by "Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
Published 11/07/2017 at 15:15
by "Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
Published 11/07/2017 at 15:15
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STARS: 1
For all the talk of me loving Total Wireless because it’s super cheap and uses Verizon’s superior network, I’ve run into a problem: the Verizon coverage at my job has been consistently mediocre, and since I’ve moved to a new office in a different part of the building, I basically can’t make any calls. Time to switch!
I’ve already been on AT&T’s network, and the main problem with it is that in my favorite grocery store owned and operated by a small crazy man , the AT&T signal didn’t make it into the building.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
I’m the primary grocery shopper in my household, and I often check my grocery list app while shopping, plus text with my wife about tweaks/additions to the list. The store has wifi, but (maybe?) because they’re all about LOW LOW PRICES, their wifi sucks. It would constantly drop and reconnect, and often when reconnecting I’d have to re-do the login splash page. This got very frustrating. When I switched to Verizon/Total Wireless, the signal worked totally fine in the store. No more stupid wifi.
But since Verizon doesn’t work at my desk, and AT&T doesn’t work at Woodman’s, I’m going to try T-Mobile. My unlocked Galaxy S7 Edge may or may not actually support wifi calling but hopefully even if it doesn’t, the T-Mobile signal will at least make it into both buildings.
I don’t need unlimited data, with being on wifi at home, work, and my gym, and also since T-Mobile prepaid plans don’t count most music streaming against your data cap. Their Simply Prepaid plans page lists a 4 GB for $45/month plan, 6 GB for $55/month, and a 10 GB for $50/month “limited time only” plan.
Right now I’ll probably keep my wife’s phone on the Total Wireless $35/month 5 GB plan so we have Verizon coverage if we find ourselves out in some part of the boonies where T-Mobile doesn’t work, but I might move her over to T-Mobile later. So I called the T-Mobile store to find out how long this 10 GB $50/month plan will be available, in case I want to switch my wife over later.
The guy who answered the phone had no idea. All he could tell me was the 10 GB plan had been available for as long as he’d worked there. He also mentioned that on prepaid plans I would have to come to the store every month to pay my bill. I made some kind of comment that it’s weird to have to go to the store every month, and then he tried to tell me that all prepaid plans with all carriers work like that, and he tried to say that prepaid brands like Straight Talk are owned by Sprint, when it’s actually owned by Tracfone and uses AT&T’s network.
I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time trying to get actual answers out of this guy, but he said he would ask his manager if there was any way to sign up for automatic payments. The manager told him that on a prepaid plan, I could download the T-Mobile app and at least pay through there, but not set up automatic payments. This still sounded fishy, but whatever. I didn’t want to extend the conversation.
Once I hung up the phone, I tried to research this autopay situation myself. Which led me here :
I mean, that’s pretty clear right there! I wonder if this particular T-Mobile store is telling people they can’t do autopay on prepaid plans to upsell them to the more expensive T-Mobile ONE plan. Who knows? All I do know is I’m now going to rely on these oh-so-competent employees to switch my service over to T-Mobile on my lunch hour.
Wish me luck!
UPDATE: The store employees were actually nice. I mentioned that I did a little searching and the T-Mobile website said how to do autopay for prepaid plans. This was news to them but they were cool about it.
I ported my number over to T-Mobile and the process went fine. Coverage at my desk isn’t really any better (shows 1-2 bars) but crucially, when I flipped SIM cards, the phone did this “restarting to reconfigure to features of new SIM card” dance and wifi calling is now active. My phone actually works as a phone and not only an internet device connected to wifi.
I should probably mention that my office building has some unique signal-killing properties. We make products that emit radiation so there are concrete bunkers in the first floor to insulate the radiation testing from the outside world (and the rest of the office). The building is built on a grade. The front entrance is on the first floor, but the back entrance is on the second floor. The radiation gets aimed towards the back of the building where it has to go through lead, concrete, and the ground. I’m on the 2nd floor but still, the building screws with cell phone signals.
I stopped by Woodman’s on my way home to see how coverage works there, since we’re out of coffee creamer anyway. It works! My phone was clinging to 1 bar in the back of the store, but it works, and that’s better than AT&T. I’ll take it.
Oh, and about autopay? When I logged into my T-Mobile account online, well...
