Category: Cell Phone

Why MCI can kiss my ass, part II

Three more reasons:

  1. Looking at my final MCI bill I noticed that I was once again suicidally overcharged. There were two problems with it. The first was the same overcharging as below. As before they (eventually) fixed that up. The second was in the last five days of my service with them the rates on my calls (to a cell phone in Japan) went up from 14¢/minute to $7.81/minute! The customer support rep (and the customer support specialist who I was transferred to and her manager) were not willing to do anything about this. They gave me the steps to escalate, more later.
  2. I just noticed there is a $40 charge from MCI in April that doesn’t appear on any of my statements. The MCI rep I spoke with couldn’t see it either and told me that I had to call the finance department on Monday.
  3. They discontinued my service in my first month with them after accruing a whopping $35 in charges!!

On a happier note, I also got my first bill from AT&T. Unfortunately they also lied to me, fortunately I don’t mind. Instead of charging me 12¢/minute to a cell phone in Japan like they said, they charged me 10¢/minute… 10¢/minute!! This is to a cell phone located over five THOUSAND miles away!! This is only a penny more than it costs me to call my parents who live 40 miles away!

I haven’t seen anything, including those 10-10-xxx numbers and any pre-paid calling card that can beat that rate (again it’s to a cell phone, I realize that calling a land line in Japan can be cheap as hell).

Why MCI can kiss my ass

When I switched my long distance service to MCI a couple of months back, they told me that calls to both land lines and cell phones in Japan were the same rate of 14¢/minute. I asked this question very explicitly because I know that most companies charge a surcharge for calls to foreign cell phones. I asked the question about four times in various forms and each time they were very clear on their answer.

In any case I got my long distance bill this month and sure enough, as I was promised, all the calls to Japan (all of them calls to a mobile) were 14¢/minute. However, I was confused that after accruing international long distance fees of $120, I somehow had a bill that totalled $350! Now clearly there was no way that my local toll + domestic long distance + taxes/fees was enough to make up that much of a difference. Looking more closely at my bill, I noticed the vast majority of that difference was in an "international mobile surcharge". Speaking with customer service, it was explained to me that MCI charges you the standard country rate on the itemized part of the bill then (essentially) hides an additional per minute charge (19¢/minute in this case) in the international mobile surcharge – this makes my calls to Japanese cell phones 33¢/minute, not the 14¢/minute I was promised.

I’m not sure which I dislike more, getting charged up the ass without knowing it, or being totally and blatantly lied to.

Further, the ease at which they reversed the charges makes me believe that this is a common problem they deal with and they basically count on people not noticing these additional hidden charges.

I switched my service back to AT&T. They don’t have the best rates in every single category, but far and away, across the board they have the best deals. I have signed up for the "AT&T Anywhere International Plan" which supposedly will give me a phenomenal 12¢/minutes to both cell phones and land lines in Japan for calls that I make from my calling card ($19.95 minimum usage). These guys were very up front about the surcharges that they charged so hopefully this deal actually pans out – it certainly can’t be any worse than what I just switched from tho…

Note to self, this is the first post where I started putting the titles in. All the posts previous to this were put in my be after the fact (~Fall 2018)

State of cell phone service in the US

In the past 6 months I have had, for varying reasons, three different cell phones with three different carriers. My thoughts on each along various criteria…

Coverage and Service – far and away the most important criteria. The damn thing’s gotta work to be useful

  • Cingular – Utter and complete crap. It was always a mystery whether or not my phone would work when I pulled it out. Secondly, this GSM phone took the longest time to find a signal (5-20 seconds compared to <5 seconds for TDMA and CDMA). Finally, SMS was regularly dropped silently – was not a reliable medium.
  • AT&T – AT&T’s TDMA coverage is excellent. However, from what I understand, the GSM coverage, while being a shade better than Cingular’s GSM, is still far from ideal – Basically, GSM in the United States is not ready for prime time. Additionally, they have done the best job of creating interesting content and services (american idol voting over SMS, 411 over SMS) – granted when I say interesting, it is not interesting to me, but they are definitely trying.
  • Verizon – Far and away the best service coverage, both in terms of quality and area covered. I never have to worry whether or not my phone will work no matter where I am. However the lack of full international SMS is a little annoying.

Customer Service – at the end of the day the bar is usually set pretty low on this so any improvement is immediately noticeable

  • Cingular – Like pulling teeth, customer service people consistently lacking in knowledge. Secondly, their billing system is flaky requiring even more calls into customer service. Finally, switching from a national plan to a local plan (or vice versa) resets your service contract (essentially adds a year to it).
  • AT&T – Fantastic. Customer service people friendly and helpful and most importantly, knowledgeable. I have had a couple of non-trivial billing issues, all of which were solved quickly and efficiently. Additionally, price plans changes are made effective for that entire billing cycle, not prorated from that point forward.
  • Verizon – Most of the time they are really friendly and want to be helpful, but tend to lack in higher end brain functions. I find that even simple tasks, even though they eventually always get solved, always take a *loooong* time.

Phones

  • Cingular – Not bad actually, but does it really matter – with coverage this bad, you never can use the damn thing.
  • AT&T – While there is a good selection of GSM phones, the TDMA and GAIT (combined TDMA and GSM) phones are lame.
  • Verizon – Definitely improving, especially on the high-end.

In summary

  • Cingular insults you across the board with bad marks in everything. I will give them credit that they are trying the hardest, offering features like nights that start at 7 and rollover minutes, but then again, they need to because they really need the most help.
  • While AT&T‘s TDMA coverage is fantastic, it limits you to a selection of really lame phones and no GPRS/advanced data services. Since the GSM coverage is not acceptable, it means that it is not possible to get good coverage, data services and a cool phone all at the same time.
  • Verizon‘s excellent coverage and a kick ass phone makes it the best carrier of the bunch.

Some thoughts on the other three national cell carriers in the U.S….

  • T*Mobile/Voicestream – Tie up with wi-fi hot spots is possibly compelling, but still limits you to GSM coverage. Cingular and T*Mobile tend to share towers so the crappy Cingular service you get in the Bay Area is the same crappy service you will get on T*Mobile.
  • Nextel – Don’t know much about them except that nobody that I know has service with them. I guess if you are into push-to-talk then it is the carrier of choice.
  • Sprint – From what I hear, Sprint is far and away the best value for money in terms of the number of minutes you can get for the price, plus you can get unlimited data for just $10. However, it seems that Sprint’s coverage is pretty rotton. Has one of the better selections of phones though.

I’m famous! Maybe…

So I was having lunch today in little plaza in front of 101 California in the financial district (mmmm, Specialty’s…) when I was approached by this woman from CNET who was doing interviews about people and their cell phone usage. I talked to her for a bit so keep an eye out on CNBC for me and my nerdphone. Actually, they probably won’t broadcast me, I don’t think I gave her what she wanted to hear (someone who was concerned about the 911 people not being to be able to automatically know my location).