint with the data. Fucks given? Zero.

 

So what was really happening there? What was the issue? The issue is they were intentionally cycling their towers to drop existing nighttime minute calls. Pretty sleazy.

We won't even get into their billing "discrepancies", either.

So for me, that was enough to drop their service. I moved to Nextel, and never had another issue. Well, until sprint bought them out, and guess what? Within 3 months it was back to the same bullshit. Dropping calls when minutes changed, major billing issues, the works.

Dropped them and never looked back. If they were the only carrier left, I'd do without.

17 hours ago, Updawg said:


I’ve seen this sentiment a few times recently and am curious about it. I know years ago sprint used to suck such as when I lived in Hyde park but would have to wonder around my back yard to get it to work

But I recently switched to T-Mobile a few years ago and it’s been great. Better than dealing with att

Same here. I dropped Verizon after 20+ years and moved over to T-Mobile a year ago. I've been super pleased with the service. At least where I live in Central Houston, the network has been stronger than Verizon’s and it’s been flawless on all my trips to Europe. No complaints.

My FiL was a big wig on the mobile network hardware side for his entire career (not with the providers, with a key vendor for them). He told me a year or two ago that T-Mobile is actually ahead of AT&T and Verizon right now. They acquired a lot of primo spectrum in the Sprint deal, I think.

I've been using Mint (T-Mobile) for a couple years. Before that I tried Visible (Verizon). Mint has been better for me - I'm inside the loop in Houston. Like someone said upthread, you'll struggle in a big crowd (sporting event, etc) with an MVNO, but other than that I've never had any complaints.

  • Author
On 2/25/2025 at 8:37 AM, royiv said:

Same here. I dropped Verizon after 20+ years and moved over to T-Mobile a year ago. I've been super pleased with the service. At least where I live in Central Houston, the network has been stronger than Verizon’s and it’s been flawless on all my trips to Europe. No complaints.

I know a lot of folks in BFE Milam County that have switched to T-Mobile and they sayd they have great service around the county and when they go to Austin, CS, or Waco.

2 hours ago, tokamak said:

I've been using Mint (T-Mobile) for a couple years. Before that I tried Visible (Verizon). Mint has been better for me - I'm inside the loop in Houston. Like someone said upthread, you'll struggle in a big crowd (sporting event, etc) with an MVNO, but other than that I've never had any complaints.

I've struggled with service at games with Verizon.

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