The Wifi Hotspot: Prices crash for this essential piece of tech

I found out about the value of wifi hotspots in 2013 when I was working on contract for AT&T.

There's nothing better for getting around flaky or nonexistent or too-secured Internet wherever you are.

I paid $50 per month for just 5 GB in 2014. Now I pay $10 month extra to

... for 22 GB. I used it a lot during a recent Snow Event we had around home that blocked our Satellite Internet when snow was melting from the trees (I speculate). But I used this a lot for work video and Youtube and even then just got a warning from Cricket "You've used 75% of your high-speed data for the month." Well, OK!

Now Sprint has apparently upped the ante with 100GB for cheap!

Go and get this for yourself before your next flaky internet experience!

Cricket update: not really their fault

I resolved my problem with Cricket the day after my last post. I still would like to have 24 hour support from them, but I can live without that.

It turns out the problem was really 2 interacting user interface issues:

The credit card statement (online) didn't say DECLINED but instead:

This doesn't say the same thing to me and I thought the payment was going through.

Then on the cricket site it didn't have anything attention-getting about 'overdue payment' in flashing red or anything.

The cricket rep took a substitute credit card number and waived the $5 late fee, which was all I could ask for (other than an obvious note on their site) ...

Cricket Wireless: the downside

I have elsewhere in this blog expressed enthusiasm for Cricket Wireless:

But they have some sort of a back-end glitch that's been annoying today. The credit card I have hooked to pay the account was late in getting the payment credited (not my fault this time!) so the payment to Cricket failed temporarily.

This is now resolved, but the phone network didn't hear the news as the phones I have on the Cricket plan aren't working.

I tried their support chat line, but they were just closing (apparently midnight EST) and said they can't do any changes to my account until they open at 6:30 (EST).

*splut* ... OK this time, but I'm not happy about this 6.5-hour window.

I'll try in the morning and post an update then.

Never buy a locked phone: an anecdote about unlocking a T-Mobile

T-Mobile is known for annoying AT&T and the rest of the industry by some of their pricing policies and I therefore had them filed under sort of the 'virtuous rebel' flag:

But it turns out they behave more like the Empire when you want to leave:

My wife and I started trimming Stupid Expenses, and when I looked and found that I was paying $71/month to T-Mobile for worse coverage than I can get with Cricket (see my plug for Cricket elsewhere in this blog) at $45, I had to make that change.

Naive youth that I am, I just assumed that virtuous T-mobile would automatically unlock your phone when you finished paying for it (we had) ... silly me.

I took the phone to Cricket and got the new Cricket SIM card installed and only then found out the phone was locked. I called T-Mobile to get it unlocked ... and found some unbelievable stalling practices they use:

• "Check for an email in about an hour" with instructions for unlocking, which will take another 24 hours after that.
• The email didn't arrive, so I wound up calling back once more and 'chatting' once after that
• I stopped at their retail store, who tried to help but told me I had to call customer service ...
• Finally, the Cricket rep told me how typical this all was and that I had to just ask for the supervisor at T-Mobile to get things moving

This finally worked; I gave her a shorter email address and finally watched it arrive while I was on the phone, and said thanks and hung up.

It then took about 22 hours for the actual unlock to happen ... now the next day I finally got two more of those (intentionally?) glacially slow emails ...

What modern internet-connected organization would tolerate email taking 24-36 hours to arrive unless they wanted it that way?

Goodbye and good riddance, T-mobile ... you lost my good will on the way out.

Guides through the cell phone jungle: first, Cricket

I recently had an experience with a local cell phone retailer that, as I was leaving the store, started to describe as "pleasant." But that wasn't quite right ... it was more like having a competent guide through a snake-filled jungle!

The retailer was Cricket Wireless:

They have an unusual business plan that contains (as far as I can tell) three legs:

• Sell phones at cost by buying in bulk ... but locked to Cricket, not unlocked
• Have knowledgeable staff in their retail stores that can help with technical/commercial issues (more about this below)
• Hold the hands of nontechnical cash users who (apparently) constitute a significant part of their business
• Advertise prices including taxes and fees so they're a smidge cheaper than the competition

I have for a while been using Straight Talk (WalMart) Wireless for my phone and for my stepson's. The stepson's old phone failed and I found advertised on Craigslist a late-model unlocked Samsung Grand Supreme ... but it wasn't unlocked. It was locked to Cricket.

Oh well ... I got on Cricket's website and tried to do the online process to switch the number from Straight Talk ... the order went through but I got an email the next day saying "sorry we couldn't get this work so here's your money back." Annoying, but much less annoying than alternatives I've encountered from other cell providers ...

I took the phone into the Cricket store in Kent, Washington and was guided by Anna, who had previous experience getting service transferred away from Straight Talk. She and I worked together to find the several bits of information to make Straight Talk's clunky number-porting process work and after an hour, it finally did.

One thing they insisted on is the SIM card number of the phone being ported away, and I didn't have that with me as this was a new (used) phone. I finally dug this out of the Straight Talk website as they wouldn't tell me where to find this:

It turns out the Serial Number in the table above is the SIM card number we were looking for; this image is actually more legible than it appears on Google Chrome (the only browser I tried) as the grid lines between fields did not show up and there was just a small space between the two fields.

Cricket runs on the AT&T network; as soon as my Lovely Wife's T-mobile non-contract iPhone payment is over with I'm going to take both of our phones to Anna at Cricket to get them switched.