Anyone have experience with Cricket Wireless?

xraydog

I'm looking for ways to save some money. Currently on AT&T and pay $70/month for 450 minutes, 200 texts, and 200 MB. I hardly use any of it.

From the looks of it I can get a $40/month plan from Cricket that will fill my needs. Anybody have experience with them? I'm in NYC area if it makes a difference.

Reverend_Chaos

I am on the west coast, but I have had cricket service in the past. They are decent, but you could probably get a comparable plan through T-Mobile. If you do go with Cricket, just be careful about the coverage areas. You might not ever have a problem, but if you ever go out of the city into a more rural area you will find that they have huge blank spots in their coverages. I never had any problems with them as a company.

bowen

Tmobile advocate here, dropped verizon for them.

Service has been okay. Sucks when you're inside a building though. NYC seems like it'd be better equipped than my semi-rural area so you'd probably get better service in general.

xraydog

I think I'm gonna give them a shot. If they suck I can always switch since there's no contract.

kaliyama

ATT acquired cricket. Not sure what that means in terms of network tho.

Darlan

I'm sure it varies depending on where you are network wise, but I've had pretty good luck with Republic Wireless for a cheapo personal phone plan. $5 for Wi fi only, $10 for Wi fi data/unlimited talk text, $20 for unlimited 3G data on top of that, $40 for unlimited 4G on top of that, and you can switch plans twice a month. I just leave it on the ten buck plan for the most part and switch to the 3G one when I'm traveling. It believe they use the Sprint network.

MulysaSempronius

Warning for t-mobile-
I currently use them and can only get service in my apt in nyc through wireless connection to my internet. The frequency they use does not penetrate building walls very well. I can use my phone just fine outside- it's just inside that is an issue.
Googling seems to suggest they are fixing this? But just because a place is in their service area does not mean the service extends into the buildings.

Shadowfire

My wife and I have Cricket, and we live in the woods in Vermont. Been very happy with them for the past few months. We pay $45 each for unlimited talk and text, and 2.5GB data.

Our reception at home isn't great, but it wasn't with Verizon either. Everywhere outside and on the way to and from work is fine though. And their customer service is pretty great.

Green

I had Cricket service a few years back, only dropped them because I moved to an area that they didn't cover. Had no problems with the service and the price wasn't bad at all.

Local H Jay

I use Virgin, $35/mo for 200 mins and unlimited texting/internet. Back home in NH it sucked but in a city like Austin, it's amazing. Like above, I get crappy reception inside bigger buildings, but it works at my job.

BloodySloth

Virgin is a great budget option that I use as well. My plan is $30 a month for 1500 minutes and 1500 texts a month. Only 30 mb of data, which is barely anything, though there is the $35 plan that Jay mentioned if you want data. I've never had a problem with coverage, but I haven't left the city too often since I signed up.

They even have a $20 per month plan, but you have to pay $1.50 per mb of data and 15 cents per text, so it seems like a trap unless you really just don't use your phone very often.

I'm not sure if the $20 and $30 dollar options are available for smartphones, for what that's worth. I really just needed a cheap phone for work and convenience, so it wasn't an issue for me.

SmokeStacks

I have Cricket. It's been pretty rock solid for me so far.

The coverage used to be pretty spotty years back, but now they either use Sprint's network or AT&T's depending on whether you have a CDMA or GSM phone. Tons of phones can either be flashed to Cricket, or can use their network natively, so if you don't like any of their phones you can grab something cheap from craigslist or more than likely use your current phone.

I pay $35 a month and get unlimited talk and text, which is all I use my phone for, but they also have plans with unlimited data as well (they just shape you like crazy after a certain amount).

Your mileage may vary, but I have always had excellent interactions with their employees as well.

xraydog

I appreciate all the feedback I'm wondering what does it mean when people say X uses Y's network? Does it use the same signal or is their equipment on the same towers or what?

Shadowfire

Cricket is owned by AT&T, so it absolutely uses AT&T towers. You'll get a SIM card from them when you start service. Any GSM phone I'm aware of will work fine. My wife and I both use a Nexus 5 and love it. We pay $45 for the unlimited talk/text/data (up to 2.5GB at 4G). The rare times we've called or texted for support have been good experiences, but they had a difficult time getting our data set up at first. We started right when the Nexus 5 came out, and they were unfamiliar with the stock Android settings, but a quick google search fixed us up.

We were actually Aio Wireless customers before that was bought by AT&T and rolled into Cricket. Nothing has really changed for us, the service and pricing is still excellent.

When we say "uses X network," we mean the towers. When you buy service from an MVNO (Cricket, Virgin, etc) you only get service off of their towers. There are no roaming agreements. So, for instance, when you have an actual AT&T contract, you can usually float onto T-Mobile towers just fine. You don't have that luxury with MVNO plans, but you make up for that by not having a contract and paying way less each month for service.