Straight talk or Crickett?

[53' Stude]

I’m looking to go away from shoddy T Mobile service. Have to move or go to other area of place to hear people I’m talking to. Downright disgusting since there is 7 towers in my area. Anyone have success with Crickett or straight talk? Which would you recommend?

Thank You

 

[Zee09]

Cricket was the best here.
I got 5 bars in my basement even. But AT&T took over so no thanks

 

[blufeb95]

Cricket is probably the better of the two because they have some physical stores where you might be able to get help, Straight talk customer service is an absolute joke, despite it being Walmart's service they don't provide customer support in the store, and when you call half of the foreign script readers just don't get it.

 

[Rand]

how old is your phone? If its not recent you might be missing major bands for tmobil.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

I have been a Cricket customer for over 5 years. No issues other than I cannot use it internationally. Cricket has become ATT's prepay offering division / carrier. Visible is VZWs equivalent. Metro is T-Mobile's equivalent. In other words all of the major carriers are now offering a MVNO brand that is somewhat decontented and less expensive than their main brand.

Mint Mobile was bought by T-Mobile and will soon join Metro as an MVNO offer.

 

[99Saturn]

Doesn't Cricket use AT&T and Straight Talk offer Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile? Do you have preference to what network you are on if not T-Mobile?

FWIW, wife has used Twigby and Visible to do Verizon network 3rd party, both have been pretty much the same experience, no issues.

 

[2heeldrive]

I have been a happy Cricket customer for about 10 years. I have 4 lines with them and pay $100/mn. I have never had a problem with coverage and their customer service is top notch. I highly recommend them. A new customer can get an iPhone 11 for $99.99.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

@ 53.....you can download an application both from the Google Playstor or Apple ITunes called Open Signal. It has a mapping feature that will show the closest carrier towers to your location and thus potential coverage.

T-Mobile users are now paying the price for the over population of their network and poor performance is the result of load balancing that they actively apply when more subscribers are trying to use the network to full capacity. They have offloaded some of these connections to their 5G network, but that only works if you are in a 5G coverage area....which is usually only available in major metropolitian markets.

 

[Warstud]

Which would you recommend?

It's not always the phone provider you want to look at ........... your location has alot to do with reliability . You should ask your neighbors and coworkers what they use .

 

[NRMedic]

I've been a loyal VZN customer for over a decade, did business with US Cellular for a decade before that. Hard to tell what I'd do. AT&T offers FirstNet which is tempting as it give me data and phone use priority on the tower. However, if I got off of a major carrier, it'd be Straight Talk for the VZN towers.

 

[Furious]

Straight Talk is obviously the cheapest option... but they have like zero spam/scam protection and you will get bombarded with calls. Cricket for me however seems to do a much better job at filtering those out.

Just keep in mind Cricket has a upgrade policy and runs on AT&T network while Straight Talk you can upgrade whenever and runs on Verizon network.

I have used both and my recommendation would be Cricket if AT&T has good coverage in your area.

 

[53' Stude]

how old is your phone? If its not recent you might be missing major bands for tmobil.

I have a 3 year old 2nd gen IPhone SE PHONE.

 

[Furious]

Doesn't Cricket use AT&T and Straight Talk offer Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile? Do you have preference to what network you are on if not T-Mobile?

FWIW, wife has used Twigby and Visible to do Verizon network 3rd party, both have been pretty much the same experience, no issues.

Straight Talk used to offer AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile coverage however Verizon bought Tracfone wireless and has changed Straight Talk to Verizon network only.

 

[53' Stude]

It's not always the phone provider you want to look at ........... your location has alot to do with reliability . You should ask your neighbors and coworkers what they use .

One coworker has straight talk and had issues with it.

 

[53' Stude]

@ 53.....you can download an application both from the Google Playstor or Apple ITunes called Open Signal. It has a mapping feature that will show the closest carrier towers to your location and thus potential coverage.

T-Mobile users are now paying the price for the over population of their network and poor performance is the result of load balancing that they actively apply when more subscribers are trying to use the network to full capacity. They have offloaded some of these connections to their 5G network, but that only works if you are in a 5G coverage area....which is usually only available in major metropolitian markets.

Thank You sir. I downloaded that app. I may explore Tracfone. What’s folks thoughts on them?

Thank You.

 

[Furious]

One coworker has straight talk and had issues with it.

There was a time where a bunch of us Samsung Galaxy users lost service for a week throughout multiple states on Straight Talk. They tried to push it off as the phones being a problem and tried to get us to use old junk phones.

They also had issues in my area where calling would not work for sometimes a whole day it would just go to the default Verizon wireless error message and end call.

They offer a good price and ok service most of the time but the scam/spam calls pushed me over the edge and that's why I finally switched to Cricket and there has been literally zero problems for me on the Cricket/AT&T network.

 

[Rmay635703]

Whichever one is $15/month unlimited

 

[Furious]

Thank You sir. I downloaded that app. I may explore Tracfone. What’s folks thoughts on them?

Thank You.

Tracfone is the parent company of Straight Talk which is owned by Verizon. It is exactly the same as Straight Talk same with all other Tracfone companies such as Net10, MyFamilyMobile, Simple Mobile, etc.

You might also want to look into Google Fi, they run on the T-Mobile network.

 

[53' Stude]

Whichever one is $15/month unlimited

You won’t find that on either one

 

[Rmay635703]

You won’t find that on either one

Why I don’t use either