Changing Phone Service

Donna and I have been using the same provider for our mobile phone service for a lot of years. We had always been happy with everything . . . until recently.

First, I felt that we were simply being charged too much. That's a bad feeling, and one difficult to get beyond. When you feel this way -- at least as regards me -- things are probably about to change.

The real kicker came a few months back. On the 7th of one month, I was billed my normal monthly fee. Then, a mere 17 days later, on the 24th of that same month, I was billed again.

I called to inquire about this rapid billing. It never was explained satisfactorily to me, and I said I wanted to continue being billed on the 7th. Well, they refunded the billing on the 24th, as they should have. Then, on the 24th of the following month, they billed me for 2 months, including a small fee for late payment for not paying on the 24th of the previous month.

I called again and was basically told that was the way it was. I suggested they prorate the fees if they wanted to change their invoice date and not charge a full monthly amount for 17 days of service, as I was, in effect, being double billed. I was told that was not possible.

Now, on top of all of this, I have to admit I had trouble understanding the people I spoke with. First, neither of the people I spoke with were native English speakers. I really don't care where they are from, but I simply could not understand them because of their accents. As you get older, you don't hear as well. Also, these folks were obviously located in large call centers, and there was considerable background noise each time I called, making it even more difficult to understand them.

Well, I'm not long on patience, so after hanging up, I began looking for a new phone service. It didn't take long. I had been considering a change because of what I considered high fees, and I had been looking at Consumer Cellular. I did some research, visited the local contact here in town, bought new SIM cards for our phones, and made the call.

The experience so far has been very good.

Consumer Cellular closed our account with our previous provider and made all the changes. Now, there has been a glitch or two, but that is understandable when making such a move.

Just a day or two after the service started, I noticed that we were unable to access the Internet using the Consumer Cellular Network (CCNetwork). At home, when connected to my network, we could access the Internet just fine. I made a call to their help desk and was able to speak to someone I was able to understand perfectly. It was simply a matter of changing some APN settings and then everything was working fine.

The second glitch took a bit longer to discover. My daughter was sending some pictures of her little monsters to my wife, but my wife could not receive the pictures. We began experimenting and discovered we could not send/receive pictures of any size. I went to the Consumer Cellular website and did a chat with a help person. After changing a few more APN settings, we were getting some hideous monster pictures that for some reason my wife cherishes.

We may discover another problem or two down the line, but the customer service so far has been exceptional. And perhaps the best news of all is that I'm paying less than half what I paid for my former service. Now, we haven't taken a trip with our new service yet, so the jury is still out on mobile service in the boondocks. But for now, I'm delighted with our new service. And to clarify, AARP members get a slight discount.

Right now, count me as a very satisfied Consumer Cellular customer.