Verizon bought Unicel

[flycessna]

I have Verizon and have never had an issue with them. I travelled throughout Maine and yes there are dead areas, but I expected that. where I live in auburn and throughout this area and south coverage is excellent. I was charged for roaming once when I was travelling through the border..I made a phone call and explained that I was NOT in Canada and they removed the charge.

As far as the phones..well, you get what you pay for..and you are getting yours for free. But with that said, if you have problems with them you have a year warranty. Mine stopped working once so I brought it in and they replaced it...the replacement worked fine until the end of my contract and I got a another one..I replace them every 2 years.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

I miss my bag phone that I had since about 1995. It might have been scratchy in rural areas, but it worked. Analog phones were great. Now we can Twit and snap, but I just need to talk. You can buy a signal booster where you clamp your phone into it, but that only works in your vehicle unless you want to carry a backpack with a 12 volt battery, hold a one pound block of electronics to your ear and epoxy an antenna to your helmet. A cell phone user would look pretty weird in such a getup.

Now Unicel/Verizon wants to send me a "free" phone if I will only send them $1,416. There is no guarantee that any of those three phones will work where I need them. I don't want to Pay $250 in addition to the $1,416 so the phone will work a little further away from their tower when It still won't work where I used to have cell phone coverage. Pretty soon this adds up to real money for their "free" phone. It's like the loss of broadcast TV we'll lose in June. It makes me grumpy.

[msina]

(sigh)..... I'm living in a time when everyone uses a cell phone ........ except me. I've put it off as just an aditional bill to pay. Remember when you'd call someone and either they were home or you called them back later? If you got a busy signal you knew they were home and you'd try them again in a few minutes? It seems odd to me that people "twitter" their every move, "I'm going up the stairs", "I'm in the bathroom"......... do we really need all that info? Don't even get me started on the constant text messaging.......... I bet we'll soon see dislocated thumbs and "text thumb syndrome". Give me the days when a phone had a cord you didn't want to stretch out. Yes people do use the technology to "stay in touch" and they're great in emergencies but, ...... we seem to be losing the ability to interact personally. Just the opinion of one old fogey here.

[island mermaid]

msina, are you twittering with the rest of the world? Here, let me send you a tweet!

[msina]

Originally Posted by island mermaid

msina, are you twittering with the rest of the world? Here, let me send you a tweet!

You're a "tweetheart"

[gcberry]

My suggestion in choosing a phone is to go to cnet.com and look up the reviews. Don't bother with the editors' reviews, go straight to the consumer reviews. That's real people who use the phones daily, not editors who are looking at bells and whistles. Key: good reception, good speaker phone. You cannot base it on company name alone; LG and Motorola and Samsung have some excellent models available as well as some that are really junk. Price doesn't seem to be a factor in regards to the quality of a particular model phone. One last thing: check your Verizon cell bills very carefully EVERY month. They usually sneak in some add-in charges that are often mistakes. They are good about correcting the mistakes when you call by crediting your next bill, but if you don't catch the mistakes and dispute the bill, nothing will be done. Other than this annoyance, I'm pleased with Verizon.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

After reading numerous buyer reviews I have chosen the LG vX8360. It has big buttons, you don't dial the wrong number accidentally and the sound quality is excellent. I just want a phone that works and according to the users, this one does.

Verizon is here. Many of the towers are up and running. The one in my town is working so I'll be on Verizon soon with my same old number. The new Verizon system picks a Verizon tower first when available, but goes to US Cellular if there is a better signal and with no roaming charges. What a wonderful thing! Of course Canada had that system 15 years ago, but we are beginning to catch up.