After nearly two years on T-Mobile, I’ve returned to Verizon. T-Mobile offers the best rates (of the major carriers), the most progressive policies, and stellar customer support. Yet, despite network improvements, their coverage continues to lag the competition (in the places I find myself) and we’ve concluded reliability must be our priority. Even in my high density, supposedly well-served area, it’s been kind of ridiculous driving home from work with my phone pinned between my sun visor and roof, while squinting from the glare, in hopes of preventing calls from being disrupted in some way (and rarely succeeding).
@JohnLegere @SquawkCNBC @marceloclaure @verizon Can you hear me now? pic.twitter.com/0z3GJhFu1w
— Dave Zatz (@davezatz) September 27, 2015
Verizon dropping the BS “activation” fee allowed me to contemplate coming back home. And, once in store to review the options, they made an offer we couldn’t refuse. My older iPhone 5s net a lofty $300 trade-in valuation — about double what T-Mobile and Gazelle offered. And, as an existing FiOS customer, $200 was knocked off iPhone 6s hardware pricing via some sort of promotion I wasn’t aware of but gladly took part in. To seal the deal, a few months down the line, I’ll be getting a $100 “port-in” credit as a “new” customer.
Our T-Mobile two-line plan included unlimited everything for $100/month, whereas the new Verizon plan runs $120 for a shared 12GB of LTE data. It’s obviously not as generous and at a higher rate. But, again, we’re willing to pay a premium for the best network. And our long national nightmare is over.
Verizon’s excellent coverage is one reason why I hope I never need to leave. I’m still grandfathered into their unlimited data/texts and 450 minutes talk. For only $60 before taxes. And I get a 4G LTE signal 99% of the time. Even in sub levels of buildings in DC without any cellular reinforcement. But if they eliminate my grandfathered plan, my monthly cost would around double since I would need to be on one of the higher data plans. And I would not enjoy paying over $120 each month for just one cell phone.
I have two lines (unlimited everything) with C-Spire for $168/month (all fees included). I finally left the city life, and moved to a rural area (commute sucks but I get a whole lot of house for cheaper property taxes).
C-Spire has killed my Android experience with spotty service (add the fact that Galaxy micro SD cards randomly ended up in RAW format). My oldest is turning 16 so we’ll be in the market to add another line.
Anyway, I was considering Verizon but their data plan tiers gave me cold feet. If they ever offer unlimited data again, I would pay a premium for reliable service. It seems like a majority of companies these days care less about reliability, and more about a customer not only making a purchase but using all free time to keep suckling for customer/tech support.
Scary times.
Pretty sure the days of unlimited data are over… In fact, I believe our (former) T-Mobile plan had language indicating the pricing and/or quantity was only guaranteed through the end of this year or next. Related, 12GB should be more than sufficient for us. But I’m thinking of limiting photo syncing and app downloads to WiFi-only. Assuming that option exists.
I think that you are right. My current provider’s site has no such offering listed. I must’ve been grandfathered in.
I share 10 GB of data on Verizon with two others and thanks to some off contract pricing and a work discount I pay $40.83 a month. Additionally, I get aa $50 work stipend to get work email and calls on my personal phone. 10 GB is usually more than enough to share although it gets dicey on vacation. I have most of my music downloaded and I only update apps, download podcasts and sync Google photos when on WiFi.
My employer isn’t quite as progressive… I carry a Galaxy on another network. Would prefer a stipend and to use my personal phone as I did with prior employers. Although it looks like I will indirectly save 15% off of $80 on my personal Verizon plan via affiliation.
That’s a shame, the 6s is the first iPhone that supports the 700 MHz (Band 12) frequency where T-Mobile has been aggressively expanding their coverage. In fact, I think they just announced turning on this spectrum in the Virginia/ DC area last week. You should’ve waited another month to decide.
I left Verizon for AT&T some months ago after some poor customer service (after being a customer for 10 years, VZ would not let my son upgrade his phone 9 days before the upgrade date as he was leaving the country for 6 months) and went through an incredible headache (and over 6 HOURS of online Verizon customer service chat to correct erroneously charged term fees) porting all four family members to ATT.
