Well my family is trying to save on the phone bill and we think we have settled on T-Mobile. My mom is a Mary Kay lady and apparently that gives you a discount 12% discount on the bill, and discounts off all phones. It will basically be My family (4) and someone we know for (5) people. Me, my mom, my sister all have AT&T and my dad and the friend have Nextel. We are basically considering the 3000 minute family plan with unlimited text, and hot spot.

1) Overall how happy are you with the service? Compared to all the other company's they seem like a much better deal, but is this for a reason? Also I was told if you can get AT&T signal you can get T-mobile signal (by roaming), is that true, and if it is I am assuming it wouldn't cost extra?

2) How do you like the hot spot feature? For $9.99 I think its a good deal you get unlimited phone calls anytime your near internet. How is the signal calling over the internet? Not that we are going anytime soon but using your phone overseas without roaming sounds like a good deal.

3) I want to get Blackberry Pearl flip. Anyone else have this phone? Its $150 but the guy told us he can get up to $60 bucks off, and than my moms discount gets another $40. Those numbers might be backwards but I could basically get it for $50. I have read some good reviews on it.
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/...5-878c69c802c7

If anyone else has anything to add that I forgot please feel free.

 

I dont know about in NC but T mobile's service sucks horribly up here. At least with the people I deal with. Majority of the people I know that go with T Mobile just get them for texting purposes and the Sidekick.

 

I love TMO and my mom had Nextel and my ex had ATT so I have compared. Tmobile around florida seems to work pretty well and I travel AL, NC, SC, and GA regularly with no real problems (minus the FL panhandle). As for the internet calling, I dont have the $10 plan but it switches over to wifi when avail for better service (still pay minutes since i dont have the 10 buck plan) and it is nice and clear. The only problem is sometimes it disconnects my curve when switching from wifi to gsm.

As for ATT, you can use their network and I would look into the unlimited family plan, it is pretty reasonable but im not sure you can have 5 lines

 

I love TMO as well, much cheaper than Cingular/AT&T. They both work on a GSM network which is why where ever you have a Cingular coverage you also get TMO. If you are going to get it just for your family get a Myfaves plan which gives you unlimited minute calls to 5 numbers in any network. I can't tell the difference with the hotspot feature. As far as using your phone overseas that isn't a problem either since GSM coverage is more popular but I don't know TMO charging you roaming. It might be just for continental US but in other continents I'm pretty sure they're going to charge you roaming. All those discounts are going to save you tons of monthly fees tho so good deal.

 

Thanks for all the great information.

T-Mobile definitely is the best deal. Especially with the discount we get. As far as the unlimited plan its we look into it. Its $150 for two lines but instead of $9.99 per line its $49.99 per line. So as long as we get hot spot we should be fine.

We are going to switch Dec 3rd as to not miss out on currently plans we already paid for.

 

Thanks for all the great information.

T-Mobile definitely is the best deal. Especially with the discount we get. As far as the unlimited plan its we look into it. Its $150 for two lines but instead of $9.99 per line its $49.99 per line. So as long as we get hot spot we should be fine.

We are going to switch Dec 3rd as to not miss out on currently plans we already paid for.

 

TMO > *

Loyal customer for 5 years now, had every other major provider

 

Do they give you any benefits after being loyal for 5 years?

 

Hotspot at home allows you to make national calls when you travel internationally for free. Just bring a router with you. I racked up over 1200 minutes of free airtime traveling in the past year, it works pretty damn well.

I've been with TMo for 5+ years, best CS ever.

 

I had t-mobile for quite some time. I really didn't mind them except that their phone selections are crap and that we get really bad service by the house. ATT does not share either problems.

I get 5 bars at work with ATT as compared to 1-0 bars with TMO..

If they would have had better service in the areas that I need them to and better phone choices, probably would have stayed... Customer service was never too brutal to deal with.

 

San Antonio is that bad? I remember it being great reception when I lived there. That's the actual place I switch from Cingular to TMo because Cingular's reception sucked ass at the time.

