After some searching for another prepaid wireless provider that would work in my area, I settled on BeyondWireless. Looks the costs will be pretty close to TracFone, maybe even a little cheaper.
I ordered the phone from their website and received it in a couple of days. Since we wanted to continue using the same phone number for my wife’s phone that she had been using with TracFone, I had to call them up and begin the process of “porting” the number from the TracFone phone to the new phone.
The good news is that I talked to two different people at BeyondWireless customer service and they both spoke excellent English, and if I’m not mistaken, were actually located somewhere in North America! Imagine my surprise!
My earlier experience being on hold for over an hour with BeyondWireless turned out to be a problem with their phone system. After e-mailing them that same day, I received a pretty prompt response advising me that they had a problem with their phone system that caused the extended wait. That appears to be true since my other two calls to them since then were both answered after a very short time on hold.
I’m now waiting for the number to be “ported” over to the new phone. This process can take a few days from what I have heard, so I will wait for the call they promised me when the number has been assigned to the new phone.
One thing interesting about the new phone is that it has a Cingular logo on it and a Cingular logo comes up on the display when the phone is turned on. I guess this outfit must be owned by them or have some other kind of relationship with them. That, however, is a good thing, since I was able to test a Cingular phone recently in our area and it seemed to provide pretty good coverage here.
In fact, I had actually wanted to sign up for Cingular service since I knew the coverage was good here, but I was not too inspired by any of the deals they had on the Cingular website.
The new phone is one that is made by Siemens which we have not had any experience with at all since all of the phones we have had up to this point have been Nokia. It will be interesting to see how this one compares.
So far, so good. If this new service works out OK for my wife, I will eventually get a BeyondWireless phone for my son and for myself as well.
[tags]Wireless Phone Service, TracFone, BeyondWireless, Cingular, Cell Phone[/tags]
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