Nords and IP - Thanks for hearing my concerns. Your responses are greatly appreciated. Turns out the phone itself is really nice. The customer service at Republic - not so much. Upon activating the phone (Sunday, April 13), it worked fine for the first 2 hours. After that, the WiFi/data feature would not access the Internet. Since I was ending my Internet experiment at home, I sent Republic an email (from work) the next day asking for assistance. I received a reply to contact a different email address for faster service. I didn't pursue that because when I returned home from work that evening (Mon April 14), the phone WiFi worked perfectly.
Unfortunately, by Friday, April 18 while at work, the same incident occurred. This time the phone was also randomly freezing and shutting down without warning. Since I still have no Internet at home, I sent them another email from work on Friday, April 18. Saturday, April 19, Republic responded (via email) to my request for assistance with suggestions to put the phone in safe mode, supplying the following troubleshoot:
https://community.republicwireless.com/docs/DOC-1852 and advising me to contact them if I had further issues. When I went to attempt the troubleshoot suggested, I again found the phone to work without problem, and it continues to function properly.
On Wednesday April 23, I receive an email from Republic, which starts
"You recently submitted a help request and we've been waiting on a response from you for more than 72 hours." Huh???? Waiting??? I did as they instructed, only to contact them if any further issues.
Maybe I'm paranoid - I'm wondering of the possibility my plan was not set up properly before shipping, or the correct plan wasn't activated by Republic (unlimited data and texting).
Conclusively, in consulting with hardcore SmartPhone users, I haven't found any of these issues due to my error. Republic Wireless offers a nice Moto X, a good plan -- but their customer service is greatly lacking. So much so, that I may switch to Ting's service plan.
Thanks again!