T-mobile USA Customer Endorsements here? $80 Unlimited.

[drmike]

Was wondering if anyone in these parts is a current happy T-Mobile customer in the USA?

Considering their $80 a month unlimited plan [other carriers pricing leaves a lot to be desired and the cheap stuff over Sprint's network is dialup-like for data].

Anyone on this plan currently?

http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html

"Unlimited talk, text & data while on our network

UNLIMITED 4G LTE data (includes up to 5 GB of Smartphone Mobile HotSpot (SMH) service)

NEW: Unlimited music streaming on services like Pandora, iHeartRadio and more, plus a subscription to Rhapsody unRadio included at no extra charge for compatible devices for as long as you have your plan

Recommended for streaming as much media and downloading as many apps as you want on our network"

 

It really says unlimited 4G LTE on this plan.

 

Background:  Looking to combo some old school cell phones into a single plan and dump my tablet data plan and combo into a single phone from which I can wifi share as needed and have data in case of land-based provider failure like has happened multiple times in the past month here.

 

[aggressivenetworks]

Unless your in a major city have fun getting 4G outside the major metropolitan areas. 

 

[dcdan]

You could bring it down to ~ $50 by jumping through a few hoops:

Buy windmobile.ca - $35/mo unlimited plan

Then activate $15/mo unlimited U.S. roaming plan (it comes with unlimited text, talk and 5 GB of data that they call "unlimited" and it can be tethered - works anywhere in the U.S.)

For as long as you stay inside US and never cross Canadian border you will never have to pay a penny extra no matter where in the U.S. or Canada you call/text/etc.

For a local U.S. number use google voice (free) or voip.ms (few bucks a month) to forward all calls to wind.

If you want to bring it down to $40/mo - every once in a while wind offers a $40 promo plan that includes unlimited US roaming.

Additional advantage - Wind roams with T-mobile AND AT&T. You can switch between the two as you please

 

[HalfEatenPie]

A friend of mine has it in Austin.  He absolutely loves it.

I used to have T-Mobile back when I was in the States.  Loved it for the price, hated it because I wouldn't get decent signal once I got into the mountains (but hey, that's part of technology anyways).  

I hated them even more though once a support tech of theirs told me they'd lower my final bill by like 45 dollars or something (totalling out to 30 dollars or so, their manager and support tech told me since we were moving out of the country and have been with them for 8 or so years).  Then later was apparently sent to collections for the missing 45 dollars that they TOLD me was credited to my account (and I confirmed it by calling them the next day).

In my opinion, they're on the same level as Comcast in customer service.  I'll definitely will not be returning to them once I'm back in the States.  I loved having T-Mobile for 8 years (family plan and all), but that final few weeks dealing with their billing department really soured my experience with them.  

 

[drmike]

You could bring it down to ~ $50 by jumping through a few hoops:

Buy windmobile.ca - $35/mo unlimited plan

Then activate $15/mo unlimited U.S. roaming plan (it comes with unlimited text, talk and 5 GB of data that they call "unlimited" and it can be tethered - works anywhere in the U.S.)

For as long as you stay inside US and never cross Canadian border you will never have to pay a penny extra no matter where in the U.S. or Canada you call/text/etc.

For a local U.S. number use google voice (free) or voip.ms (few bucks a month) to forward all calls to wind.

If you want to bring it down to $40/mo - every once in a while wind offers a $40 promo plan that includes unlimited US roaming.

Additional advantage - Wind roams with T-mobile AND AT&T. You can switch between the two as you please

Pretty freaking awesome idea   Have you tried just this State-side?

 

[dcdan]

@drmike

I live in Canada and use Wind daily here but I visit states quite often. Have one of their older $29/mo plans + this magical addon, total is $44/mo. In the last few months have been using this setup in California and Texas on both carriers (Tmobile and AT&T) with great success, works like a charm! Where Tmobile sucks (and it did in quite a few places) I just switch to AT&T. But it will work anywhere in the U.S. where either Tmobile or AT&T have coverage.

