Review of Suncom Goodcall Prepaid Cell Phone Service
I did tons and tons of research looking for the best prepaid cell phone plan available in my area and after looking at every plan that I knew existed, I went with Suncom Goodcall. Suncom is a small regional carrier with offices in N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico. Prepaid service is a good option for me because I didn’t need a bill hanging over my head. So if things got tight and I couldn’t afford it anymore, I wouldn’t have a contract termination fee hanging over me. Also, I checked out many different prepaid phones like Virgin, Boost, and the others that you can buy minutes at the gas station and stuff. Those per minute rates were absolutely ridiculous! You’d be broke even though the intent behind prepaid is to save money, not waste it. Actually these types of ripoffs cost more in the long run than a monthly plan. The main advantage for people who use these services is that there’s no credit check necessary. I say, don’t waste your money on that. Don’t skimp on your research to make sure you get the best deal.
Many other prepaid plans want to charge a daily usage fee around a dollar a day no matter how many minutes you talk. So if I talk for one minute a day, I have to pay a minimum of $30 in addition to the per minute rate. That was not working for me.
The main reason I like Suncom Goodcall is the price was excellent for the type of caller I am. I’m a stay at home mom and don’t do much talking on my cell phone, so I didn’t need some $40 a month traditional plan with 600 minutes or the like. When you first sign up, you can go to http://www.suncom.com and choose the type of phone you’d like to get. When getting prepaid service, you don’t get those cool free phone deals or rebates like the one or two year contract plans. You pay for your phone upfront which includes activation and 50 minutes of talk time. It’s a fairly simple process. You get your phone shipped in a few days. You can easily refill your minutes with a quick free call to 611 from your phone and pay with a debit card. Another great thing about Suncom Goodcall is that the minute quantities are very versatile. If you only need a little, you can get a little and if you need a lot, you can get a lot. For example: You can buy the smallest number of minutes which is 100 minutes for $10 (plus tax) that expire in 15 days. 200 minutes costs $20 (plus tax) that expire in 30 days and so on. There is a low 10 cents per day service fee. Also, your minutes rollover if you don’t use them all before your airtime expires. At one time I had well over $60 on my phone because I barely used them. Those extra minutes came in handy eventually.
While I love my Suncom Goodcall service, it wasn’t without problems. I have to give it to them in that I haven’t had a problem with reception or dropped calls at all, but then again, I’m not a heavy user. When I got my first phone which was the cheapest one available for $39.99, I had a problem with it and customer service was not able to get the situation resolved. I ended up calling the Better Business Bureau to make a complaint. After this, a very helpful employee of Suncom contacted me and worked with me to make sure I got the situation resolved to my satisfaction. I was very happy to get it resolved as I really didn’t want to ‘take my business elsewhere’.
Also, I had a problem with not being able to make calls from my phone when I left my home in N. Carolina to travel to NJ and MD. According to the coverage map on the website, these states should have full coverage. It was strange because I could receive calls, but not make them. What was even stranger was that I had used my phone the previous year in NJ just fine and the night before when it died on me the next day. At first, T-Mobile (whose network I was on) said they were having a problem with the tower. That wasn’t true because others with T-Mobile had no problems in that area. I tested the phone as we were traveling back home and sure enough; it was working again once we were in NC. When I contacted Suncom about it when I got home and all they could tell me is service on another network wasn’t guaranteed. So much for accuracy of the coverage map on the website. I don’t travel too often, so this wasn’t too much of an issue, however, if you’re a frequent traveler, Suncom Goodcall may not be a good option for you.
Overall, I’d definitely recommend Suncom Goodcall as an inexpensive option for residents of the states they serve. As with all cell phone companies, no one has a perfect track record in handling customer service issues. Some people have a good experience and others have a terrible one with the same company. It’s important to keep this fact of life in perspective.
