Dead Cell Phone

A month and a half ago I got a new cell phone from Republic Wireless. They use Motorola Android phones which some consider to be decent mid grade phones. I was pretty happy with mine -until it stopped working while reading a Kindle book -not exactly heavy duty abuse.

Their web site had some suggestions but none worked. Over the course of a day I exchanged e-mails with a variety on-line trouble shooters. They were pleasant enough to deal with and their suggestions easy to follow. Unfortunately, nothing worked.

By the end of they day they said they'd have to replace my phone and shipped it the next day. It's supposed to come in tomorrow. Republic Wireless sent a PDF file for a mailing label so the old phone can be sent back. They want to check to see if the phone was abused. That doesn't worry me as it was well taken care of and I had sprung for the heavy duty protective Otter case. The phone looks new.

It's going to be a pain to set up a new phone, but probably not a serious pain. All in all I found them decent to deal with. My monthly phone bill has been only a little over $12/month, including tax, so that can't be beat. Their phones are optimized to work on wifi so as to limit expensive cell phone data usage.

My plan is actually the $25/month plan that allows for 1 gig of data usage. Since I've limited my phone use to wifi, plus cellar talk and text, they knock $15 off my bill. The extra $2 and change is due to taxes.

Regular cell phones don't get a signal at my house as there's a mountain between the tower and my house. The Republic phones work great on my home Internet connection through wifi.

If the new phone holds up better than the old one I'm seriously thinking of replacing my land line with a second Republic Wireless phone. It would pay for itself in about 6 months.

Of course, before I can even think of doing something like that I'll have to see how the replacement phone holds up.

-Sixbears