From Republic by Dish to US Mobile, an in-progress review

I have a hiccup with my US Mobile plan to report.

I thought I’d be smart and save some money by switching from the $10/month 1GB plan to the “light” annual plan at $72 a year.

I scheduled the switch on my monthly renewal date, February 4.

Two days before that date, my monthly $10 charge hit. It seems autopay is out of sync with the monthly renewal because autopay is every 30 days. :roll_eyes:

I spent some time on chat and was told I could request a refund for the monthly payment once the annual plan “sets.” Okay, fine, whatever.

Today, however, I two simultaneous emails. The first assured me that my annual plan had successfully begun. The second informed me that my monthly payment had failed.

I wasn’t too worried about the failed payment email since the annual plan success looked good, but after not getting any reply to a text to my mother-in-law’s phone, I tried calling her. I get a recording that calling restrictions are applied to the service line. :rage:

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I’ve observed reports of similar experiences on US Mobile’s subreddit, which is very active.

For what it’s worth, the reps who answer there seem to get things sorted fast when other support channels fail. That said, I’m not a fan of needing to resort to social media.

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The chat agent was able to get it fixed, and seemed to know exactly what to do. That’s good, and it took less time and with less back-and-forth to my mother-in-law than I had feared (just one reboot after some “configuration changes”.)

So, better support than I had expected, but still one demerit for a personal service outage to my mother-in-law’s line for what looked on paper to be a simple billing change.

US Mobile has tweaked its plans once again. At first glance, it appears some prices have gone down. It also appears some previously included features have been removed from lower cost plans and will be included only on higher cost plans or available as add-ons.

Among less welcome developments, streaming video is being capped on all plans at 480p. This particular development is causing much consternation on the US Mobile subreddit. It’s getting more than a bit over the top there.

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Are any of our US Mobile users intending to try the forthcoming “Dark Star” network? Translating US Mobilese; Dark Star = AT&T, GSM 5G = T-Mobile and Warp 5G = Verizon.

Kudos to US Mobile for striking MVNO agreements with all of the big 3. USM could make it more clear it’s a choice of the 3 national networks. It is not on the fly switching such as once offered by Google Fi.

On another note, has anyone tried US Mobile’s “Teleportal”. It’s marketed as seamless switching among the networks offered by US Mobile but under the hood is an actual number port between those networks (with the caveats that entails). Still, I can see use cases where the ability to initiate a port between networks from US Mobile’s account portal to be worthwhile. For example, if traveling internationally and one of the underlying networks offered more favorable international roaming.

I’ve been using US Mobile since the demise of Republic. In my area their Verizon coverage is far more usable than my other consideration, Visible. For a reason I can’t figure out, even the Visible+ plan with supposedly comes with prioritized data is useless in my area, while US Mobile on Warp (Verizon) works great. I’m using US Mobile on two eSIMs on my phone. Warp on an unlimited as my primary line, and a backup on GSM (T-Mobile) as the backup. Given how good the AT&T network is in my area I’ll likely move that line to Deathstar once the silly early access period is over.

So, you’ll be using the Teleportal thing to move from GSM (apparently soon™ to be rebranded as “Light Speed”) to “Dark Star”?

Teleportal is a clever workaround but under the hood, it’s still a full-fledged port. It’s not the quasi-dynamic switching US Mobile seems to want to market it as. Generally, I like US Mobile’s service offerings but their marketing lately has me :roll_eyes:.

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