EDIT: the only inconvenience when you use this with a separate US number (via google or voip.ms or whatever) is that when you send someone a text from your phone it will arrive from your canadian number which makes replies a pain in the ass, unless whoever you are chatting with in the US has cheap/unlimited texts to Canada in their plan.

 

[drmike]

Very interesting plan.

Sadly have so many text messages [thousands a month] ... So that's a problem....   Still really interesting for other uses, just not the intended one.

Thanks much for the info.

 

[drmike]

A friend of mine has it in Austin.  He absolutely loves it.

I used to have T-Mobile back when I was in the States.  Loved it for the price, hated it because I wouldn't get decent signal once I got into the mountains (but hey, that's part of technology anyways).  

I hated them even more though once a support tech of theirs told me they'd lower my final bill by like 45 dollars or something (totalling out to 30 dollars or so, their manager and support tech told me since we were moving out of the country and have been with them for 8 or so years).  Then later was apparently sent to collections for the missing 45 dollars that they TOLD me was credited to my account (and I confirmed it by calling them the next day).

In my opinion, they're on the same level as Comcast in customer service.  I'll definitely will not be returning to them once I'm back in the States.  I loved having T-Mobile for 8 years (family plan and all), but that final few weeks dealing with their billing department really soured my experience with them.  

I had an even worse situation with the local incumbent monopoly telco.... They actually owed me ~ $100 due to wrong billing [billed me for services never rendered - after cancellation date].   I received a check in the mail for the refund months later......

The kicker, received nasty collection letters.

Called the telco and they show no debt/owed....  They can't find anything.

Think we are 3+ years into this circus.

I really need to start slapping the bogus debt collectors and bad practices in the mouth for their practices.   

 

[HalfEatenPie]

I had an even worse situation with the local incumbent monopoly telco.... They actually owed me ~ $100 due to wrong billing [billed me for services never rendered - after cancellation date].   I received a check in the mail for the refund months later......

The kicker, received nasty collection letters.

Called the telco and they show no debt/owed....  They can't find anything.

Think we are 3+ years into this circus.

I really need to start slapping the bogus debt collectors and bad practices in the mouth for their practices.   

Yeah I ended up coughing up the rest of the funds (45 dollars) just to get them out of my hair.  Was pretty annoyed and rather not deal with them anymore.  

They're the equivalent to a legal mafia in my opinion.  

 

[NodeWest-Dan]

I'm leaving t mobile today. I live in Cincinnati and have random dead zones throughout the city. If I go in a building I lose service, and when we traveled cross country a few months ago I had no service or very terrible service.

 

[Munzy]

I have it and love it, just need to get a new iPhone to get some of the newer LTE bands they use.

 

[drmike]

I have it and love it, just need to get a new iPhone to get some of the newer LTE bands they use.

How is the coverage in your neck of the world @Munzy ?

How is throughput with the current handset?

 

[ihatetonyy]

T-Mobile here, on the older $20/mo unlimited add-on. Jumped ship from Sprint when Uncarrier started happening.

The data is truly unlimited - the only thing they throttle is P2P programs.

Service has improved quite a bit in the area compared to years past. People used to complain about awful coverage a few years ago - coverage is great now, though there are dead spots in more rural areas of the county where only Verizon bothers to put effort in.

My recommendation would be to first check T-Mobile's coverage maps, then look at RootMetrics, OpenSignal and Sensorly maps for your area to see real-world coverage.

They're also offering that T-Mobile Test Drive promo, but you have to use an iPhone..

