|
Powered Descent posted:For a quick break from Cricketchat, does the thread have an overall impression of Republic Wireless? I really like republic because the cell phone signal at home from any network is terrible, so the wifi VOIP with seamless handover is great. Sprint is also fine in my area (previously I was on Virgin Mobile which is also sprint). The only thing I dislike is that they dropped their roaming data allowance from like 500 megabytes to 25 megabytes a couple of months back because apparently it's very expensive for them to provide roaming. It doesn't bother me near home but if I was going on a trip I'd be worried about using my phone a lot since it's hard to tell if you're roaming or not. I don't use a lot of mobile data off wifi so I just go with the 3g plan on a Moto X and for $25/mo it's great. The slow updates to android kind of sucks because Republic has to integrate their calling software into the phone image, so we may not see 5.0 until next year, but the phone works fine as it is so I'm not too upset.
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2014 22:22
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 02:58 |
|
|
Kukash posted:So what is the latest opinion on Republic Wireless? I avoided them before because Sprint didn't have very good coverage where I am but they seem to have built more towers recently. I have no problem being on WiFi as long as it works. I am just really interested in the new Moto X and a cheaper monthly payment I like their service a lot, but I have pretty good Sprint coverage around here. The main downsides are that you have to leave your phone mostly stock and wait for them to provide updates because they integrate their VOIP over wifi and seamless handoff stuff in with the stock dialer and everything. Lollipop isn't due out for their 2013 moto g and x for a couple of months still, although it may be longer due to the weird issues with lollipop so far. I'm not sure about the lollipop release for the 2014 moto x. Also, they say that their phones won't work with any other carrier which while I haven't investigated the veracity of that claim, kind of sucks because you're buying the phone outright when you sign up. I'd guess it's because they add/modify so much to get their service working with wifi. They've had one bad thing happen this year which is that they went from 500mb of roaming data to 25mb due to roaming data being very expensive, apparently. It hasn't affected my use but I'd be concerned if I was going on a trip and needed my phone for gps where I didn't know if I'd be roaming or not. Locally it's fine, though, and $25/mo for the 3g plan is perfect for my uses. I like the service enough that I got my 70 something year old mother a republic moto g for xmas to replace her horrible Kyocera Event which cost her $35/mo on Virgin Mobile. $150 for a 2013 moto g is expensive but it saves her $10 a month and she'll probably have the phone for a few years so it'll be worth it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2015 21:04
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:Are they the ones that use Sprint CDMA but have special phone software that uses WiFi voice and data whenever available? I think you're describing republic wireless. FreedomPop may do similar but afaik they're known for having free service plans where you basically only pay tax for 500mb of data on a 4g hotspot or another piece of hardware that you buy from them. They're on Slickdeals a lot when they're selling off pre-owned equipment or refurbished things. Their business model seems to be to get you to use a paid plan by being hard to reach and requiring you to talk to a representative to switch off the paid plan you need to start with onto the free one.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2015 19:31
|
|
|
Shnicker posted:H2O is absolutely horrible. I've found prepaid carriers in general are pretty bad with customer service. With Virgin Mobile I ported a number from t-mobile to it. The person from Virgin handling it cancelled my account (with the number they gave me when I activated the phone), opened a new account with the ported number, and wiped out the 15 days of the 30 days of prepaid time I had left on the original account without telling me that that would happen. I called them and emailed them quite a lot about it but it was the same company line of "that it is against their policy to give out time credit", despite them loving it up in the first place. They even claimed they didn't have a record of it because the original account was deleted. With Republic wireless I tried to port my number from Virgin, and the form just had a field for account number. Okay, Virgin's account numbers are your phone number. But it kept failing to port and they just put "wrong account number" in the error while porting field. I just re-entered it a few times assuming they had hosed it up, but it turns out that Virgin has a hidden account number which is independent of your phone number (which makes the previous experience with them completely baffling) that you have to call them up and ask for. Once I had that, then I was able to port. It's not really Republic's fault (it's mostly Virgin Mobile's fault) but they don't really communicate the issue well and I'm sure I wasn't the first person to port from Virgin Mobile. Anyway it is really lovely that someone was allowed to basically steal your phone number but I don't think they will ever offer you more than the time you were without a phone (if even that). They can't really be held responsible for monetary loss due to their service not working (much like an ISP doesn't give a poo poo if you are trying to work from home and their service is broken beyond crediting you for one day of service) unless you felt like trying to sue them, and I imagine most lawyers would not take that case. There are very few cases where a company will assure a certain amount of uptime and actually be held responsible for it in some way. It's totally normal to be angry about it but nobody on their side will take responsibility for it.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2015 04:22
