Boost Mobile Cellular Phone

[Nadia]

So has anyone seen the ads on TV for this telephone and it's service? Boost Mobile is currently offering a pre-paid service for $50.00 per month. The service is unlimited minutes, text messages, and picture messages and walkie-talkie for that fifty bucks. Now I have searched the company web-site and cannot find any fine print or "catches" as we all say, as I am convinced there has to be one. This sounds too good to be true...I pay Verizon Wireless $80.00 per month for these services except no walkie talkie. I do have VZ Navigator on the phone as well as wireless web. Does anyone have any input? Hopefully maybe someone actually took the plunge and bought into it, and is happy even? Please do tell! I so want to get rid of my evil contract phone but I am convinced there is a catch.

[wifi]

The biggest problem I see, is that they don't cover NH...

[Seeker]

I have Verizon Wireless over here but I don't get a signal at my house. Well, what do you expect for $15/month? I do get an excellent signal from my 3 cars with Onstar which is also Verizon, go figure.

[Nadia]

wifi how can they not cover NH and sell their phones and cards in so many stores around here? I'm not at all saying I don't believe you I'm very interested in where you found that info, obviously it will help me make a good decision!

[wifi]

I checked their coverage map found here

They specifically do not include NH, eastern Ct, WV, etc.

If you look at the Maine map, you can see some 'leakage' of the map into the state of NH. Not sure why they don't choose to include these states. Perhaps they cant reach agreements with carriers in those areas.

There coverage looks mainly to cover the major travel routes, (take a look at ME and VT for example), vaguely reminiscent of Sprint/Nextel. Wonder whose system they use?

[Skip]

Not sure which coverage map you looked at, but the one I saw on their website (a .pdf file) shows the do cover the southeastern portion of the State up into parts of the Lake region.

Boost Mobile is owned by Sprint/Nextel and piggyback's on that company's Sprint Nextel iDEN network, hence the walkie-feaure.

So, if you have Sprint/Nextel coverage in your respective area, you will also most likely be able to utilize the Boost network.

Unfortuneately once you get into the western and northern 2/3rds of the State, this system has little to no coverage.

[PennyPenny]

My husband has a boostmobile prepaid phone that works just fine in this area and surrounding areas. It is not the phone you are referring to but it is the same company. He has traveled down the east coast to Georgia and west to Illinois and was able to phone home. There was a big area in Georgia that was a dead zone and he had to travel 30 minutes away in order to get service but otherwise it has worked everywhere else. We live in Sandwich and he can make phone calls from our house with good connections. The phone itself is nothing fancy but he has voicemail and texting on it. It serves its purpose.

[Nadia]

Originally Posted by PennyPenny

The phone itself is nothing fancy but he has voicemail and texting on it. It serves its purpose.

Exactly I might be one of the very few but what ever happened to having a frickin cell phone for phone calls and the occassional text message when needed (and not driving)? I understand all these added features are a standard of conveinence for some but for me they are nothing but an annoyance and unneccesary 99% of the time. You practically have to be a computer programmer to store a number! Like PennyPenny said I just need something that serves the simple purpose of making and receiving phone calls, storing numbers and text messages. Every new phone I upgrade to there is more and more crap to sift through in order to choose a ring tone and to store a few stinkin numbers! Anyways enough of that, thanks for listening to me bitch

Thanks for all your responses and if anyone has anymore info please do share! I want to know as much as I can before I make this switch because the initial set-up will be costly. For a decent Boost pre-paid phone it's roughly $100.00, and then the $50.00 per month set up, and to pay my last phone bill plus $175.00 to break my contract with Verizon Wireless. I still have another year with them and there are numerous reasons that are good enough for me to justify spending the $175.00 to break the contract off for sure. Ironically VW probably owns Boost Mobile, just like they own Net 10. I guess it's VW contract plan I'm unhappy with. I'm going to check out those links again thanks for the input please share if anyone has anymore.

[beaner]

After our Verizon contract expired, we dumped them and switched to TracFone pre-paid. I think they run off the US Cellular towers, but in any case, they work great. In some signal-challenged areas such as Melvin Village and Madison we actually get a better signal than we did with Verizon. Our company is saving a TON of money after the switch. We don't use any texting and we're low volume callers, though. You can buy a TracFone for next to nothing at any WalMart and buy only the amount of minutes you actually need. You can also buy phones and minutes online http://www.tracfone.com

[Nadia]

Originally Posted by beaner

After our Verizon contract expired, we dumped them and switched to TracFone pre-paid. I think they run off the US Cellular towers, but in any case, they work great. In some signal-challenged areas such as Melvin Village and Madison we actually get a better signal than we did with Verizon. Our company is saving a TON of money after the switch. We don't use any texting and we're low volume callers, though. You can buy a TracFone for next to nothing at any WalMart and buy only the amount of minutes you actually need. You can also buy phones and minutes online http://www.tracfone.com

Hey beaner thanks, although I have looked into TracFone and actually owned one myself about 9 years ago this option is not feasable for me. The amount of time I spend on the phone between personal use and business makes this option not cost effective. We actually have three cellphones. One for me, one for him and one for our business. For purposes of taxes, proffessionalism and sanity I will not commingle business calls with personal calls or vice versa. He has some long time customers who have his personal # but I don't do this for many reasons. Anywhoo I would love to be able to know that every month no matter what the cost for phone usage is a straight $150.00 for all three. It can vary so much but usually for the month I end up paying $200-$300 for all three. I have paid up to $600 These were times when the phone company did the sneaky little things they usually do to make money and I got the boots put to me cause I didn't catch it. Or DH rekindled his love affair with tetris. Don't get me started! LOL. It's become a hassle to keep constantly changing the plans on three different phones to meet the ever-changing needs of each line. As soon as I get it straight it's something else, or DH drops his cell phone in a 5 gallon paint bucket or business picks up out of nowhere and the phone rings non-stop. Life is just too impossible to predict so to know that I can plan on $150.00 every month makes me happy. And will save me hours on the phone with tech support pressing buttons to try and reach a person who can barely speak English! I'm glad TracFone works for you and is saving you and your co. money, that's what I'm looking to do myself but our trade requires a lot of phone time and sometimes long distance calls, and in turn we need something like Unlimited Minutes. We have paid for plans with a lot of minutes which get more and more expensive as the mins increase, then the demand for phone usage slows down for whatever reason and we're still paying for all these mins we're not using. Then I'm back on the phone pushing buttons for ten mins and waiting an hour to speak to someone named Ishmuackelraanmoolie who if I'm lucky understands my problem and can suggest a helpful solution. No offense to anyone foreign but when they don't have a good grasp of the English language all kinds of things get changed or switched around on the plan and no matter whose fault it is big co.'s like Verizon have a million reasons why it is the consumers fault and in turn can justify charging you the same amount of money for your cell phone that you pay for your mortgage! LOL. Ugh...I even think about it and turn 3 shades of red!

[wifi]

You might have already looked at them, but USC has free incoming: minutes, pictures & texts on their plans. If you can separate out incoming minutes, etc on your Verizon bill, you can see if USC could save you any $$. Just a thought.

[PennyCentury]

Boost Mobile sure does cover NH; Along the major routes including NH 4/9, 93, 89, and definitely the Lakes Region -- it uses the Nextel push to talk network and Boost users are assigned the same type of PTT number to talk to other Nextel and Boost users.

I'm sticking with the pay-as-you-go scheme for now; this could change for me in the future. So far I'm a satisfied user for about four years. I currently have the Motorola 1776 camera-flip phone, it's very good.

Regards