Wife wants to use Boost Mobile - anything we should know?

Delzhand

She wants to do the monthly unlimited plan. If I understand this correctly, you maintain an account, and every month they deduct $50. But it's not like you get a bill, you just sorta have to keep an eye on your account balance?

Anyone else have experience with Boost? I'm sure plenty of people have customer service complaints, which I'm sure you'll have with any mobile carrier. But is there anything egregiously dickish that we should watch out for?

Lankysean

Back when I used to sell boost mobile we used to get a lot of complaints about slow text messages, texts would take upwards of 20 minutes and sometimes as long as a full day to be received. Keep in mind this was over 2 years ago when boost first came out so maybe it's gotten better since then.

Gaslight

Lankysean wrote:

Back when I used to sell boost mobile we used to get a lot of complaints about slow text messages, texts would take upwards of 20 minutes and sometimes as long as a full day to be received. Keep in mind this was over 2 years ago when boost first came out so maybe it's gotten better since then.

Boost only came out two years ago? I thought they were the ones with those "Where you at?" ads that T-Mobile in turn responded to with their "Poser Mobile" ads, and that was way more than two years ago.

Tox

I use Boost mobile.

Boost is basically Sprint. Like, identically the same if you have a CDMA phone. If you have IDEN, then it's basically Nextel.

The phones are slightly lower grade. Basically they're about one hardware revision behind what you can get from Sprint usually, but the phone I had was absolutely panned in reviews on every Sprint website I found, and I've had none of the problems people cited as having with it.

If you're extremely paranoid about your phone, by it third party, or buy it outright from a Sprint store, then take it to Boost (this will cost you twice as much as it would to buy it from Boost).

I've honestly never had a problem. You get the auto-draft payments set up and you're golden. I managed to get in a year or so ago when they were doing the Shrinkage program, and my bill now is only about $40 a month, completely unlimited.

I definitely recommend it. The only thing I'd say is if Sprint happens to suck where you are, be careful.

Lankysean

Gaslight wrote:

Boost only came out two years ago? I thought they were the ones with those "Where you at?" ads that T-Mobile in turn responded to with their "Poser Mobile" ads, and that was way more than two years ago.

Well according to wikipedia they launched in america in 2001, but I suppose the place I worked out may have just been a late adopter.

HadjiQuest

I'm bumping this with my own question:

I'm on Virgin Mobile, which is also on the Sprint Network. What's the difference between Boost and Virgin mobile, then, if anything?

Penguin_Otaku

On that note, how do Virgin and Boost run off Sprint's network? That doesn't make sense to me.

billwill

These small carriers may run on Sprint's network, but keep in mind that Sprint doesn't give them precedence when their towers are swamped and also their data speeds are limited so while the plan is technically unlimited, it is nowhere near the speeds you would get on Sprint (which aren't even that good to begin).

Tox

billwill wrote:

These small carriers may run on Sprint's network, but keep in mind that Sprint doesn't give them precedence when their towers are swamped and also their data speeds are limited so while the plan is technically unlimited, it is nowhere near the speeds you would get on Sprint (which aren't even that good to begin).

Untrue. The network does not discriminate. Data is data. Can you provide any evidence to substantiate your claims?

Penguin_Otaku wrote:

On that note, how do Virgin and Boost run off Sprint's network? That doesn't make sense to me.

Boost is wholly owned by Sprint. It's the same way you can get "Earthlink" high speed internet, but it's really Time Warner (or maybe Comcast depending on where you live not sure).