While ATT network is generally good, there is virtually no rush hour data connectivity (while showing 3-4 bars) on I-495 from the NJ Tpke through the Lincoln Tunnel to NYC. Verizon users on the bus are happily tapping away. Clearly a capacity issue as there is somewhat better service during non-rush hours.
So after two years, I may pull my lower lip over the back of my head again and switch back to Verizon.
Joe, lighting up that spectrum wouldn’t help me where there’s no towers at all. Like Hot Springs, VA this summer. Nearly all of New Mexico when we visited February 2014. Etc. It’s possible the 700 MHz could help locally both indoors (something my wife has complained about) and during my commute home. Fortunately, I’m not on a contract and it’s my understanding that Verizon’s phones are unlocked. So I could flip us back at some future time if we wanted. But not sure what would motivate me to try.
@Joe Catul
I’m hoping for a coverage miracle as well. Unfortunately, Legere pissed Dave off at a time when it would have been really convenient to do the opposite. If the Band 12 upgrade really does improve T-Mobile’s coverage, Dave won’t be there to tell his turnaround story.
In a world of what “should’ve”, Legere should’ve asked Dave to wait for the Band 12 rollout instead of being a wise ass.
As for me, I’m going to keep paying $42 per person for unlimited everything.
I give it, so I should be able to receive it. We’ll call it a wash. But, yeah, trash talking customers is a strange business practice. Maybe it’s par for the course for the snarky Legere “character” – who I kinda equate to Flo of Progressive, a marketing creation.
Fair enough on the coverage during your travels. I’ve only been with T-Mobile < 2 months, in a fairly suburban/rural area too, and Band 12 has certainly helped fill a lot of holes. While Verizon ultimately does have better overall coverage, I find T-Mobile very close (with far better speeds) – all have holes in many parts.
T-Mobile has been expanding at a tremendous rate, I bet if you give them another look at the end of the year you'll be pleasantly surprised. Just get a prepaid SIM then and try it out for a few days or a week and see if your experience is better.
Unlimited data on two lines on the best network keeps me on Verizon! Downside is paying for phones but zero percent financing at Apple will help for future purchases.
Dave, my wife and I we contemplating the same decision and I mistakenly called her on my T-Mobile phone to discuss it. During, the call it dropped. She called me back and said “I guess there is your answer”. I was 2 miles from downtown Minneapolis. I will gladly pay a little extra a month for convience so I jumped to Verizon. 18GB for $100 seems like a good deal even going from unlimited data to gain better coverage and reliablilty.
I just couldn’t continue paying the ridiculous prices for data at Verizon – we’ve got 5 family lines, each with 10Gb data, for $140/month. I guess we could’ve made do with the 18Gb shared bucket on Verizon for $200 (for 5 lines), but that’s quite a bit more. T-Mobile’s unlimited International Roaming (at 2G) and voice calls at $0.20/min are a big draw for us though; and the significant more data is the icing on the cake.
There are plenty of spots around me where I have no Verizon coverage; I’d just deal with it in the past, thinking “well, they’re the best network so it is what it is”. We tend to blame T-Mobile a lot more for any holes, and their network is definitely not on par with the big two. But again, their expansion has been dramataic, and I bet they’ll be a lot better at the end of the year, especially if one is using a Band 12 device.
I’ve had my ATT personal phone for 17 years, a TMo iPad, and Verizon work phone. Out of all three, ATT would regularly be the worst signal and slowest LTE in the places where I am 90% of the time (work and home). After carrying an ATT and Verizon phone around the last 6 months I quickly realized that Verizon’s coverage was more solid and much quicker. So I dumped ATT, switched to Verizon for my personal phone.
“But, yeah, trash talking customers is a strange business practice.”
