In addition, I.P. Daley's Superguide says Consumer Cellular has "some serious caveats to the service that you should watch out for.." What are these caveats??
My apologies, this is one of the situations where the forums and their per post text limit runs afoul of the guide itself, and why I plaster said guide with links back to
the unabridged guide on my site, as stuff like what you're after doesn't have to be cut for the sake of space and overall wall of text length (people seem to be less overwhelmed by individual pages instead of a 23,000+ word single wall of text). The forums really don't do the detail level of the guide justice and instead just makes it appear more daunting than it really is. Thus the
For the complete, unabridged version of Daley’s Frugal Communications Guide which contains far more detailed topical information, reviews, supplemental information links, as well as hardware and software recommendations, please visit Technical Meshugana.
at the bottom of each topic post.
What you're after however, is from
here:
Consumer Cellular – consumercellular.com
I will readily admit that in the past, I have bagged on Consumer Cellular. I haven’t cared much for their advertising rhetoric, AARP old person technology fear tactics, and “oh, how gauche” attitude they take towards prepaid services, and it helped given the ridiculous prices they had going for the longest time. Some of that (the pricing, anyway) has changed since AT&T dropped their package prices to MVNOs during Summer 2013 combined with their more recently swelled, million-plus, Matlock-loving AARP membership roles. The bottom line is, they have since gotten quite a bit more competitive with their pricing, especially on the data front. As to the customer service quality? Given the old people and AARP connection, they’ve got to keep their support levels up to keep their users happy and avoid user base backlash. They’ve also been around since 1995, and are a big enough fish now that they themselves are an AT&T wholesale reseller to other MVNOs. This makes them a good candidate for this list, no matter how much I don’t want to give any company who sneers at prepaid and gives Ron Maestri acting work to be a poor-man’s Patty Duke my approval. There’s still some serious caveats to the service that you should watch out for, but they’re a good option for GSM family plans and people who want to be voice-less data hogs. If you like the idea of Ting, but want GSM service? This might be the way to go.
Pros: Off-network GSM roaming support. Reasonably good customer support reviews. Shared service buckets between lines like Ting. Data tethering is not expressly forbidden. BYOD GSM phone support. Reasonably good voice, text and data package rates. One of the biggest MVNO companies in the US outside of America Movil. Package overage notifications. Postpaid, if you like that sort of thing. Free SIM cards. AARP discounts.
Cons: Manually adjustable package selections with insane overage rates if you don’t adjust accordingly. $10/handset monthly fee. Not a good deal for individual users. All the ugly policies that usually accompany postpaid cellular service.
It's also a
bit dated on the pricing front, as they've recently done a modest bump to the minutes, texts and data on their packages about a week ago... but that should be covered in the 2015 guide overhaul. There's been a lot of changes recently with a few more coming up in the industry, and I'm waiting for the dust to settle a bit to ensure avoiding having to make too many edits after publishing.
Regarding the "ugly policies" of postpaid cellular service, just read their terms. They're nowhere near as heinous as say Republic, AT&T or any of the Tracfone/NET10/StraightTalk prepaid, but the terms are still a fair bit more broad and restrictive than the prepaid legal contracts from most of the providers in the guide, and a bit more financially burdensome if you run afoul of it.
That should answer your questions.