savskad
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Be the best you can be
Posts: 189
Austin, TX
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I'll throw in my 2-cents about all this. I had Sprint for the past ~4 years. Had my wife and I on the family plan, 2 lines, eventually ended up with 5, a friend, half-brother, and half-brother's mom, then back down to 3 lines. Finally got bored with Sprint as their 4G is horrendously slow. In fact, I had a custom Rom running on my Galaxy S4 (great phone by the way) and I could switch back and forth manually between 3G and 4G. At times, I would jump over to 3G if 4G seemed slow and BOOM! Facebook would start loading way faster.
My theory...Sprint has "Truly Unlimited" 4G service, sooo everybody uses excessively and because of this, Sprint doesn't bother upgrading towers or anything because if they're not making any more profit off of it, why should they? Which would be all fine and dandy except...T-Mobile rolls out their "We'll pay your ETF's so you can break-up with your carrier" and to guys like me who really don't have a reason to stick around, we switch over.
I've been with T-Mobile now for a little over a month. I'm having mixed feelings, I don't know whether to begin with pros or cons, so I'll start with the bad, and hope the good will sweeten the deal again. (Not recruiting, just don't wanna think I made a bad decision by switching.)
Cons: -The "Pay your ETFs" is a reimbursement, meaning if you're like me, living paycheck to paycheck, that $450 might be more than you can afford at the time. It can take up to 2 months to receive the reimbursement.
-I got the Sony Xperia Z3 (it's full waterproof [submergible] to 5 feet for 30 minutes). I am a huge Sony fan, always wanted a Sony phone, but Sprint did not, and still does not offer one. Got the phone, T-Mobile forces you to trade in your old phone and buy a new one either cash, or finance it out over 24 months. 0% interest though. Anyways, my phone's screen crapped out probably 15 or 16 days after I got it, went back, they told me they'd replace it because it was still under warranty. They didn't mention it would be with a Refurbished phone. I don't trust refurbished phones, never have, never will. Fact of the matter is, I paid for a NEW, free-of-defects, phone. What I got was a new, defective phone. Replaced with a once defective, but fixed used phone. In my honest opinion, better customer service could have been given by allowing a month to return defective phones and still receive a new phone. This "con" is debatable on whether or not it's T-Mobile's fault, it could have been Sony's fault for making a defective device. I had seen it's not uncommon to have screen problems with Sony phones.
Constant issues with making calls. Like 50% of the time it doesn't go through the first time, I have to hang up, try again, usually it works on the 2nd try, if not I have to try again then it usually works fine. Haven't had any issues receiving any calls though. That's only over the cell network. We can set our phones up to do Wifi calling where it defaults to calling over wifi networks, when I do it that way, making a call isn't a problem, however, maintaining the call is usually a problem, since if there is any little hesitation in wifi connection, it drops. And say you leave your wifi in the middle of a call, you have to hang up and wait for it to connect over the cell network. (That feature can be disabled or set to prefer cell network over wifi.)
Pros:
I will say one of the big reasons I do not regret switching, the 4G is lightning fast! (Compared to Sprint at least) I mean, it's like just a step down from Wifi speeds. And the bill will come out to be hopefully less than Sprint's was. (It's hard to gauge since I have only 2 lines with T-Mobile, and for a while with Sprint it was at least 3 or more lines).
No contract. For the cell phone service that is. If you buy the phones cash, no contract. If you finance, you have a contract til the phones are paid off. For some people this ain't such a bad deal. I can throw any extra cash I get at paying it off, and once I do I can leave anytime I want. Plus and Plus in my opinion. With Sprint, I was stuck waiting it out or having to come up with extra money for the ETF.
$100 for 2 lines, unlimited 4G. (Limited time offer) We signed on with 3gig of 4G each for $100, a couple weeks later they came out with the unlimited offer. I went in, the T-Mobile rep did his little thing and BAM! we got unlimited 4G and were paying no more. After you go over your initial 4G limit, T-Mobile then would throttle you back to 2G. In this case I was just relying more heavily on my Wifi usage. Now that it's unlimited though, I don't worry too much about it. When I'm at home I stick to wifi, when I'm at work or anywhere else, I don't pay too much attention to it.
You can use any "unlocked" phone you want. Meaning, if it has a spot for a sim-card and isn't a Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T, phone. You can use it with T-Mobile. I mentioned I have the Sony Xperia Z3, my coworker bought the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact direct from Sony and put it on his T-Mobile plan without a problem. (Identical to my phone in every way, just smaller).
All in all, I'm glad I switched, I use data WAAAYYY more than I used traditional calling. I still call a lot though. But having slow data vs. having to hang up and try again.
There was nothing more frustrating than trying to show a funny video to a friend on youtube and then when you go to show it you get the spinning loading image................................................................still loading........................still loading........................finally! loaded! 5 seconds later..................loading................and I'm sitting there feeling like a jack#%% and eventually would give up. Now, I NEVER have that problem.
If you use data often, want to be free of contract, and have cash to buy the phone out-right. I recommend switching to T-Mobile ASAP to catch that 2-line unlimited 4G deal. You will be grandfathered in whenever the deal goes away. In the future I plan on just buying my phones cash, from the manufacturer and just putting a T-Mobile sim card in it. That way if I have any defective phone, I can work that out with the manufacturer instead of T-Mobile. Since I'm pretty sure the way the do it is, **Someone correct me if I'm wrong**, T-Mobile tells Sony, "Hey! We want 10,000 Xperia phones for our service, all of them to be black in color. No, no thank you, we don't want to offer white, or green, or brown, all of them black. Yes, and no thank you, but we only want the full sized one, so it impales our customer's legs if they try to put it in their front jean pocket and sit on a motorcycle. We do not want the compact, decent sized one." Then Sony preps all those phones and sell the lot to T-Mobile. Then when my phone's screen breaks, it's a issue between me and T-Mobile, not Sony.
So I've already had my ups and downs with T-Mobile, but I prefer a company that makes me happy on a daily basis, and only disappoints a few days out of a year than Sprint which disappoints every day of the year and only makes me happy the day I upgrade to get a new phone.
TL;dr Sprint sucks and overcharges, T-Mobile's pros outweigh their con's, and they're relatively cheap.
Hope I covered everything. I'll add more in another reply if I remember something.
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