 

[KuJoe]

Switched from T-Mobile to Republic Wireless and never looked back. I gladly paid the ETF which was about 2-3 months worth of service with them and about 9 months with RW. Their service was decent (on par with RW) but their customer support was horrible, we ended up losing my wife's number that she had been using since she got her first cell phone in high school. She switched to a Pay-As-You-Go plan after her 2 year contract was up and they said they transferred it to her new service, but they never did. After calling them every day for a week, we finally got somebody who had a clue but when they tried to recover it, during their clicking they assigned it to a new client who just ordered service. They put us on hold to call the new client to fix the problem but the new client didn't want to give it back so the rep just said "Yeah, it's gone for good now. It wasn't before but now it is. Can I help you with anything else today?" No sorry, no explanation (I had to dig deeper to find out what he meant by "gone for good now") and not even an offer to credit my wife's account for the 3+ hours we spent dealing with this problem (mostly hold times and the reps breathing into the phone while they typed wildly in the background).

We continued to get bills both after I paid the ETF and cancelled and after my wife switched to a Pay-As-You-Go plan.

And if you think going to a corporate store will help you, you're sadly mistaken. The store reps just say "Sorry about your trouble, we hear that a lot but they removed our access to fix things locally so all we can do is dial the support number and hand you your phone back."

 

[MannDude]

What about StraightTalk? It's a Wal-Mart service but they just resell/broadcast over other company's towers. My old StraightTalk phone was $45/mo for unlimited everything (text, talk, data) and used Verizon's towers. Very good service here, in the country, the city and in between. Depending on what phone you buy, the service may utilize different towers so be aware of that. You can also avoid the hassle of having to go to Wal-Mart to buy your pre-paid cards by refilling online or over phone.

I am not certain this is a proper solution for you, but for a single phone it's not a bad idea. Also beats having a contract.

 

[drmike]

What about StraightTalk? It's a Wal-Mart service but they just resell/broadcast over other company's towers. My old StraightTalk phone was $45/mo for unlimited everything (text, talk, data) and used Verizon's towers. 

The whole reseller thing has left me unimpressed so far.   Tried others and not StraightTalk, yet.

Resellers talk good smack, but their terms are death if you actually read them.

Verizon's network here is sluggish, no, it's downright shit.   Perhaps if I spring for a fancy new 4G phone and lock onto 4G only then maybe it somehow will get better.  Unsure though.  3G stuff for them = unusable.  Fine for text and voice though.

I need something with 4G that actually gets throughput and doesn't have annoying tiny caps on everything disguised as unlimited or throttled to the point that I show up at some call center looking to neck tie hang sales/support/corporate a$$holes who can't stop the lying.

I think I am going to straight give T-mobile a try and if it is shit like the others, that big mouth John J. Legere is going to have my insanity and loud mouth to contend with.  I mean I like the guy and his industry punting,  but don't deliver and I'm going loco on them

And yeah, no contract for me.  I'll cash money buy a phone, buy SIM kit and prepay.

 

[aggressivenetworks]

14 days to see if it suck and get your money back 

 

[tburke]

Unless your in a major city have fun getting 4G outside the major metropolitan areas. 

^this.

I lived just outside of Chicago, and was unable to get a usable LTE signal most of the time... in fact, I was roaming on a majority of my drive into Chicago everyday. T-Mobile didn't like all of that roaming, even though the area I was roaming in was supposedly "on-network", so they ended up booting me off of their network.

 

[QuadraNet_Adam]

I gave the T-Mobile Test Drive program a shot a few weeks ago, and everything was great in downtown LA (in fact slightly better than AT&T), but once I started going towards east and near the mountains signal started getting very inconsistent and sometimes nonexistent. YMMV.

I'll pay a little more and stick with AT&T, but I'll admit I like the direction T-Mobile is going (no contracts, no bandwidth count on music streaming, "uncarrier," etc)

 

[WSWD]

Have been with Verizon for almost 20 years and have never, ever had a problem.  I can count the number of dropped calls I've had on one hand, and have traveled all over the country with excellent coverage (both data and voice).  I remember driving through the middle of nowhere last year, on a road trip through Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, etc., being out in the middle of the desert, with no towns for 20+ miles, and still had 4G access.

I'll gladly pay the few extra bucks a month for that.