I have been with Sprint for over 10 years. With my smartphone and data plan I have been paying just a little under $70 per month. About a month ago I used my upgrade to buy a Galaxy S4 from Best Buy for $One Dollar. Then when I got my bill it was $123. I called customer service. It is no longer possible to talk to anybody who speaks good English. All of their service has been moved to the Philippines. It turns out that somebody at Best Buy must have changed my plan when I bought the new phone. After two calls I finally got the plan changed back to the old one but they still want me to pay $103 for this month. Then I got texts and emails from Sprint saying that I had to reverify my eligibilty for my discounts. I have been getting a discount of about $20 a month from a job I had back when I first signed up with Sprint. In 10 years they had never done that. I called them and told them I was going to cancel if they didn't reapply the discounts. In the past if you had an issue you would be put through to the retentions department and an American service rep would make it right and you could get them to throw in a credit of from $50 to $125 for your trouble and to keep you as a customer. After 6 or 7 more calls with no results I have had it. I'm thinking of switching to Walmart's Straight Talk plan for $45 a month prepaid for unlimited talk, text and data. Has anybody had any experience with Straight Talk?
We're going to Republic Wireless. They use Sprint's network. My wife has been using it for about a month now and it's better call quality than with Sprint because the phone has software that will use a WiFi connection if it's available. We always have a solid WiFi connection at home. I can't say the same for Sprint's signal. Her line is $25 a month, unlimited talk, text and data. My daughter's will be $10 for unlimited talk and text on a smartphone. Her only data will be WiFi, which she almost always has at home, school, mall, etc. If you want 4G, it's $40 a month. Our bill dropped from $160 to $60 with no loss of call quality. You buy the phone outright with no subsidy. We added up going with Republic or upgrading out phones and sticking with Sprint. It was well over $1000 cheaper over two years to go with Republic. https://republicwireless.com/ Be warned: Republic has no customer service. If you need help, they have a bulletin board and an active user community. It's not an issue for me because the only time I have ever had to call Sprint was to get them to correct a bill or cancel my service.
I looks good except that I would have to buy a phone from them. With Straight Talk I can use the phone I already have. I would want 4g LTE so with Straight Talk my bill would only be $5 more than Republic.
Can you bring CDMA over to StraightTalk? If so, then that's definitely the road to take. I have heard that StraightTalk uses every carrier's towers to ensure great coverage, but they are at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to signals. Coverage may not be an issue, but bandwidth could become one for you. I'd at least try it. You're only out of a month of service since you have your own device already. Also, make sure you get solid 4G service at home, work, etc. If you're not getting it you might consider just sticking with cheaper 3G service. No sense in paying for something you can't get anyway.
The Galaxy S4 I have on Sprint does have a sim card even though its cdma.. but for me to switch I don't need it. Staight Talk website says they have 4g but no mention of 4g LTE. My old Galaxy S2 had 4g. I bought it in Maryland and 4g worked fine there but Sprint never had 4g in Baton Rouge. 4g is really just wimax. Now with Sprint I get a good speed with 4g LTE so I need to find out if that would be the same with Staight Talk