 

I used to complain about TMobile until i switched to AT&T, what a difference in customer service, like moving from St. Barts to Haiti.

 

Even if the reception is bad as long as you have hotspot it should be fine. Glad to know they have good customer service though.

 

i still have the national plan of 1500 mins for 49.99. never changing that .

 

its because youre ghey.

solved problem. lol

 

Tmobile + iPhone 3G model = Teh Sex....get your hands on an unlocked one or one that isn't unlocked and well unlock it. I can easily walk you through the process.

I've had Tmo for a year now and have used 3 different phones. I had the original iPhone I just sold yesterday, a Nokia 6030 whatever the silver candybar model is and the Tmobile Dash (eww). Oh yeah I also have an unlocked Motorola Q9H I use with both AT&T prepaid and Tmobile from time to time.

My contract basically expired last month. I was gonna go to AT&T but now I've decided to stay where I am due to 2 things...great hassle less service and great coverage where I am
(Northside Chicago).

I came over from Verizon a year ago and my bill is cut about 40% a month for all the same features vs what I had a year ago. From my experience, I highly recommend it

 

^^^ That's basically one of the main reasons that we are doing it for all the money we would save. We are pretty much made up are mind to switch when are current plan is up at the end of the money. Looking forward to the experience. Thanks for all the information everyone.

 

No prob TR. Keep us posted. Too bad T mobile just took away the 5.99 Internet Option (Tzones) today for new customers. That was part of the "savings".

They still have the 19.99 total Internet option though and a couple new ones according to their website

 

 

I've had them for over 3 years now and their customer service is superb compared to all the other carriers.

Hot Spot is the :ghey:. If you have Wi-Fi on your phone you can connect through just about any hotspot and talk VoIP.

I've gone through so many phones and I'm finally stuck on the SE TM506. It's a 3G phone with GPS. You can configure it any way you want. Even though it's not the most expensive it still gets the job done.

Right now I have the 19.99 100MB internet service + Unlimited messages hooked up. I just purchased and installed a 2Gig M2 card in it so I can have music saved to it.

My wife has the Samsung Katalyst and that phone is perfect for her. I unlocked that phone so it can be used any where. I am waiting for the unlock code so I can unlock the SE.

 

Well thanks for the advice everyone. Turns out the discount was bigger than we though we got 4 blackberry's (I got the flip) for free. Also no activation fees and a 12% discount off of all our bills. So far the single has been about what i got with AT&T (which is good). Hotspot is really cool I like it so far.

This phone does so many things its not even funny. Like the screen changes brightness with the lights. It has a lot of cool games on it. I still need to figure it out.

Once again thanks for the advice everyone.

 

How do you feel about the blackberry flip after having it for a few weeks? I was looking at that phone as well. I know you can get HTML based email like gmail, but how about if your ISP is POP3 and SMTP based? I don't want to download the email to the phone cuz then it won't be available to my pc.

We have the "At Home" voip and it works great. The wife has the samsung phone(not the katalyst) that works over wifi, no complaints so far.

 

I really like it. A few draw backs are its easy to push the red button and hang up on people and the battery life is no where near the advertised 15 days. I personally do not have the email feature but my dad does. He has outlook express and he can get his email on his phone and it also goes to his computer. I am not sure how its set up but I am sure it can be done if you call blackberry and ask.

 

Blackberries pushes HTML email for all providers. It will always leave mail on the servers for you to download to your computer.

It was probably advertised 15 days standby. No radio, no data at all, just sitting there on.

How many people who got blackberries have a BIS plan? That could get expensive.

 

It was. However I really doubt if I just let it sit there that it would last 15 days.

 

the only rant i have on Tmobile is that their discounts on upgrading when you are up for an upgrade are horrible. plus asurion (tmobile's insurance company) sucks at their deductibles. i have the MDA which is like 4 yrs old and its still 135 if i lose it. im like wtf.