Pay no attention to this "advice". Some people are incapable of understanding that when the majority of reviews for cheap services such as RW highlight poor service and other carriers provide normal service at a fair price that actually works and is favorably reviewed, that you are in fact getting what you pay for. After all, the op came here to complain about his unreliable cheap phone service, not to claim against all logic and evidence to the contrary, that these cheap providers are better than regular phone service at a fraction of the cost.
I was looking at switching to Metro PCS recently until I did some research and saw how many complaints there are, and how poor the review are.
http://www.cnet.com/products/metropcs/user-reviews/
Please, oh infinitely wise and humble bearded know-it-all guru with access to Google, please explain to me and the hundreds of people just here in these forums alone over the past four years that I've steered towards Airvoice, P'tel/Giv, Consumer Cellular, Ting, Selectel, Puretalk USA, and Ecomobile exactly how crappy and failure-prone the services we're paying for really is and how incompetent we must all be for using them and recommending others do likewise! Because man alive! I've just been
drowning in complaints since February 2012 and need someone to fix where I really went wrong with the guide. I think I'm up to six complaints, now? And three of those were human error? I mean, crap, I've been with P'tel five years now, and I don't understand
why I keep giving them money and recommending others without taking a commission, what with them always giving me reliable mobile service. Don't make me beg, oh infinitely wise and humble bearded know-it-all guru with access to Google, show us all the error of our ways all these years! Show us foolish and mortal users of these smaller MVNOs that haven't given us any significant problems for years how wrong we are!
Listen, Republic is a crap-tier provider. That's no secret, and I've repeatedly explained the mechanics as to
why it's lousy service, and it's
not because it's an MVNO - in fact, it's not anything resembling a traditional MVNO at all - it's an mVoIP provider which is a whole other beast. It's also no secret that all of America Movil's brands such as StraightTalk, NET10, Tracfone, Page Plus, Simple Mobile, Total Wireless, etc., have terrible customer service, support, billing, and subsequently related issues. Also, you're only proving what I said about MNO owned "boutique" bands. Do you know who owns MetroPCS? T-Mobile. Do you know what brand isn't is the guide? MetroPCS. Nor is Cricket (owned by AT&T), Boost Mobile (owned by Sprint), GoSmart (another owned by T-Mobile), and Virgin (owned by Sprint) is only included purely out of virtue of Ecomobile not entirely filling in the mid-range - and yet I warn against Virgin's low-quality customer service anyway. There are good MVNOs out there, and a
lot of people here use the good ones successfully on a daily basis without so much as a burp, but you have to know
where to look and be willing to actually listen to people to find them. They are far and few between, but they remain bright shining jewels in a landscape of crap, and far better for the money than paying the major carriers directly.
You clearly know as much about the MVNO industry as you do landlording.