Best/cheapest family cell phone plan

[torinsmom]

Don't expect any better customer service from Virgin. I've used them for 8+ years now, and while the first 7 years with them was great, this last year has been AWFUL. I have a pay-as-you-go plan, and the auto top up feature has failed twice, one time resulting in my service being cut off at a very inopportune time I've also had problems with them charging me outrageous rates (over $1/minute on a series of phone calls, instead of the $.25 it should have been), and with not being able to get a listing of my phone calls on the website (which I need to make sure the $1/minute problem doesn't show up again!). Submitting problems via email is a black hole, you will never get a problem resolved that way. And calling doesn't get you much better service - my last problem I had to call 3 times before they took the time to actually click on the link I told them was giving me a hard error to see it and open a trouble ticket!! After I finally insisted on talking to a Supervisor, she was all sweet, insisting she'd take care of the problem, that it was being escalated and someone would look and get back to me within 72 hours, and she would "personally monitor" the issue to make sure that happened. Well guess what, it's now a week later and I still haven't heard a thing from them. And I haven't had the time to call them about it again because you end up sitting on hold for anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes before you actually talk to anyone!

I've spent the last week doing lots of research and I think I am going to switch to T-Mobile. It will probably cost me slightly more, and I will have to buy a new phone even though I just got a new top-of-the-line phone for VM in January, but I am soooooo beyond frustrated with VM at this point!

I did have some problems when my son had pay as you go, but with these plans, it is not pay by the minute. I get 1200 minutes and the most I have ever used in one month was 800(usually more like 500) Everything else is unlimited. I am not going to link a credit card to my account, because if there us some weird charge about it, I want to know about it before that money is sucked out, not later.

Oh, and I just checked. With the Beyond Talk plans, you can actually see all your outgoing and incoming calls with the charges(if there are any).

I have had three conversations with CS so far. The first person was a total idiot and tried to tell me the phones I had were NOT VM phones, even though it said they were right on the front. The other two were great and got me set up and my numbers ported over within a few hours. Like I said, it only costs me $65 to try it and I'll go from there. So far the service is comparable to what I had with AT&T.

Marsha

 

[Purseval]

I have been with Tmobile like FOREVER. I have there old Fav Five plan with 1200 min.

That's what we have, Friends and Family 2 phones $70/month no data or texting. We were going to switch to Virgin Mobile but we wouldn't really use the data/texting anyway.

 

[sam_gordon]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... #1 on the list of cell providers needs to be who has service in your area. It doesn't matter if you can get 5 phones with unlimited talk/text/data a month for $20 if you need to stand on the corner of Maple & Oak in order to use the phone.

Check with coworkers, neighbors, anyone IN YOUR AREA to find out if a provider has coverage issues. Once you find out who has coverage you can use, THEN you can find out about those providers.

 

[Dashzap]

We've had Sprint Family 500 minute plan for 3 lines about $100/month for years.

Since the car wreck that hurt my son, we moved across town (to a one story house) and apparently Sprint drops calls from the new house. Verizon and TMobile have good reception. (I've not seen the new place yet, still at hospital with son....3 months later @@).

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[MomToOne]

Oh, and I just checked. With the Beyond Talk plans, you can actually see all your outgoing and incoming calls with the charges(if there are any).

Oh, I'm SUPPOSED to be able to see my outgoing and incoming call charges. It has generally worked but it stopped working sometime in the last few weeks for some reason on my account. That's the current problem I am fighting with them, where they haven't contacted me in over a week. First, s they kept trying to tell me it had something to do with a massive texting outage they had last weekend - I kept trying to tell them it made NO sense at all that viewing my call history from a computer wouldn't work because of a texting outage, but they wouldn't listen and kept insisting that was the cause. Then they kept trying to "explain" to me that it takes 4 hours for calls to show up there - they weren't even listening to the fact that I was getting a hard error on the website, it wasn't just a delay in listing calls. That's when I had to get the Supervisor.

I've found about 1 agent in 5 actually listens and knows enough to resolve problems. But even then they just fix the problem for the minute, and don't seem interested in identifying and fixing the root problem. For example, when I had the $1/minute charges (I have a plan that does charge by the minute - they have the two different flavors of "pay as you go"), they just credited me the overage, they didn't seem interested at all in figuring out why those overcharges happened in the first place. That's why I need to constantly monitor my account now...I have no clue what triggered the problem, so I have no clue when it may show up again!

 

[clori]

I've been with tmobile since they were voice stream. Right now we have a 4 phone plan with 500 minutes and unlimited data on one phone. The data plan is only $10 a month for the nokia nuron which is a touch screen phone. Texting would be $20 a month unlimited but we don't text much so just pay as we go. Tmobile has a AAA discount. I'm paying about $80 a month. My dd10 and my dmother 81 are on the plan so we don't need tons of minutes plus my whole family has tmobile and calls to them are free.

 

[jenseib]

We have Nextel, which is owned by Sprint. I'm not sure if they use the same towers. They didn't in years past. They do have the same plans though. We have 3 phone and I think it's around $175 a month for our newest plan we just signed up for a month ago. (we decided to upgrade our plan) We have unlimited direct connect, which is a walkie talkie like feature. unlimited data package, unlimited text, unlimited cell phone to cell phone calls, not matter who the others carriers are, and 1500 minutes for the 3 phones to share for cellphone to landline calls. I beleive we have unlimited weekends and evenings too.
Nextel just came out with a droid, which is what I got, but the other 2 phones are just basic ones.
We rarely have ever had problems getting service. But it sitll is good to be sure your area is good with what ever carrier you have. I don't know of any AT&T dealers in my area, so I don't even know if service is very good where I live with them, but I have heard numerous complaints about them on different websites. My son had virgin mobile years ago, and it was AWFUL. I would never suggest them to anyone.
My parents have had verizon for years, and really like them and it seems like verison has the best overall service. I had Alltell for years and the service was very spotty. I couldn't use the phone in my own home.
Verizon has recently bought them out, so I assume they have great service now with the verzion towers. But Alltell got snippy with me once. Put me on a contract and told me they didn't and went I went to actually upgrade my pan to something more, they wouldn't let me till my contract (the one I was told I didn't have ) was up. So as soon as that was up, I joined DH's plan with nextel and have been very happy since.

 

[luvtogo12]

We've had Sprint Family 500 minute plan for 3 lines about $100/month for years.

Since the car wreck that hurt my son, we moved across town (to a one story house) and apparently Sprint drops calls from the new house. Verizon and TMobile have good reception. (I've not seen the new place yet, still at hospital with son....3 months later @@).

Thanks for all the replies.

No advice really, I have Verizon. Just wanted to wish you and your son the very best!!!