Study: Just 13% Truly Loyal To Their Wireless Carrier > Study is BS

Study is BS

Or they did the math and AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile would not be cheaper for them. Especially if your family is not all on the same contract end date. I took a bath ($75 or so) when we switched to Verizon as our 1 line was a couple months prior to the contract end date.

I think that's what keeps people there.

100% correct. I convert friends to prepaid like it is going out of style. I have had 0% success w/ people having 3+ lines because no surprise contract dates are all over the place and the way the contracts are structured is that the primary line takes the "hit" and the 2+ lines are more reasonably priced. If they converted to share everything, that first gig or two is VERY expensive so dropping a line becomes punitive if now that person has to drop $45+ (prepaid) when they are only paying $55-$60 AND get a subsidized phone. Add to the fact that data limits on prepaid are sketchy at best or they throttle and don't clearly disclose what the throttle speed is.

I am here to say that 3+ lines almost always makes sense to go postpaid, unless you have monster data usage because the phone subsidies play out here. When someone gets into a contract, they sort of know how the network functions. The only network that has taken a shi**er is Sprint, the others have only gotten better. Even crappy AT&T now has decent coverage in NYC and Boston w/ Wifi offloading.

Also people a "familiar" and if the service is good and they make it easy to get into a new contract, there is no churn. So while people may complain about price, they are not going to move.

The $10 is funny, because if you look @ how T and VZ did things, they didn't actually raise prices, they hid them in shared data. When you buy an airline ticket, you shop on the price... When you get to the airport and they whack you $25 you complain but buy it. Nobody told you Jetblue or Southwest you can avoid that fee.. Most people have other things to worry about, so they just pay.

I sorta felt bad (not really) buying my Mrs used phones for years. She never really complained about the rooted phones and bugs phones EXCEPT for the crappy cameras. Now that the Nexus 4 is here and the camera is awesome she is just happy. My point: Prepaid now has some classy phones --finally-- and postpaid is under attack. I can't tell you how much I like here Nexus 4 compared to my toy iphone.

Decent service in NYC for ATT? ATT can't provide decent service in NYC if their life depended on it. I can't carry on a conversation with my son in NYC with his phone dropping on the shitty ATT coverage they provide in Brooklyn Manhattan in other parts. Oh they are quite willing to charge you for a signal boosting device to piggyback on your Internet connection so you can get cell phone service and try to make you think they are doing you a favor. Guess everyone has a different experience. ATT for me sucks hind tit!

reply to BF69

reply to itguy05
IF they did the math and included T-Mobile or Sprint they certainly would have found them to be cheaper.

What they most likely determined was coverage and that was probably based on perception as opposed to real world information.

reply to Twaddle
Correction. I was talking about data if you are on wifi. I agree that my colleagues that with voice is still subpar and having a more than 5+ minute conversation means a redial. Almost everyone has moved over to Verizon, so I don't really have that many datapoints as of say the last six months.

AT&T screwed me big time in the blue-orange merger (not to mention crappy services) on billing/etc, and I will likely never push another byte of data (knowingly) across their networks as long as I breathe. They are in my top three of most hated companies. As a matter of fact ST uses TMO SIM for the Mrs, and now it looks like T is putting the bone to Carlos so I can assume their data rates are going up due to lots of iphone 5's still sitting on HSPA....

I have Verizon, which functions quite well in NYC and Boston for that matter (except for some shady portions of 93 and 495). The only shady place I have ever seen is West Virginia, but then again they seem to get the shaft (no pun intended) by all data providers.