Backup Service recomendation?

It depends on how much and where you want to use your backup Verizon phone. If you want to use it regularly then I would go with a post paid plan; also if you are going to use it while traveling nationwide, etc. I would go with a post paid plan if the areas you will travel to are not covered by the prepay plan. I mean Southern California is pretty well covered, you don't need a post paid plan for that.
I think you did own a VZW phone a while back so you know what their coverage is like, but I have a friend who lives in La Mesa and uses VZW and he hasn't had any problems. I've also not had any problems when visiting him and going to SDSU with him. He used to have Sprint and when on certain parts of SDSU campus he had to borrow my VZW phone since his phone didn't have any service, but I believe this has changed by now. So there's my $0.02... Good luck
~Andy

P.S. My friend lives on jackson I believe and another friend of mine used to live right next to SDSU campus on Montezuma. T-Mobile/Cingular were on the building across the street.

 

Where do you plan on using this backup phone? Do you plan on going cross-country? Cingular has grown a lot, but I take it you need a phone to work up in the mountains/ski resorts and way out in the middle of nowhere. I also assume you need something other than GSM since you already are part of the nation's largest GSM service provider. You need something that works in and out of San Diego?

BKK, I think your signature says enough about your VZW sentiments. I'm not sure why you'd want to go with them since they were spawn by Satan himself??? Didn't you and VZW have a falling out of some sort? Ready to kiss and make up? Even if you did use them, you do know you can roam off their native coverage for $ 0.99 per minute plus you'll have AMPS coverage in some areas where digital does not exist.




http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/...iew&cm_re=Home Page*Top Nav*Plans-PrepayPlans

Pay As You Go Rates

Anytime Minutes 10 cents
(25 cent per call connection fee**)
TXT Messaging 5 cents
(per message sent & received)
Domestic Long Distance Included
Roaming Per Minute Rate: $0.99

**First minute is $0.35 ($0.25 per call connection fee plus $0.10 per minute rate.)

 

Geez, how old are you? I'm guessing under 21? What's up with that! I mean, granted, there are a lot of companies that make us want to kill, but that's too much! Some guy got arrested for throwing a phone and yelling at the CSRs. It was also at a Verizon store. It's just a phone!! Oh, well, if you hate them that much, and it's obvious you do, go with someone else. There are many other choices out there.

 

Well it looks like it all depends on whether or not you want to go back to VZW... I mean you need to decide, not us. If you are ready, we told you our advice, if not look for someone else.

 

If you already have a GSM provider, I would get a CDMA backup phone, definitely since there are still some areas where only one technology works, sometimes even only analog.
If you give VZW a try, will you go prepay or post paid?

 

Sure, keep us updated. Good luck and let us know if you have any more questions.

 

Save your money and just buy a new car.

I was reading some posts in HoFo and you seem so anti-VZW reflected in posts dated today yet you still want to use VZW?

You confuse me man.

 

Since the end of July, I've been testing out various prepaid services, since Cingular would not activate a third line on my postpaid account at the $10.99/month rate that the other two phones are on. One side of Cingular said, yes, the other said no. You be the judge.

Anyway, I've tried TracFone, Cingular KIC, Verizon Pay As You Go, and T-Mobile To Go.

Early problems I had with TracFone were resolved to my complete satisfaction. FWIW, the GSM TracFone model (Nokia 1100) is on Cingular. I'm staying with TracFone.

Cingular KIC hasn't been too bad. I once asked their customer service whether a phone on KIC Prepaid could roam in Canada. The first few people muttered "uhhh...." when I asked the question. The next rep. asked me where I was calling from, I replied "Boston". She then asked "What city?". I pressed the END button at that point.

T-Mobile is an all 1900 MHz network and as such, a 1900 signal has difficulty penetrating a building. I also did not like the idea that (even though incoming text messages are free) they send a text message to tell me that I have a voicemail message waiting, an added step for the customer. This is the same for postpaid customers. Every other carrier uses the voicemail indicator, which I believe is a more graceful way of informing the customer that a voicemail is waiting.

Verizon - forget it. I went through THREE Nokia 3589i's in the first month I had the service. The electronics failed in the first phone, the second phone was a refurbished phone that the local store's tech. support tried to pass off as a new phone, the third phone was to replace the second when I complained about being given a refurbished phone. Within the first 30 days of service, they provide a brand new phone. After 30 days, it's a refurbished phone. This was within the first 30 days. The local Wal Mart is selling $15.00 refill cards with a 60-day expiration printed on them. Verizon originally would not honor the 60-day expiration, telling me that the $15 card is only good for 30-days of service. When I complained AND loudly, they then decided to honor the 60-days printed on it. And this was after I offered to fax them copies of the front and back of the card clearly showing the 60-day expiration printed on it. I have since learned that the $15 card is something that is only included with the prepaid packages they offer on the web site and Wal Mart should not have had those cards in the first place.

As you can see, I have had both good and bad experiences with prepaid services. I hope this information will help you make a decision.

 

What's wrong with VZW?

 

I've never know anyone who has gone through three Nokia 3589i's.
Yikes.

You are right about the 30 day policy regarding phone replacement. With prepaid, I did not know they even will replace your phone after 30 days since there is no insurance option with prepaid plans.