|
|
|
crabkettle posted:From the posts I've read in this thread, it looks like most people are getting the $30/$40/etc. per month unlimited plans, rather than the pay-per-use plans. I'm interested in the latter, and am currently on the AT&T GoPhone $0.10 per minute plan. I have pretty modest needs for a cell phone so I'm happy with my plan; the problem is that I want a new phone, and AT&T doesn't want smartphone users on the pay-per-minute plans. I've had this plan for several years, so I guess my Huawei Fusion 2 U8665 is grandfathered in, but if I were to get a new phone I think I would be forced to get one of the flat-fee-per-month plans. (The same thing happened when I used to be with Virgin Mobile; when I signed up, my smartphone was allowed to be on the pay-per-minute plan, but shortly thereafter they changed it so that anyone signing up for service with a smartphone had to get a monthly unlimited plan). I currently buy a $25 top-up card once every 3 months, which is actually more talk time than I need, since I only use about 10-15 minutes per month. I also buy a 200 text package for $5 which is good for 30 days, and I don't pay for data because I'm OK with only using WIFI. This makes my total cost for 3 months of service $40, or about $13 a month. The cheapest flat-rate plans are more than double that. I use Republic and I like it, I paid $299 for the first gen moto x (they stopped selling it like a month ago and dropped the price on the 2nd gen). It uses sprint's network for calls and mobile data and some folks complain about Sprint coverage but I haven't had any issues, you may want to check the Sprint coverage map for your area. You can also change your plan twice a month (you pay whichever was greater) so if you went on a trip and needed mobile data you could upgrade and downgrade after you were done. The only thing that sucks is that the taxes and fees on Republic are a little higher than on other services I've used, over $4, which brings my $25 3G plan up to just shy of $30 per month. It's still very reasonable but it was a little surprising compared with other services I've used where it wasn't so expensive. The main downsides seem to be that they have a low cap on roaming data (not an issue on a plan with no data), they use Sprint's network, and there's only a small selection of phones. The Motorola phones are all pretty great, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2015 08:41
|
|
|
ThermoPhysical posted:Changing the OP but...$15 per gigabyte?? Even with the credit refund... Yeah it seems a little high. Google Fi is $20 + $10/gb and then you get refunded the data you don't use, so it's a similar pricing scheme with different prices. Existing Republic customers keep their current plans grandfathered until January 31st, 2016. That's probably when I'll switch to another provider. I'll miss my moto x but I guess I've got 6 months to find a new phone.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2015 19:32
|
|
|
It looks like Harbor Mobile is about to release their AT&T service. Someone on slickdeals got the pricing information from a customer service rep: https://slickdeals.net/f/8080810-harbor-mobile-2-0-at-t-plans-pricing-revealed?v=1 quote:AT&T plans:
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2015 06:47
|
|
|
RingPlus is doing some free plans for new line activations in phases over the weekend including this 1000/1000/1000 plan: https://discourse.ringplus.net/t/future-phase-6-1000-1000-1000-the-honor-system-trials/5518 saw it here: https://slickdeals.net/f/8142344-ri...red?v=1&src=tdw If you've got any sprint or old enough to be unlocked prepaid sprint services devices (supposedly boost, virgin mobile, and someone on slickdeals posted repulic wireless as well) you can sign up for their plan. They charge a $10 top-up for overages on activation. I signed up a pre-owned boost mobile moto g I use for perk tv and it seems to work. RingPlus is kind of hilarious in that they play you music when you make calls instead of ringing as advertisements and stuff, but the plan seems legit so far. Rexxed fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Oct 4, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2015 05:33
|
|
|
Rastor posted:RingPlus is doing some kind of gimmick with their plans, every single day their website says it is a limited time offer that ends that day. Then the next day the offer magically returns. Yeah it's definitely weird. It seems like the catch is that they require you to use the plan. Last post I saw about it said using the plan consisted of making 10 calls a month, so you can't just let it idle but otherwise it seems reasonable.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2015 23:53
|
|
|