Now you’ve done it, Dave. Now you’ve really done it. Prepare to see John Legere on your Arlo cameras crawling under your house as he yells at you…
I’m curious about why folks here never seem to say anything about the re-sellers, such as Page Plus Cellular (a Verizon re-seller). Their rates seems to be significantly lower than the major carriers, but maybe there is a downside? I have never gotten a smartphone, because I don’t want to pay the high data rates that the major carriers charge.
My issue with Verizon is their draconian device control. For example, my mother cell phone was busted, and my dad bought a prepaid cell phone (old school) to put on her line. They wouldn’t let the phone move over for 6 months. The fact that with AT&T and T-mobile I can just put a sim card (or swap a sim card when I pass down phones) with no interaction or control from the carrier is huge benefit. It’s still a problem now (for instance there we activation issues with the Moto X Pure on Verizon). As I am normally a Nexus guy, this is always a cocern for me. The fact is Verizon does not want to accept its dumb pipe reality, and until they fully do, I don’t trust them
Now I know there are some issue with switching between andriod/iphone/and wp for lte access were you still have to call AT&T to provision, but that’s not too much of an issue. As far a service, AT&T has been pretty good for me, but I can’t argue with the national test result stating Verizon is better.
So is Verizon’s activation fee completely gone if you but the phone out right? Curious as to how it work?
I was hoping you would hold out to see how much the Band 12 made a difference. If you ever want to do a trial again, you can just grab a prepaid SIM and pop it into your iPhone. I activated a Verizon iPhone 6 on my account for my brother-in-law no problem. I presume the same can be done for the 6s. Band 12 would not have helped in Hot Springs or NM.
I did look at your tweet about the GPS. The limitation there is your map program not the network. For example, I tried out a WIndows Phone and it had HERE Maps. You could download the entire country’s maps onto your phone. That way they would always be available. I would NEVER travel relying on a cell connection for my map data. Even with Verizon or AT&T. Verizon for example has pretty poor coverage on a cross country trip as they rely on a lot of roaming partners. Unfortunately, the real problem is with the FCC here. They allowed the fragmentation of technologies (CDMA and GSM). It effectively split the available roaming partners into two groups. Those living in rural areas should be up in arms for unified technology to be used in the future.
Was with ATT for many years and made switch for same reason to Verizon – sick of dropped calls. Of course we upgraded to the iPhone 6 Plus his last fall so we have 1yr commitment left. At this point I think I need to shop around because I’m telling you 5 GB of data to share isn’t enough and we pay the 120 – not sure how u guys got those deals but I need to shop around.
Is there an activation fee for new customer? I don’t recall getting charged an activation fee every time I change phones on Verizon.
Josh, if I’d studied T-Mobiles coverage maps before I went anywhere, I would have known to download the TomTom app which I own and uses offline maps. Maybe I should have been using them all along given T-Mobile’s track record. But that wouldn’t solve complete lack of communication capabilities in certain areas – like our need to coordinate, from the road, with family we were meeting in Fenwick Island. And, like I implied, most days on the drive home a call is either dropped or the folks on the line can’t hear each other for a few minutes. In terms of blame, that’s mostly irrelevant to my immediate need of connectivity. I have experience on all four major networks, and Verizon has been most consistent. When T-Mobile works, it’s been great – the speeds have been insane and the pricing is great. But I obviously chose (this time) to give those perks up for more consistent coverage. (Also, without T-Mobile market pressure, Verizon wouldn’t offer the current deals and plans they do — so I thank them for that.)
Sally, check the current plans. You pick a data bucket (mine was $80 for 12GB) and then add $20 per line/phone.
aaronwt, ananth, when previously “activating” lines on Verizon, it was $30 a pop. With more phones using SIMs these days, if you bought from Google, Apple, Swappa, etc (instead of VZW) you could skip that fee for upgrade and simply swap SIMs. But even with this round some of my followers were hit with $40 activation fee. They’re phasing them out based on device payment — whatever I selected, and you might need a degree in calculus to figure it out, doesn’t have that fee.
dwgsp, I did look at two MVNOs. In fact, I paid for a month of Straight Talk (on AT&T) to validate T-Mobile is inferior in many places I find myself. I had thought of going to Cricket (now owned by AT&T) as the rates are favorable and the network is solid. However data speeds are capped even though the buckets are very reasonable priced. However, we’d have kept our existing phones in that scenario. Verizon effectively knocked the price of a $750 phone down to $150 for me (and $100 for my wife) — between that and the superior network (in my experience, where I travel), it was a no brainer yesterday. I’m sure I’ll be bitching about something soon tho – customer service, perhaps.