"Jcarr" (jcarr)
11/07/2017 at 12:22, STARS: 2
As someone who worked in a Verizon corporate store for a few years after college: Can confirm.
The requirements for the job are basically a pulse and the ability to form sentences.
"OPPOsaurus WRX" (opposaurus)
11/07/2017 at 12:31, STARS: 0
on the radio this morning they were talking about a guy at a phone store, I wanna say T Mobile, who was fixing a woman’s phone. While he was at it, he sent all her nudie vids to his phone. Unfortunately for him, she was monitoring all this on her apple watch.
"Quadradeuce" (quadradeuce)
11/07/2017 at 12:38, STARS: 0
I switched to T-Mobile a couple of years ago. Things I like: Binge On feature lets you stream Netflix, etc, unlimited at a lower streaming quality, coverage is quite good in metro areas, cheaper than other plans in my area, I can buy whatever phone I like and swap in a SIM, national customer service has been great for me (stores just OK). Things I dislike: coverage outside of metro areas is bad (but getting better and is fine along interstate), uses signal bands that do have problems getting deep into buildings.
So I think it’s going to come down to if there is a decent tower by your office as well as that shitty store you like to shop at.
"MonkeePuzzle" (monkeypuzzle)
11/07/2017 at 12:39, STARS: 0
TL;DR (and you were breaking up most fo the time #cellphones)
"Highlander-Datsuns are Forever" (jamesbowland)
11/07/2017 at 12:49, STARS: 0
T-Mobile was my first mobile carrier when we lived in California. Their coverage in CA was great and the price was right. Now on Verizon, because pretty much only Verizon and some AT&T work in Montana.
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/07/2017 at 12:52, STARS: 0
When I zoom in to the ground level on the T-Mobile coverage map where it shows you how strong the signal is supposed to be at a given location, my office is listed as excellent and the grocery store is listed as good. Both locations have check marks on them that this information is supposedly verified by users. So hopefully this does the trick.
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/07/2017 at 12:58, STARS: 0
They’ve only expanded into Wisconsin relatively recently. Verizon and U.S. Cellular have the best coverage in most rural parts of the state, AT&T is half decent, and now T-Mobile has built out a lot. But for some reason Verizon has been terrible for years on the edge of Madison & Middleton where my office is located. This is a huge office park and commercial area, you’d think they’d have fixed their shit by now but no.
"Rust and Dust - Oppositelock Forever" (rustanddust)
11/07/2017 at 13:18, STARS: 0
I’ve been on TMo for about eight years now. The coverage in the metro areas is pretty good, the rural areas not as much, but it works for me, especially with the pricing.
If you have coverage issues, TMo will send a signal booster as well. My current shop is like a void for cell coverage (metal building with an office built inside of the building). I get full 4G signal in the shop, but zilch in the office. Called TMo, they sent a signal booster for free (one box mounted on wall in shop, bounces the signal to a second box in the office, full coverage in the office now).
"Quadradeuce" (quadradeuce)
11/07/2017 at 13:19, STARS: 0
Hopefully. One of my employees (who is on the same plan) supposedly lives in a covered area. Very much inside the city limits. He barely gets a signal upstairs in his house, and the basement is a dead zone.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
11/07/2017 at 14:22, STARS: 0
Don’t AT&T and T-Mobile both use the GSM signal type, and thus probably a lot of the same towers? Unless T-Mobile isn’t playing nice with AT&T, in which case maybe they really do have better coverage in the same area.
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/07/2017 at 15:10, STARS: 0
2G network type doesn’t dictate who has what towers, especially since most service nowadays is 4G LTE regardless of whether a network uses GSM or CDMA for 2G. Each carrier leases towers on its own, often they do share towers but each carrier uses its own antennas mounted at different heights on the tower, and sometimes different frequencies. Lower frequencies do a better job permeating buildings than higher frequencies.
Here are some OpenSignal maps of the different coverage at Woodman’s. T-Mobile is still relatively new here in Madison so there are way fewer dots. Some of them are red. We’ll see if I get any signal at the store.
Honestly though even if T-Mobile’s signal does end up sucking at Woodman’s, it’s still better than AT&T because my office building has some unique signal-killing characteristics, but T-Mobile
does
work at my office using wifi calling. Unlike T-Mobile, AT&T doesn’t do wifi calling on unlocked phones.