whatever7 posted:Ringplus has a new 1500m/1500txt/1500MB/one time charge $35/free monthly plan promotion up for today. You can get a nice prepaid Boost moto g or something, I signed up one of my perk tv moto g phones with ringplus and it's been a nice backup phone so far.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2015 02:22
|
|
|
Rastor posted:Here's a little comedy phone for you all: That's amazing. I kind of want to own one for novelty value (but not for $100).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2016 03:38
|
|
|
Rastor posted:Now on sale, do you think it has $70 of novelty value? No, but it's close! Although, I'm also not sure Best Buy will sell me any more prepaid phones because of the ones I bought for Perk. They had me on some kind of "too many prepaid phones" blacklist for a while.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2016 05:59
|
|
|
Yeah, they still have a 200/750/750 plan for free so I moved my RP phone to it. They let me move with no charge so I still have $6 of my original $10 left. It's a shame but their business model is weird.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2016 03:15
|
|
|
I'm gonna miss my backup free phone. Freedompop kit ordered!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2017 09:12
|
|
|
Syrinxx posted:I'm looking for a SIM I can put in an old phone so I can leave my 9yo at home for an hour and he can call me if something comes up. I expect the minutes will never be used so I don't want to have a recurring monthly charge. Would I be better off with FreedomPop or a small pay as you go sim such as Ting? I've got a phone on each. With Freedompop it's actually free, but calls go out over VOIP over the data connection. For occasional use that's probably fine. To make sure you're on their actually free plan there's a guide on slickdeals: https://slickdeals.net/f/9723468-fr...earchBarV2Algo1 I used a virtual credit card from citi to give them a card with a $6 limit so they never charge me more than one reload (I used some data without realizing it once when the power went out and the phone kept doing stuff). For Ting you're looking at $6 a month, and $3 if you send a text, $3 if you make a call, $3 if you use some data, and the charges go up if you use more of any of those. I prefer the service of Ting since it's not VOIP but one annoying thing is once you set it up, they suggest you make a call to try it and make sure your phone works. That's $3 if you weren't planning on making any other calls (I mostly use these to get text verifications, and freedompop doesn't work sometimes). The main upside is that if you have more than one phone on Ting you pay the $6 a month for each, but the surcharges for use apply to the whole account, so I can get texts on two phones for $15 a month. There's also controls on the website to disable data, texts, or voice calls in your account. So there's annoyances to both, but neither is super expensive or necessarily bad.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 03:39
|
|
|
Blue Train posted:Isn't the smart network switching one of the things that doesn't work with unapproved phones? Those fi prices are still stupid high imo also Fi pricing is $20 for unlimited calls and texts and $10/GB for data. My monthly bills are usually around $25 because I'm on wifi pretty often. If you go over 6GB of data it caps there so you'll never have a bill over $80 (unless you're paying off a phone, which google will let you do without fees or interest for 24 months usually). There's also an optional phone protection for $7/mo which covers phone issues, including breaking it (although I think there's a $99 replacement fee or something, I forget the details). For me it's one of the better phone service deals because Sprint and T-Mobile are both good in my area. I've also been on US Cellular during long road trips but I forget which state I was in. Somewhere between TX and PA. There's options for a data sim for your tablet or a family plan thing now, too, but I don't think the family plan saves much money. There's a dedicated Project Fi thread.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2019 18:20
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:Ting has the new Flex plan for $10/line and then $5 for 1gb of shared data, so for 2 lines that's $25/month total + taxes/fees Yeah their email read like this was replacing the old plan. I have one phone on their old plan that wavers from $7-13 a month and I'm not actually looking to change that to be $10+ but maybe I just need to port out or do a second line on my Google Fi account.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2021 04:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 02:58 |
|
|
I have a second cell number on an old Galaxy S5 through Ting. They emailed me today to let me know that the T-Mobile bands that phone uses won't be available after December 31st:quote:T-Mobile has announced it’s shutting down the network that your phone runs on. This means you’ll need to invest in a new phone before December 31 to ensure you don’t experience a service interruption. We have a great new network standing by that offers 5G* and is one of America’s most popular networks. I have a few extra phones that will probably work for me but I just figured I'd post in case anyone doesn't check their email so they don't get surprised in three months.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2021 00:13
|
|