Time to get rid of some companies I'm doing business with ...

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kolyaboo wrote:

Solwitch, last I heard, calls getting dropped and poor quality had nothing to do with credit. Since my credit is excellent that must, indeed, be the case.

Reading comprehension is apparently becoming a graver issue.

Thanks to those that had good ideas instead of nonsense to add to this thread. I like the looks of Ting and will give them a call tomorrow.

you actually took me seriously lol...

Sprint sucks and AT&T mega-sucks from personal experience. T-Mo isn't great, but it's about as good as USA telecoms are going to get, honestly. I haven't dabbled in the middlemen telecoms like Ting, but they seem potentially very good.

For insurance, State Farm is pretty okay. At least they haven't tried to screw me out of recuperation like GEICO did.

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kolyaboo wrote:

Anyone (in US) got suggestion for phone? I got T Mobile and I'm here to tell you they suck so hard I wonder anyone's dick stays on.

I use Verizon. Buy the cheapest, lowest data plan, then use their safety net to roll over to throttled bandwidth if I ever go over my data usage. Still works fine with 4G, just slower. But I'm often around wi-fi, so I don't have a problem.

What I've learned from mobile phone providers...

1.) Verizon rips you a new hole with your bill, but you don't really care since it's a darn fine network. Plans change, and you don't get grandfathered in, so in 6 months or a year you might even up getting ripped a third hole!

2.) TMobile gets you to switch by buying you out of your other plans, then sets you up on a mobile phone network from 2004. If you're lucky, you get upgraded to a 2008 network if you live in a major city. When the 2004 network fails, you get shuffled over to Verizon's network that's contracted out, and things are great, then when the 2004 network is fixed, you get switched back and things suck again.

3.) AT&T cut your bill, and your reliability in half. Why pay more for a 1% difference in network? Because 1% of 365 days is 4 days of no damn service every year. Or you live in the 1% of no coverage at all.

4.) Boost Mobile. Where you at? No seriously, where you at? I can't tell because my phone has no signal.

5.) Straight Talk (Walmart). Sounds great! Get home, activate, errors, doesn't work. Oh, it doesn't support half the phones out there right now. Customer service: outsourced to a small island in the Pacific with support reps using Google Translate over an unreliable Internet connection while trying to do VoIP at the same time.

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kolyaboo wrote:

GEICO. Don't even. I have done business with them for years and they suddenly started acting crazy. I forgot to pay my auto insurance bill (it was still in grace period, btw) and they "accidentally" put me on a dunning list. I got like 5 calls in one day from what sounded like the hood.

That's whacked. I've had nothing but net with GEICO, but then again I do auto pay and never miss a payment. Rates have gone down over time. Enough that I upgraded my plan to minimum $500 deductible on both my car and my wife's car for around $50 to $60 a month. So cheap. Caveat: I've never had to file a claim with them. I've reported accidents (always some idiot ramming into me), and then went through the moron's insurance to fix everything instead of mine to avoid any deductible.

Yeah, I mean they apologized profusely but the damage was done. Problem is I have homeowner's policy through them (not underwritten by them, they don't do that) it's with Travelers and I get a multi policy discount so it would mean switching for both policies which is a nuisance.

I used to have State Farm, years ago, may check them out. I might just bite the damned bullet and get licensed for P&C and write my own. So there. But still have to pick what insurer since I'm indy and don't represent any one co. State Farm and Allstate, to name 2 biggies, do not let indy agents sell their products, they are only sold through their own captive agents. :( Unless that has changed. Liberty Mutual used to do that, but they changed rules (get with the times MF!) and now let agents outside get appointed with them.

I discussed the smaller coms with the wife after checking out both tello and ting and she is game so, looks like we might try that route.

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kolyaboo wrote:

I used to have State Farm, years ago, may check them out.

I had to deal with State Farm from the side of them paying for the damage one of their clients did to my car. If you go through their "preferred" service centers, etc., everything is breeze, and they paid for a rental/loaner for me.

All reps were courteous. They even scheduled the rental car with the body shop since I was unable to find any rentals across four car rental chains in town for the time I needed it (must have been an event in my university town). You see the body shop originally told me they didn't have a loaner available, but that changed when State Farm contacted them directly. ;-)