"Rico" (ricorich)
11/07/2017 at 15:22, STARS: 0
Yes yes come to the pink side. We have good beer!
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/07/2017 at 15:32, STARS: 1
The kicker for me is the wifi calling on unlocked phones, at least the ones that are able to do wifi calling which my S7 Edge does. My office is literally sitting on top of a concrete bunker so the building screws with signals bad.
"AestheticsInMotion" (aestheticsinmotion)
11/07/2017 at 15:43, STARS: 0
I’ve been pretty happy with T-Mobile, from their customer service to their “industry disruption” a la free stuff on Tuesdays, changing the available plan structure, free tablets and speakers (free as in, I don’t pay taxes on them, and it’s not rolled into monthly charges), etc. I just wish things were a bit faster. I’ve never been able to stream anything at 1080p or higher, anywhere in the country. Even 720p is hit-or-miss. Maybe this is the norm, it’s been a while since I had Verizon so can’t really compare.
For what it’s worth, T-Mobile will give you a signal booster for free if you want one. I’ve got one in my home, and it makes a pretty big difference
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/07/2017 at 15:58, STARS: 1
What T-Mobile plan are you on? T-Mobile does assorted variations of video throttling depending on what plan you’re on.
On the Simply Prepaid plan, you can just log in to your account and turn off Data Maximizer and that disables video throttling.
On the T-Mobile ONE plan you have to pay an extra $10/month for T-Mobile ONE Plus to get HD video streaming.
If I were to guess, the rationale is if you have unlimited data they want you to pay more for access to unlimited HD video, but if you don’t have unlimited data, streaming un-throttled video will eat up your data faster and you’re more likely to hit your cap and buy more data.
I picked the $50/month 10 GB prepaid plan and I’ve already turned off data maximizer. I don’t stream video all that much off wifi, and since music streaming isn’t going to count towards my data cap, I’d rather not have my video throttled.
"AestheticsInMotion" (aestheticsinmotion)
11/07/2017 at 16:32, STARS: 0
Huh. That’s irritating. T-Mobile one, and yeah looks like I’m limited to 480p. Tethering being separate from the unlimited data is mildly annoying, but this really ticks me off. Especially seeing as the data gets throttled severely after 50 gigs anyways.
What I wouldn’t give for a truly unlimited plan. That’s not a thing anywhere, is it?
"Rico" (ricorich)
11/07/2017 at 16:46, STARS: 0
WiFi calling saves me at my friends house where my signal is trash.
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/07/2017 at 17:21, STARS: 0
Basically every carrier has some kind of not-actually unlimited plan.
T-Mobile One ($70) throttles video, and throttles hotspot to “3G speed” but doesn’t specify what that speed is. T-Mobile One Plus ($80) lets you turn off video throttling and your first 10 GB of hotspot isn’t throttled. Both of them throttle your data after 50 GB usage.
Verizon Go Unlimited ($75) throttles video and caps hotspot to 600 kbps. Verizon Beyond Unlimited ($85) doesn’t throttle video, gives you 15 GB of hotspot after which it throttles to 600 kbps. Both plans throttle your data after 22 GB.
AT&T Unlimited Choice ($60) throttles all your data to 3 Mbps, throttles video, and blocks hotspot. AT&T Unlimited Plus ($90) lets you turn off video throttling, and throttles data after 22 GB.
Sprint Unlimited Freedom ($60) does supposedly light throttling on video (up to 1080p), gaming (8 mbps) and music (1.5 mbps) and throttles your data after 23 GB. You get 10 GB of hotspot.
Personally I don’t need not-actually-unlimited data, but I do want my data under my cap to not be messed with. So the T-Mobile Simply Prepaid 10 GB for $50 plan works perfect for me, because I turned off video throttling, hotspot isn’t throttled either, and music doesn’t count towards my data cap.
"Birddog" (maintmgt)
11/08/2017 at 03:24, STARS: 0
Glad to see that it worked out!
I miss “T-Mobile”. I was on Iwireless one of the mvnos that use their network. $45/mo unlimited everything was awesome but it didn’t work at my house. I’m on Verizon now and the service is great but pricey AF!