New Phone, ST can shove it...

RACHGIER said:

I may have impulse purchased a new phone and plan through another carrier in a fit of rage at Straight Talk, and got a better deal in the process.

There I was, minding my own business, not worried about my phone because it's on auto-pay. I've been locked in on their $35/month unlimited everything package with a 25gb Hotspot for about 8 years now because I use the auto-pay feature. Well I got an email not to long ago that their pricing packages were changing. I get those every year as new networks become available, infrastructure changes, new devices, etc. Take your pick of legit reasons a carrier would raise their rates. Email says not to worry, I'm still going to get my super awesome rate with the same features, blah blah blah. It will still renew on the 30th of the month, like it always has.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning. The 31st. I'm on a call with my mother having a rather important discussion, and my phone drops the call. Try to call her back and I have no network. Well wtf...?

I switch to wifi and call ST. Straight Talk says I forgot to pay this month, so my service expired and now it's $75 a month if i want to keep my number and have the same plan I had before because it's now their platinum package or whatever tf they call it now. I say no, I'm on auto pay, it should be automatic. ST says my payment failed. So I grab my son's phone and call the bank. Bank says they never even attempted to process the payment. I put everybody on speaker so the bank and ST can verify information. Bank hangs up, ST apologizes and asks if they can have a moment to get everything sorted.

~Here comes the fu** Straight Talk part~

We're sorry sir, because your plan was an older plan at a rate that we no longer offer, we are unable to process your request at this time to reinstate your service. If you would like, we can give you the same exact plan you had but it will now be $75. It will be $74 a month if you use auto-pay.
~All spoken in my best Bollywood accent~

So I lost my schizz and called Boost, because that's the plan I used for all of my boys until their mother decided me paying for their phones meant she owed me. That's a whole other TL~DR for behind the pay wall.

So I buy a new phone outright, kept it in the Samsung Galaxy family because I prefer them to other phones. Bought a new introductory plan. $40per unlimited everything, but it's only a 10 or 12 gb Hotspot that i never use but always have in the back pocket kind of deal.

Fast forward to this morning! I go to port my new number over and ST refuses to accept the pin number they gave me when I told them I was changing carriers. To port a number you need a pin to prove you're not stealing someone else's phone number. So they gave me a pin number, then rejected it, saying I couldn't unlock my phone or take my number with me unless I paid them $75. I flipped right the flock out... I was throwing out sentence enhancers like I was getting paid by the letter. Mind you I have ST on one line and Boost's US based customer service center on the other line, and they can hear everything...

So it ended up costing me $35 for their basic plan instead of $75, but I got my number back, unlocked my old phone to use with any carrier, have a brandy new phone, and my Boost Mobile rep for the day is glad I'm on their side...😆

Click to expand...

RACHGIER said:

ST uses everybody else's towers so they get the bottom end of the bandwidth. My earlier S model phones used AT&T towers. My S6 used Sprint's network and it was a f-ing nightmare. My S9 uses the Verizon network, as do all the iPhones that ST sells, if I'm not mistaken. The FCC makes them disclose what actual network the phone used regardless of retail provider. Like Boost Mobile is part of Dish Network which now has like 4 or 5 cell phone companies. Boost, Republic, Cricket, and MetroPCS right off the top of my head.

Edit: Oh, and 3G is officially going away, so you may want to invest in a signal booster. I'm on the 5g network now. New towers and signal boosters are popping up everywhere.

Click to expand...

RACHGIER said:

I still don't know how they plan on getting 4GLTE/5G out to the rural areas here. I mean I still pick up on the old 1x analog towers they haven't upgraded when I'm out hunting and get up on top of the cliffs. It's the only signal some of these remote ranchers even have because it costs too much to run in landlines.

Click to expand...

lklawson said:

Not enough throughput on that band(s) using that technology for the high data rate of today. It's like expecting gigabit throughput over 1,000 feet of hand terminated cat 3.

Click to expand...