cell phones

Just curious to see what other deps have as far as cell service. My phone just died and am not under any contract right now so I am free to pick and choose whatever company I want. What are your thoughts about the folowing 4 companies and the service throughout the county, Verizon, Alltel, AT&T and Sprint. Any comments pro or con would be appreciated. Thanks for the input.

[Average Joe]

I have Alltel and have found the service to be very good, but a very poor phone selection.

I recently found a place online, PhoneStoreUSA.com that is out of Pompano Beach. They sell new and used phones on line. I was able to find an original brand new Razr that was discontinued. The phone is one of the best by Motorola. There new Razrs are garbage, but the V3c was a very good phone. I picked one up on the site for $100 as a package that included the phone, wall charger and car charger. All can in a sealed factory box. I took the phone to Alltel and it only took them 5 minutes to turn it on. the nice thing about this is I am no longer tied to a contract.

Believe it or not the old nextel system, not sprint but nextel with direct connect has dramatically improved since they put up 2500 towers in the last year. I was about to drop them since I couldnt get a reception even in my house but now there isnt a place that I really dont get reception from wimauma to odessa.

VERIZON

I had nextel and in my opinion the are the worse cell company ever in buisness. Very poor phone service and customer service is horrible.

I have had verizon now for two years. The service has been great, the phones are cool, and they give goverment employees 15% off.

[Average Joe]

For the Tampa Bay area Consumer Reports rates Verizon the best, followed by Alltel.

I have Alltel

Pros: great reception, great customer service, 5/10/20 friends program (talk to those people for free incoming/outgoing anytime as much as u wat), u r able to change plans without renewing your contract

cons: as stated early, not a wide selection of phones, no governent discount

[fltoddy]

Verizon isn't bad, and don't forget you / we / HCSO get a 15% discount off your monthly package charge with Verizon.

I have the Verizon HCSO rep's name if you want it.

If you go with Verizon it's a really good idea (in my opinion) to solicit the reps assistance in ordering and activating your new phone. They can get you breaks on accessories and help cut through some of the red tape.

They also have a pretty good feel for what phones are good buys and which ones are lemons.

Verizon by far has the best service in this area. Let them know that you are an HCSO employee and you get the great quality phone next to nothing. They have a good selection for the free phones, but take a good one instead; you won't regret it.

I did a lot of study of the various offers on the Internet before dropping the discounted Nextel program that I had been using for years.

I finally settled on the AT&T plan with 900 minutes a month and rollover of unused minutes.

The main things I considered were:

Unexcelled nationwide coverage, because I travel a lot.
No roaming charges.
No long distance charges.
Calls to other ATT mobile phones don't count against your minutes.
Calls after 9PM don't count against your minutes.
I went to the ATT store at Dale Mabry & Bearss at a time when they were having a promotion and they waived the activation fee.

I recently was traveling and had cell service in the boondocks along the upper Columbia River George in Oregon and around the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington.

I didn't want a lot of bells and whistles on the phone, just one that I could talk on and I got what I needed at a greatly reduced price along with the contract. (It does take pictures, but I didn't even really want that.)

Look around and get what's best for you, but beware that the cheapest company also has the poorest coverage areas.