Wednesday, April 03, 2013

They Helped Me Make Up My Mind

Been looking at new phones lately. I'm with Verizon, but that's not who I started with. Originally, it was Kansas Cellular. Then it was Alltel, who I really liked. Now Verizon. Not the same.

But I and every trucker I know from this area gets far better service in points unknown than anyone else. Period. When the iPhone first hit, one of our lease drivers had, absolutely had to have one. We ran together up to North Dakota, and ran most of the way back together. He lost service in Nebraska, and only got it around certain parts of I94. Granted, that was a while ago, and AT&T and Sprint have improved service in that area. Another one has service from our local telco, and they're hooked up with Sprint for the rest of the country. He can make phone calls while in ND, but not text or get online. Sprint apparently has no data agreements there. Verizon does.

So, I'm not gonna switch carriers. If I get a subsidized phone, I'm gonna have to ditch the grandfathered all you can eat data plan. For now, Verizon still lets me have it, and if I want to keep it, I have to pay full price for a new phone. Considering the way the industry works, I'm skeptical that I will be able to keep it long term even if I do purchase at full price. One day, they'll just announce that the grandfathered data plans are history.

So, not sure about keeping my buffet data.

And I've really had good luck with Motorola phones over the years, but I'm sure leaning towards the new Samsung Galaxy S4 that will be out this summer for sure. Worth a try.

So, since my phone is paid off, and they're pushing me to buy a new one and offering discounts. One ad caught my eye the other day - "trade in your old phone for cash!" it said. So, I looked up what I'd get from my Motorola Droid2.

Fifty freaking cents. Are you serious? Why didn't they just tell me they didn't want the damn thing? I'm not letting 'em have it for fifty freaking cents - they can stick that, well, yeah, you know where.

So I'll be keeping that puppy as a spare. Screw 'em.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never traded in a replaced phone. Probably because the first ones we had became unsupported when Cingular bought out our original carrier before our contracts were up; I doubt they would have been of any use to anyone if we had traded them in.

Then our last previous phones were such POS's that I manually dismantled mine (I may have enlisted a pair of pliers at one point for backup) just to keep from inflicting it on anyone else.

My iPhone is a couple of years old and still doing fine. If I replace it it will be because it craps out altogether, but if Apple or AT&T will take it back I'll consider their offer -- as long as it doesn't mean I have to replace it ith another iPhone.

I like it just fine, but I've gotten tired of iOS and the extra barbed wire and the moat Apple built around their walled garden. I was unimpressed with the bastardized version of Android on my (now defunct) Kindle Fire, but Jelly Bean on my Nexus 7 tablet rawks so I'm thinking I'll want a Nexus 4 phone.

Anonymous said...

I just got a new Galaxy Note II and I think it's great. Huge screen, and still fits in my shirt pocket.