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Consumer Reports: Cingular, Sprint Bad Performers
dcgirl20006 writes "It's that time again, Consumer Reports is out with the annual cell phone review. And Verizon has risen to the top. And, Cingular, with the most subscribers (post AT&T mega merger), claims it is the company with the "least dropped calls" but consumers say otherwise. What can be done? Provide risk-free 30 day trial period; realistic coverage maps, upfront price disclosure, and end early termination fees."
As much as I'd love to read the article, and as informative and helpful as I'm sure it is, I can't help but wonder if an article that requires that you pay for it (not even a free registration option) has any place on Slashdot.
(Cue "Slashdotters don't RTFA" jokes now)
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What the best nation-wide wireless provider is. You might get different favorites, but most will say sprint sucks.
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Provide risk-free 30 day trial period; realistic coverage maps, upfront price disclosure, and end early termination fees."
Yes, yes, yes, and maybe not.
Remember that the cost of the phone is included in a contract, and that's why you get the termination fee if you cancel early. Even if you explicitly banned early termination fees, they would introduce fees for paying off the phone if you cancel the contract early that would be eerily similar to the termination fee. I guess it would be more explicit to the user though. Worse could be they keep the contract fees the same, but you have to pay in addition for your phone.
The 30-day trial period should be enough to find out about service issues that you wouldn't know about until you had the contact otherwise.
Then again, I'm not in America, but a couple of the same issues occur in England.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Most CDMA providers, Alltel, Verizon, Sprint, and the like all have roaming agreements. I have sold all three of those services and reps from Alltel told me that they have agreements with Verizon and Sprint for cities, because Alltel is primarily rural. They all share towers and the networks are then pretty much the same. The biggest difference between the services is the location of their primary towers in respect to you. If an Alltel tower is closer to you than a Sprint tower, a Alltel user will have better reception than the Sprint user, but if a Verizon tower is no where to be seen a Verizon user may use the Sprint tower or the Alltel tower and your phone will say "Extended Network" On an Alltel phone you will get a flashing triangle while roaming freely, and on a Sprint phone will simply say roaming, though you pay nothing more. Each provider has their pro's and con's and the most important factor in deciding a provider is who has towers located where YOU are. In my area Sprint is amazing, I get better reception then all of my friends with US Cellular, I have a cooler phone, and more choices for mobile data packs. My friends with Verizon are at par, I would say, but they have their bad spots too. I really don't like Consumer Report because of things like this. I sell Cingular and Sprint in Madison WI. They work very very well. Now people will tell me, someone who is trained on cellular services and technology, that the services I provide are bad because they spent 5 minutes reading a Consumer Report which told them so.
I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather pay a one time 200$ fee for my cellphone, have it unlocked, and be able to take it with me to whichever carrier, than to have an early termination fee. Heck, I already do this anyways, WITH the early termination fee. The early termination fee is not to recoup costs on the phone, it's the wireless providers way of making you stick with them, and it's sad. Make me pay retail for the phone straight from the phone companies and provide me service as it should be. Can you imagine if we had to buy our televisions from Comcast and it only worked on their cable network!??? Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous the whole thing is?
A lot of times I see people bemoan one cell phone company or another for coverage when the issue at least partially lies with the phone. It's a two-dimensional equation and far too often it's not being treated that way. I know my Cingular coverage used to stink until I switched phones and then all of a sudden the dropped calls and poor coverage I got magically went away. I'm now pretty happy with Cingular after I got rid of my old phone. I do realize that there are plenty of examples where the fault lies squarely on the provider's shoulders but it's important to at least keep in mind that the fault could lie in the phone. I don't know if this partiular study takes that into account (I won't pay for the article) but I've never seen one that does take that into consideration.
Information is a passive entity, it doesn't want anything (obviously).
Information is completely in the control of the person who has access to it.
Therefore, the only way to control information is to control other people.
Controlling other people tends to piss them off, and is the opposite of freedom.
So it isn't information that wants to be free, its people who want to be free. IMO, giving someone access to something but trying to control what they do with it is not only unlikely to succeed but also morally wrong.
But none of this is new.
They just let us know that they are going to raise our rates ahead of cancelling our plan and shutting off the TDMA network we've been using until now. I'm a bit annoyed- we actually get better reception than almost anyone in our neighborhood and I can't replace the plan. It was a "totally unlimited calls for $60/mo" deal that I've never seen anywhere since. TDMA phones are tanks too- we've had exactly two in the past five years and they've taken a huge beating without breaking. (We replaced the first since buying a Nokia 3560 off of eBay was cheaper than replacing the failing battery.)
Ah, progress. I'm going to get to pay more for crappier reception.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Am I paraphrasing you correctly here?
> We both had E815's through Verizon and loved the phones for the build quality, the hackability and the design just being a -solid- one
WE HAD VERIZON AND LOVED IT
> However, I was pissed about the lack of real OBEX profiles
BUT WE WANTED THE FEATURE "OBEX"
> took the $350 hit on the early termination and went to T-Mobile
SO WE SWITCHED TO T-MOBILE
IT COST US $350
> The coverage with T-Mobile is definitely not as good as Verizon's
THE COVERAGE IS WORSE
> We're paying more overall
WE ARE PAYING MORE
> it's lacking full OBEX support for a damn good reason
WE STILL DON'T HAVE THE FEATURE "OBEX"
Ummmm.... congratulations on your wise move?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat