The Consumer Cellular Transfer

It is done! We’re both using Consumer Cellular now. A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were thinking about switching from being long time AT&T users to Consumer Cellular. I have had a cell phone with AT&T continuously for about 24 years so it was a big step for me to switch.

First, we wanted to try CC to be sure the reception was decent out here. AT&T is the ONLY service that works out here and, while I’m not complaining because it just goes along with living so far out and where there isn’t much traffic and not many houses, and I truly understand the cost of putting cell phone towers in areas like this, but sometimes, even AT&T service was spotty at best. For our phones to work inside the house (metal roof, wide porch and very thick rock walls), we either had to use wifi calling, which wasn’t great because our internet is also pretty slow and unreliable, or we had to walk around in circles out in the yard and try to find that one spot where we could get a signal. So, I ordered a new phone from CC (A Samsung J7 because we are Android fans) with a test number. Vince ordered a test number and just a SIM card and put it in one of his older phones. Both worked fine. I took my new and old phones with me to MO and had good service in all the areas where I typically have good service and had no service in the areas where I typically have no service.

When I got home, we decided to stick with CC. We went to Target in Abilene because CC had told us we could go there and make the switch – get my AT&T number put in my CC phone – same for Vince, get his old number switched to the CC account. It turned out that the guy in Target put an AT&T SIM card in Vince’s phone and a T-Mobile SIM card in my phone. T-Mobile doesn’t work in this area at all so CC had to mail us an AT&T SIM card.

We don’t blame the guy at Target – it was an easy mistake to make and the difference in the cards isn’t easily recognized.

Other than that little mix-up, it went quite smoothly. The Consumer Cellular people have been amazing to work with. We’ve had questions, and through the initial “How do we do this?” to the end and getting the AT&T account closed and making sure our old numbers were working on the CC account, it’s been amazingly smooth.

All of the Consumer Cellular customer service people are in the U. S. I think CC is growing very quickly and hiring lots of new people and there were two times when we had questions, got answers, hung up and said “I’m not so sure about that”, called back, got different answers, explained that someone had just told us “this” and now you’re telling me “that” and both times, a supervisor was brought in and both times explained that it was a training issue; they would make note and have the person go through some additional training. That’s understandable when a company is growing so quickly and having to bring new folks on.

I’m not saying CC is better than AT&T. For us, they are quite a bit less expensive. I’m not recommending anyone change – just sharing our experience as happy Consumer Cellular customers.