Consumer Cellular vs AT&T Wireless Prepaid, an honest comparison. I don’t do a lot of reviews, but the honest reviews are popular.
A mobile phone is a necessity of modern life and nearly everybody needs mobile phone service. The service providers know it so there is no need to provide affordable service and no incentive to provide customer assistance. The way things are going in the United States, I think free customer support will be a thing of the past shortly.
I had to change phone service providers recently. It was an unexpected change that happened quickly. I was using Consumer Cellular for a number of years. At first, the service was pretty good but recently, the service has gotten a lot worse. One of the big reasons I didn’t change providers is that, like every mobile phone user knows, you can go through a few day(or more), of customer service hell and roll the dice with another provider.
I decided to change when I found out Consumer Cellular was adding data to the actual total. I think this has happened a couple times before, this time was the most obvious.
I was on their “Unlimited Plan”, which is of course, not unlimited. It’s supposed to be about 50G(50 Gigabytes), which is a fair amount of data for a mobile plan, almost too good to be true, which it is. The first time I ran over the 50G limit, I was a new customer and did not know “unlimited” was not “unlimited”. It was during a wildfire emergency and the phone was worthless during that critical time.
Most of the time, I think I used about 35G per month. Typically, the Consumer Cellular service was so slow, I don’t think I could use more than that if I tried. Last month, I went over the 50G limit. Software on my computer automatically downloaded some updates so I can’t say precisely when, or if, I went over the limit. It seemed like a lot of data for service that couldn’t even load a small JPEG image file.
When you go over the 50G limit, Consumer Cellular throttles the service to SMS text messages only and disables the phone hotspot. At the beginning of the new billing cycle, you must call them to turn the hotspot on.
After doing this, I checked how much data had been used the past few days without the phone hotspot. I checked the phone settings for network data usage. I had used 5.65G of data. The Consumer Cellular network is the only one on the phone.
That’s about the right amount of data I might use over a few days. I was surprised to see considerable more data on the Consumer Cellular app.
It’s not unusual for the figures not to match, but when the difference is in the gigabyte range, always in the favor of Consumer Cellular, something is going on. At the end of the day, I checked the data usage. The phone settings showed 7.68G of Consumer Cellular network data used.
In less than twelve hours, Consumer Cellular has added another gigabyte of data.
When I turned on the phone the next day, there was 7.87G of data use registered on the phone. That’s about 200MB of data used, probably automatic updates the instant the phone is turned on.
Consumer Cellular added more than a gigabyte of data while the phone was turned off.
A mobile phone, or any other device, does not receive signals while it is off. Consumer Cellular customer service told me that the phone was using bandwidth while the phone was turned off. That is not true.
By then, I was looking for another service provider. The next morning when I checked the Consumer Cellular app, another gigabyte of data had been added.
At this rate of data use, I would go over the 50G data limit, just like last month. I was being taken for a ride. Consumer Cellular markets to senior citizens, of which I am one. Kind of a dirty trick to pull on old people.
Once again here in America, being a good customer and always paying your bills gets you exactly nothing. Because of my location, I have to use AT&T wireless service. In cities, you have more of a choice, but in rural America, the choices for mobile phone and broadband are extremely limited.
I went with AT&T Wireless Prepaid Unlimited plan with 35G of hotspot data. Basically the same plan as I had with Consumer Cellular with a 50G data limit. AT&T limits hotspot data at 35G and costs about ten dollars more a month. In the few days I’ve used AT&T with the same phone, same location and same cell tower, the service is significantly better than Consumer Cellular.
With Consumer Cellular, when I started up the phone, there would be decent data coverage. After an hour or so, the data coverage would fade away to nothing. Reboot the phone, fast data for about an hour that fades to nothing. With AT&T, same phone, same location, same tower, there is nothing like that. It certainly seems like the service is being throttled nearly all the time. Consumer Cellular claims they don’t reduce bandwidth, but clearly, they do.
There are plenty of great reviews of Consumer Cellular, especially with their customer service. It’s true that Consumer Cellular customer service is quick, the people all speak English and they are very polite. The thing is, they are very nice while not providing the information requested or flat out lying to you. A lot of reviews are for new customers, everybody’s happy at first.
AT&T customer service is absolutely horrible. I would say it was a nightmare from hell, but I don’t want to sugar coat it. And that’s after less than a week of AT&T service, with a lot of that week spent on hold with AT&T customer service.
No matter what the problem, expect to spend at least an hour on hold. Don’t have a problem or sign up for new service, like I did, near a weekend because there is no live customer service on Sunday. Creating an online account or using the AT&T phone app cause way more problems than they’re worth.
Same phone, a little better service with less customer service and ten dollars more. I lost a little personal data which AT&T has probably sold by now all to use a mobile phone.
Which is best, Consumer Cellular or AT&T Wireless Prepaid? After having them both, I would say “neither”. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
This entire article was written while on HOLD with AT&T Customer Service
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