Let me tell you something, that first 30 days was great! I was able to text in areas of my work building that I'd never been able to before. No more standing by a window! But here's the thing, I hardly made any phone calls. I didn't have the need to! Plus, everything else was working great...except for the fact that I couldn't surf the web away from my home wi-fi or the wi-fi connections that I built up, but whatever. I didn't want to be held hostage by the internet anyway, right?
The 30 days no risk period was getting close to an end and my only other complaints with Republic was that whoever owned my phone number before me was clearly running with the wrong crowd. I kept getting voicemails demanding that "Face" give up the money. Whoever the gentleman was that was leaving me these voicemails threatened to beat Face up several times if he didn't bring the money to specific locations and times—and I’m guessing Face regretted missing those messages. I talked to the angry caller a few times and told him that he had the wrong number. He told me I was wrong and that no, this was the right number.
These phone arguments got old fast so I decided it was time to take the plunge and port my number over from Verizon. What they don't warn you when you port your number over to Republic is that you could be unable to text for up to 72 hours. I was so confused. It had seemed so easy to port it over, why was nothing working right? I couldn't figure out what was going on at first. I emailed a few people and asked them to text me and send me a confirmation email. Finally, went to the "Community" where you are encouraged to get all your help from.
It’s a cost effective method for Republic to pawn people off on the Community and there's definitely nothing wrong with getting help from other users. I pose questions to Twitter sometimes and see other people doing the same. Other people are a great source of information and will generally be more honest about issues than the company ever would be. Republic's Community is no different. It's a place where I would go to find how people work around Republic because frankly it isn't working right. I loved the screaming rants that people would go on because I knew I wasn't the only one that says Arrested Development style, "I've made a huge mistake." Oh, I tried to make it work. The monthly bill was really nice, but the frustration....
So the community gave me my answer: porting your phone number means that texting is non-existent for a few days, but it cleared up just like they said it would. I figured things should be great from there, but then... I had to move to a new apartment. This meant making phone calls. Lots of them. Lots and lots and lots of phone calls.
It quickly became clear that automated systems could not handle my phone. Hearing "I'm-I'm-I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I'm Sor-ry!" was pretty standard for any call with an automated system. It was really funny the first dozen times. I'd put my phone on speaker for whoever was nearby to get a good laugh too. Not so funny now. And actually talking to real people was just as annoying. The line would cut in and out, which Republic explained away as being the result of going between Wi-Fi and Sprint's network. Unfortunately, that excuse didn't fly with me because I typically made calls from the comfort of my own home...while on my wireless.
Not only that, but the dropped calls were different too. I experienced what I called the "Silent dropped" call. The Silent dropped call results in a drop of all audio, while the seconds are still counting. Sometimes the other person would hang up, the seconds would keep rolling and they'd try to call me back. I wouldn't be able to switch to the other call because the screen would be flashing between off and on--this actually happened again...while I was trying to switch service providers away from Republic. It was good times. Naturally, the problem usually occurred when I was working from home and trying to assist a client. I sent more than one quick email, "I apologize, I seem to be experiencing technical difficulties with my phone. Here's the information you need."
Then the problems started growing like the McDonald's food chain. Republic's logo, the green rainbow shape, is supposed to display on your phone whenever you are connected to the wireless to signal that well... "You're connected!" Unfortunately, it stopped meaning that. Getting access to the internet would become next to impossible while on wi-fi (I spent more time switching to a laptop or my kindle than I'd care to admit). More than once I was in the process of tweeting something along the lines of, "Oh wow, Republic is so great that I can't even access the internet while on the wi-fi!" and twitter would fail to update over and over. Most of my complaint tweets would be sent a day later when I had access again. I couldn't even complain on a timely basis!
The texting issues after I ported my number never seemed to get better. My Fiancé got used to always contacting me via chat or email because texting didn't work 90% of the time. Now, I text a lot; when I was with Verizon my stats typically showed that I was texting roughly 2000 times a month. Take away my ability to text and I'm dead in the water. My main form of communication is gone. It was always devastating to me when my texting capabilities became non-existent. Plus, I rarely got all of the texts that I mixed after texting finally returned. Then there were all the times that my phone would send out my texts over and over. A friend told me that she got 16 copies of the same text before she gave up keeping track. Her phone wouldn't shut up for a long time as the notifications came in. Again, this is funny the first time, but not so much after several occurrences.