Dave, on your iPhone you can go to Settings > App and ITunes Stores and turn off Cellular Data. You can also go to each App’s settings menu from the root Settings menu and turn off Celluar Data.
My wife and I were on Sprint for over a year and while the comfort of unlimited data was nice, we had inconsistent speed and coverage and our frequent visited areas. Verizon works the best in our areas. We only averaged about 6GB of data a month on Sprint (with a month or two of 8GB) so I knew we wouldn’t have crazy overages on Verizon, plus 75% of the time we are on Wi-Fi. So a switch to Verizon was easy for us.
If only everyone had all these choices for home broadband service…
Brian, excellent point – it’s the aggressive pricing and marketing by T-Mobile that’s forced the other carriers to become more competitive. And you can come and go as the coverage, deals, etc move you. I am fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood with both FiOS and Xfinity, but I know most are not.
Regarding data usage, I imagine we’d keep phone-only usage under 6GB most months. But when traveling and because I try to avoid public WiFi (think laptop tethering), I wanted the buffer for only $20/month more. (6GB is $60, 12GB is $80)
“Dave, on your iPhone you can go to Settings > App and ITunes Stores and turn off Cellular Data. You can also go to each App’s settings menu from the root Settings menu and turn off Celluar Data.”
That’s a start. There are a multitude of other settings scattered about that are worth disabling as well. (Cupertino’s obscuring settings behavior sure seems to imply it sees benefit for itself in keeping the carriers happy at the expense of consumers.)
And New For iOS 9! Reportedly, Wi-Fi Assist is a major cell data suck worth disabling.
Thanks Brian, Chucky. I turned off cellular app updates and WiFi Assist on both our phones.
“But when traveling and because I try to avoid public WiFi…”
Assuming this is because of (justified) fears of evil MITM, have you considered going with a VPN?
“I turned off cellular app updates and WiFi Assist on both our phones.”
Also, consider enabling Airplane Mode 24/7. Makes a big difference in data usage.
“it’s the aggressive pricing and marketing by T-Mobile that’s forced the other carriers to become more competitive”
Backtrack and appease like Neville Chamberlain all you want, Dave. But John Legere is still going to be crawling under your house and yelling at you.
I watched 300 again. So I’m ready for Legere, don’t you worry. Regarding VPN, yeah I’m frequently a Cloak subscriber. But I’d prefer to avoid non-secure networks entirely if/when I can.
I give up. On my phone you open settings and under cellular ( top level choice ) is a slider for each app (including built in ones such as App Store) to disable cellular data. Is it really hidden?
I’m a T-Mobile customer, and while I’m sometimes envious of Verizon’s more complete coverage, I’m holding out for Band 12 LTE.
Every customer of AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon has T-Mobile to thank for the fact that their carrier suddenly offers lower prices/more data/simpler plans, etc.
Also, Verizon’s data buckets, although bigger than they used to be, are still limited, so the onus is still on the customer to track their usage closely enough to avoid a potentially nasty surprise in their bill. (And good luck doing that when there are multiple devices at the trough.)
I’m sure that Verizon counts on a certain percentage of their customers inadvertently overeating each month, thus reaping the profit from those punitive overage charges.)
Does the simple sim swap activate the CDMA chip for 3g connections?
Dave wrote:
> our long national nightmare is over…
I moved to TMobile after six years on Sprint, and I can’t stand the thought of going back to a CDMA carrier where I lose data when on the phone — I spend a lot of time on conference calls and love still having data when on the phone.
I’ve been able to use data and also be on the phone for the last few years with Verizon. It depended on the phone whether that was an issue.
