I loved my Samsung Omnia. I bought a Zagg for it, even though it’s in my opinion that Zagg’s don’t meet the hype. Needless to say, well within my one year warranty my screen starts going out of alignment. A week or so later I have to keep realigning the screen every day just to type on it, 2 weeks later the screen became non-responsive at all. A week goes by with just using the optical mouse and then the screen starts to peel off. I stop using my Omnia and called up Samsungs warranty department. They asked me if there had been physical damage to the phone such as water or dropping it, which there hasn’t, I take care of my things. The person I spoke with had the RMA department email me a shipping label so I went and printed it out, paid the UPS store a whopping $8 for a small cardboard box and peanuts to ship it!(I know, how do they get away with such robbery!!)

About a week or so gets back and unlike what I was told on the phone, their warranty department emails me telling me that they are shipping back my phone(including the tracking #) and voiding the warranty. The only reason specified was “ABUSE”. This pisses me off because the woman I spoke with said that they would be contacting me with the status of the repair or if there is any complications, instead they just shipped it back. This is a major disappointment because I’ve been surrounding myself with Samsung products lately and was wanting to buy an Omnia 2, 2 USB powered LCD Monitors, a bluetooth soundbar, a wireless ready blu-ray player, a laser printer, and a Samsung refrigerator. I already have $3000 worth of Samsung products in my home and this has been my first experience with their warranty center and I’m honestly quite upset by that.

Now that this new dislike for Samsung’s warranty center has developed I started looking at my options, and despite my trust in Verizon to always bill me fairly, provide me with great tech support, and great service, their modular pricing seems to be getting under my skin. This is what I was paying them for…

Last Months bill:

900 Minutes Plus email:

99.99

Mobile broadband connect(didn’t even use it once):

15.00

500 Texts(not unlimited):

10.00

VZ Navigator(if you don’t flash the firmware, this is all you can use and they charge you for it. Flashing is 3rd party and voids warranty…)

10.00

Verizon Wireless’ and Other Charges & Credits(aka whatever they wanna charge you for)

2.52

Taxes and blah blah blah

1.67

87 txt’s over limit:

8.70

I face dialed 411 information once:

2.99

This ends up being 150.87 for the month of December. Fun!

Now this isn’t just to play with, I run a business(a few kinda) and I have customers calling and txting me often and it’s not uncommon to go through a lot of txt’s, minutes, and data in any given month. I usually go over the txt limit by about this many, so I will perform the following comparisons with this in mind, minus the 2.99 for dialing 411.

So without 411, $147.88/month, across 12 months is $1774.56, multiplied by the contract length of 2 years is $3549.12. My girlfriend gets all of these features and more for $45/month without having to sign a contract with Metro PCS which works out to $1080 over 2 years of service. Unfortunately I’m traveling off the beaten path often so Metro won’t work for me yet.

Phone service guide, 1st quarter 2010:

A list of all of the above features I’m currently subscribed to and their costs from all major carriers, including all fees and taxes. This is just a guide I’ve compiled from other peoples data. No I’m not going to give you a map of coverage zones or a list of dropped call rates. I’m not backing any of this with facts, I’m just sharing my research with anyone who wants to read it. So don’t sue me AT&T when I say that you are by far the worst deal out there…

Verizon

900 Minutes w/ 587+ txts(500 + overage)

$147.88/month | $1774.56/year | $3549.12/Contract length

AT&T

900 minutes w/587+ txts(1500 incl.)

$121.74/month | $1496.88/year | $2957.76/contract length

Sprint

Unlimited calls to mobile, unlimited txt and data and everything else.

$73.18/month | $878.16/year | $1756.32/contract length

T-Mobile

Unlimited talk, text, and web

$84.18/month | $1045.16/year | $2055.32/contract length

Metro PCS

$45/month | $540/year | $1080/across 2 years

Most expensive to most affordable

1. $3549.12 | Verizon  (Too much)
   
2. $2957.76 | AT&T
3. $2055.32 | T-Mobile (Average)
   
4. $1756.32 | Sprint
5. $1080.00 | Metro PCS (Way affordable)
   

^The reason I’ve decided to highlight both Sprint and Metro PCS in green is because Metro has far less coverage outside of large cities and far less phone selections.

If you had to rank the reliability of the networks today it would go in this order:

1. Verizon – CDMA (Best calls)
   
2. Sprint – CDMA
   
3. Metro PCS – CDMA (Average calls)
   
4. AT&T – GSM
   
5. T-Mobile – GSM (Worst calls)
   

If you had to list their coverage in order it would be as follows:

1. Verizon
2. Sprint
3. AT&T
4. T-Mobile
5. Metro PCS

Selection of phones:

1. Verizon
2. T-Mobile
3. Sprint
4. AT&T
5. Metro PCS
   

Overall I would say that Sprint and Verizon at this point are the only carriers I would consider at this point. Sprint is a lot less expensive, so that’s probably where I will go.