I have had the worst luck with cellular service. I joined the wireless community about seven years ago when I got my first Motorola phone from Pacific Telesis, which later changed to Airtouch, which in turn changed to Verizon. As those of you who have been with these companies know, the customer service was awful and the coverage was virtually non-existent. Being the lazy person I am, however, I suffered through this bad service for over four years until I finally decided to switch companies. I researched companies for a week or so and was all set to go with AT&T, but when my favorite uncle showed up at my studio one day with a shiny new Motorola i1000 plus from Nextel, I thought my search was over. I called Nextel that day and ordered service. In fact, I was so impressed with the phone that I called two close business associates and told them to order Nextel without ever even trying the service myself. I figured, with a phone this cool, how could the service be bad? I mean, the web site claimed that Nextel covered 92% of the United States! Surely the remaining eight percent was in North Dakota or someplace where I would never do business, so I had to be safe, right? Well, let’s just say that my close business associates are not so close any more, and my uncle, being the wise one that he is, switched companies about a month after I saw him. I, however, am still stuck with Nextel, but not for much longer.

To me, there are only three things that make a cellular company good. In order, those three things are coverage, phones and customer service. I’ll start with the one OK thing about Nextel, and that is the phone. The Motorola i1000 Plus is a good phone. The 2-way radio is a feature that I absolutely love. If you have more than one phone in your household or company (we’ll call it a group), it allows you to communicate with members of your group via a built-in two-way radio as opposed to dialing that person in your group on the phone. Assuming the person you want to reach is in an area of good service, communication is instant. Just switch to the radio mode, select the person and press a button. This is why Nextel calls this service Direct Connect. The phone’s programming could be a little more intuitive, but it is easy enough to get around on. Storing phone numbers is not as easy as it was on other Motorola phones, but as before, it’s not so difficult that you won’t understand the procedure after a couple of tries. Battery life seems to be about average: 3 days of standby and an hour or two of talk time. The phone is light enough to not be a burden but not so light that it seems like it will break in your hand or get easily lost, and I live by email, so the web-paging features are useful as well. And one of the greatest features is the built-in speakerphone. I drive a car with a manual transmission and I love not having to take my hand off the wheel to hold my phone. I try my best to not talk on the phone while driving, but when I get a call, it’s nice to be able to just hit the speaker button and still maintain control of my vehicle.

The above-mentioned features are nice, but what good are they if your service provider has lousy coverage? Compared to Airtouch/Verizon, Nextel has great coverage, but compared to other current companies, Nextel’s coverage is awful. I have found almost a dozen places in the greater Los Angeles area where service just simply goes away, and in this age of technology, this is simply unacceptable. I live in Glendale, which is only a stone’s throw from downtown LA, and the service here is never better than spotty. My mom lives in Bel Air, and the entire area up to Mulholland has no service whatsoever. The same holds true in areas of Hollywood, Los Feliz, West LA, Westwood and West Hollywood, which is where I do most of my business. I simply cannot trust important phone calls to Nextel because a majority of my calls are dropped. I also have a home on the East Coast, and with the exception of New York City itself, Nextel's coverage is terrible. And what about this so-called nationwide coverage? I have driven across country three times in the past year and found that Nextel’s service is only available from within about 30 miles of major cities. Beyond that, forget about calling for help in case of an emergency. I guess Nextel means that 92% of the population is covered, because they certainly aren’t referring to the land.

I have called Nextel’s customer service on more than one occasion to discuss matters ranging from billing to their lousy coverage. When I first joined Nextel, getting in touch with a living, breathing person was only a matter of waiting on hold for a couple minutes. Now, getting in touch with a person is almost as hard as it is trying to talk to someone at DirecTV, which has by far the worst customer service ever. It’s gotten so bad at Nextel that I don’t even try anymore. And to make matters worse, I went Nextel’s web site last night and discovered that customers can access their account information online, yet customers have to apply for an access code and wait up to two weeks to receive it in the mail. The only way to get semi-prompt attention is to physically go to a Nextel representative and beg for help. I can only figure that they don’t want people calling to get cheaper plans, so they make it difficult for everyone to get through. I know that it’s really probably just a case of being under-staffed and over-worked, but sometimes I wonder.

I just ordered a new phone and accompanying service from Cingular and can only hope that it’s better than what I’ve been getting from Nextel. With my luck, it will probably be just as bad, but I’ll always hold out hope. If it’s good, maybe I can recommend it to the people whom I told to get Nextel, if they ever trust me again.


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 199.00