So I griped about the issues again on Twitter and Republic finally took notice. They tweeted me and said that they had improved since then. I was curious how they'd improved since the day before and said as much. They proceeded to try to get me to talk to their helpbot (who never once responded to any of my tweets, by the way). Another follower of mine joined in on the conversation and Republic got really snippy and told her that she obviously didn't read their tweet. She let them know that the internet is forever and they backed down, but I still grabbed screen shots of everything. (Click the image below for full view)
They did try everything from making me delete all of my messages to factory resetting my phone, but there's only so much of that you can take. I just stopped letting them know when it broke. It wasn't worth the trouble when the issues would come back in a few hours and I had already decided it was time to go ahead and break up with them. After all, a relationship between a wireless provider and its users is all about usability. I loved the little bill. But the trouble of trying to get it to work consistently wasn't worth the $22 and some change after tax. It was a rip-off. The $19/mo advertised was way too expensive for all the trouble I went through.
I hung in with Republic Wireless for about 6 months, 7 tops. I couldn’t handle it any more. So I switched to Boost. My brother had been using them for a month or so longer than I used Republic and had no issues with them. And I really didn’t feel like jumping into yet another contract like Verizon, so I figured why no go with one that I knew people with firsthand experience could vouch for? I made one little mistake though. I wanted to keep my phone number.
I don’t have a lot of experience with porting phone numbers. I usually just opt for the new one. But I wasn’t keen on repeating the “Face” man incident. The thought of dealing with calls at all hours of the day for what was probably drug money did not appeal to me. There was just one tiny problem with this; Boost was convinced that my phone number was a landline. I had my number originally with Verizon, so I knew that it was definitely not a landline number. I talked to person after person over the course of two days; mainly because my RW phone kept dropping the calls. They kept referring me to the landline department and I kept asking, “How is this a landline? I’m holding a cellphone in my hand. Do you see why this is hard for me to understand?”
Those poor people probably hated me, but I really just wanted to understand.
So after a little digging and once again going to the RW Community, I found that the service is basically a VOIP service and that other carriers do consider it to be a landline service. This was bizarre news to me, but I won’t pretend to have the most technical acumen. After finally getting a hold of the mysterious landline department with Boost and their random hours, I was able to get things sorted. It took just a few minutes with them and I was set. Despite the annoyance, it was still easier than porting to RW! And with that, I was finally free of them! Or so I thought…
After you port your number, you have to cancel with RW and hope that they actually cancel it. There were lots of complaints in the Community that RW continued to charge them and I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t notice the $22 leaving until a bill got declined for the lack of money. But I needed to end things, so I sent the message requesting deactivation and received a letter back asking me to confirm.
The interesting bit about this letter was one sentence, “Please be aware that once we cancel your service the phone will be shut off instantly.” Now I spent a lot of money on that phone and they were telling me that my phone would be shut off instantly? I *own* my silly Motorola Defy XT! How come I’m being denied the use of my phone? Not that it’s worth trying to use beyond my service with them… It’s a horrible phone after all! But the principle of making people pay full price for a phone and then shutting it off when they don’t approve of your service is just wrong**.
But…it’s finally over! I left the Republic 3 months ago and couldn’t be happier. Things aren’t perfect with Boost and honestly, there’s never going to be a perfect provider. But, I at least feel like I’m getting *something* for the money I’m putting into this carrier!
Honestly, Republic has a great idea that just wasn't being done well. The idea of paying for what you get is phenomenal, I just didn't like not getting *anything* for what I was paying. After all, any idea or company that lets you nix the big cell phone companies can't be all bad. But as I've been hearing lately, this service is probably best left to an app rather than a full blown wireless provider. I just don't think Republic will back up and try again. So if it's going to be done on the level that they're going for, Republic needs to make some big changes, provide real customer service, and lasting solutions to problems.
In the end, they said they were sad to see me go. And ironically, I felt they were being truly honest about that. If they weren't sad to see me go, they were a little jealous of me. As I used my RW phone for one last phone call to my new wireless provider...my call dropped. How poetic is that!
**I still have the phone and keep meaning to test it to see if they were really right about the whole, “YOUR PHONE IS DEAD TO US” thing but haven’t done so yet. So there’s still the possibility that they weren’t being honest on that front. I may remember to check one day and make an update, hah!
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