Moved over to Cricket from T-Mobile after waiting what seemed like forever for better 4G data on T-Mobile.
Here locally, I never had a problem with dropped calls or texts on any carrier, just wanted better 4G coverage, without paying through the nose for Verizon.
4 lines, unlimited talk/text, 2.5 GB 4G data for $100/month total, no other taxes/fees.
($40 for the first line, sister pays me $30 for her line, $20 for #1 kid, #2 kid pays me $10/month).
Phone prices were reasonable – the kids picked up 32GB Verizon iPhone 5c (unlocked GSM) for around $175 each, sis & I use old Moto Gs.
Dave,
Living in the Southwest/Rockies I can tell you data coverage is nonexistent on any carrier in vast areas. With that being said, I can pretty much get voice service on 1x just about anywhere on Verizon by climbing to a higher point. It is pretty amazing actually.
When Verizon turns off their CDMA voice network…. I will probably switch to AT&T.
I can’t deny that TMO has spottier coverage than Verizon, at least in southern California. I drop more calls on TMO. But I stick with them because the difference is barely noticeable in most places. In my basement office, neither one offers very good reception. But at least TMO lets me use WiFi Calling. In crowded places like a convention or ballgame, everybody’s service is garbage. And on the open road along major freeways, they all do fine.
I continue to reward TMO for their way more consumer-friendly practices. Of course, those practices may be driven largely by their knowing they have to make up for their lesser network. If and when they built out their network to be as good as Verizon (or close enough), I wonder if they’ll stop being so customer-friendly.
So happy for you and your decision, and why, and for sharing it with us and that everything is so much better now..
After nearly a week: No dropped calls, no extended disruptions, and I can use the cardio gear in multiple locations at my gym – not just under the glass-covered atrium. (Although Band 12 could have helped with that point.) Slower data speeds much of the time, but more consistent coverage. That trade works for me.
Not a fair comparison, the iPhone 6s with Band 12 would make a significant improvement in your T-Mobile experience there.
Pretty sure I said that in my comment. ;) But Band 12 won’t help where TMo has no presence at all and they didn’t offer me the sweetheart upgrade deal Verizon did. And, at the end of the day, “fair comparison” may be irrelevant. I was unhappy on T-Mobile and, a few days into Verizon, my wife and I are satisfied. In this new golden age of contract-free cellular (thanks to TMo), I’m free to flip should I feel differently down the line.
There’s no question Verizon is ultimately better – however, again, you were unhappy because you weren’t using a device that gets all of T-Mobile’s frequencies. I’m plenty happy in my area where I’ve found T-Mobile to have ~90% of the coverage Verizon did, but with more data and features for quite a bit less. Apples to apples.
In the end, of course, one needs to choose the carrier that works for the situation – and in your case, that appears to be Verizon.
Let’s not propagate the T-Mobile coverage perception of a year ago – they’ve made dramatic improvements, continue to do so, and with an updated device (Nexus, 6s, etc.) one can have a pretty comparable experience.
Joe, my understanding is the 6s with 700MHz on T-mobile is to help with coverage inside of buildings. I had a dead spot in Minneapolis that I would drop a call and loose LTE every time i passed this in my car (unfortunately every time I left the house I had to drive in the area). Verizon has no issues since I switched a week ago from T-Mobile. Just curious on your thoughts if the new 6s would be better in this instance with T-Mobile.
Shannon, 700MHz is what T-Mobile calls their “Extended Range LTE” – it’s a lower frequency than their Band 2/4, and travels as much as four times further (also, doesn’t support quite as high max speeds FWIW). They’ve typically been using it to fill holes and expand coverage where possible, and it certainly helps a lot with building penetration. But that’s not the only benefit, it makes quite a difference as you get away from denser areas and pick up coverage in spots where you had none previously.
Yes, if someone was on a previous iPhone (or any non-band 12 device) and is in an area where Band 12 has been deployed (check SpectrumGateway.com to find out), the iPhone 6s would likely make a noticeable improvement to their T-Mobile experience.