I personally wouldn't buy prepaid cards from anywhere but the source, but that's just me. You should of informed Wal-Mart management in regards to the prepaid cards they were selling that was a misrepresentation of VZW's policies. It was nice of VZW to honor it though. If you check out VZW's website, it gives you the terms of expiration on their prepaid cards.

Glad you found something that worked out for you in the end.

 

I have two Nokia 3589i's on my Family Share plan and have never had a problem with either one of them; one of the phones was lost in melting snow last winter and was dripping water once I found it but it worked as well as before. Friends of mine that have 3589i's have also never had problems with their phones; and I have the total opposite experience. When I had trouble with my VX6k, they exchanged it without one word; T-Mobile on the other hand, I had to spend hours and hours on the phone fighting for them to send me a refurb phone.
In General I think that prepaid services here in the U.S. are not good at all IMO, period.

 

The information packaged with the phone indicated the replacement policies before and after 30 days. Had they told me that it only applied to postpaid phones, I would have forced the issue, because the literature covered replacement and was not specific to either postpaid or prepaid phones.

The local VZW store does not even sell the prepaid refill cards, strangely enough.

Now that I think of it, when I bought the 3589i from VZW, the original phone number was not local. When I informed VZW of this, I told them which towns were local calls from here and an OTA programming (*228 option 1) programmed a new local number into it. The current VZW service expires Dec. 1 and given the problems I've had with them, I do not currently plan to renew it.

If you like three phones in 30 days, how's this: I previously tried out Alltel's Simple Freedom service, phone was Nokia 3585i and in this area (non-Alltel), the phones are connected to Verizon. I went through two (2) of those phones in nine (9) days. Both phones would not detect an incoming call all of the time, which was a first since every phone I have tried before and after these, have detected every incoming call. Their tech support tried to make the first phone work, but in the end they said the phone was bad since (according to VZW) the phone dropped off the network when a call ended. VZW saw the phone on the network only when it was on a live call, if the phone was on but idle, the network saw nothing. The phone was returned for another and after a few days the second phone started doing the same thing. It was becuase of this experience that I was very reluctant to try out VZW directly, because of the technology and as you can see, between the two, I went through 5 CDMA phones.

 

Edward, you went through 5 CDMA phones and I went through tons of GSM phones for which I had to fight for with T-Mobile...long story, though. So everyone can have a bad experience with a company others don't have problems with. If you're unlucky, you can have problems with every wireless company.

 

And this reminded me something about T.

The day after I bought my T-Phone, I went into a T-Store to inquire about refill cards. I was given incorrect information, in that the one year expiration special ended on August 31. The promotion actually ended on July 31 (see below). The phone was purchased in early August.

So, I called T-Customer Service. and complained when the refill card only added 90 days of service, explained what I was told by the T-Clerk at the T-Store and mentioned the location of the store. The T-Customer Service Representative apologized for the mixup and mentioned it expired on July 31. I explained that I either wanted the one year expiration or find a way to refund what I paid for the card and remove the minutes. I'm sure that on her screen she noticed that the phone was newly-activated only the day before. She put me on hold so she could speak with a supervisor. About 10 minutes later, she came back on the line and informed me that although they could not give me the one year, the supervisor authorized six months, which they added onto the 3 months that the card added to the phone.

I really believe that I have had more than my fair share of problems with wireless companies. Some problems were resolved, some were not.

 

TracFone uses multiple carriers, depending on the location.

Here in the Boston area, they use Cingular and the phones that are available are either TDMA or GSM. The first TracFone I purchased (a Nokia 1221) is TDMA, it was activated with no difficulties and works well. The Nokia 1100 (GSM) also activated trouble-free and also works well. The battery life in the 1100 is quite good. I bought the 1100 in late August and despite having the phone turned on all day, at least one call per day (either incoming or outgoing) with the phone off at night, I have only had to charge the battery twice since then.

In portions of south central New Hampshire for example, the phones offered there are CDMA and I believe Verizon is the carrier.

At this hour, TracFone's web site appears to be down. If you go to their web site and select a phone, you will be prompted to input your zip code. The phones displayed resulting from the zip code entered will give you an idea as to what service is offered in your area. If you see the 1100 and 1221 phones among others, the service is GSM and TDMA. If you see the Nokia 51xx phone along with others, then the service is CDMA. Their web site works best with Internet Explorer though.

The local Wal Mart began to sell the 1100 this week.

I had some trouble as mentioned above with Simple Freedom. One thing I did not mention is that their service did not fully work as expected. Because their phones are activated on Verizon in this area, text messaging did not work both ways. The phone could receive a text message as specified on their web site, but an outgoing message from the phone would not go through, probably because of the Verizon connection and I was charged for those failed outbound text messages. Alltel informed me that some customers could not send messages from their phones but at the time, their web site did not state that. So if you are not in an Alltel service area, you might have the same problems that I had with Simple Freedom.

 

As you stated, Virgin uses sprint's network. You can only use Sprint's network, there's no off network roaming options as far as I know.

BTW, why is VZW out? Simple Freedom works well I heard.

 

The phones you displayed above are either GSM (Nokia 1100 and 3390) or TDMA (all the others).

I think Motorola offers both TDMA and CDMA versions of those phones, but again, it depends on the service area.

From what I've been able to tell, TDMA has near universal coverage, GSM currently does not.

You might want to check your local Wal Mart to see if they carry the 1221. The TracFone Motorola package will state what type of phone it is on the back of the package, depending on the service area.