Nextel offers many services plans, the one I am on is on the cheap end of their plans. It's $49.99 a month, now some of you reading this went ok that's enough I don't want to hear any more that's just too much. Before you go and leave this review read what you get for that price.

First of all you get unlimited direct connect, direct connect works like a 2 way radio, and you can connect with any one else who has a Nextel phone in your calling area. The calling area is quite large. I have an Indiana number and can still direct connect with my husband, who is a truck driver, even when he goes to Wisconsin. We only ran across one problem with this, one of our friends had a really old nextel phone through his company, these phones were out before the direct connect was opened up to include all Nextel customers, so his phone would not work. Nextel direct connect used to be only for businesses and was not set up for the general public to be able to talk with anyone else having direct connect service, this is no longer the case.

You also get 200 minutes of cell time with free long distance and no roaming charges. I know this doesn't sound like a lot of time comparing it with other phone plans out there, but with direct connect you don't need the cell minutes. They do have bigger plans with more cell minutes though if you feel you need them. The service also come with free voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, and calling timers.

There's free unlimited web access, you can access your e-mail while your away from home, play games, shop, and much more. Their internet service is really cool and I absolutely love the internet game Jumble when I'm stuck waiting around.

The text messaging can be a lot of fun, my plan include 300 free text messages a month. All I have to do is go to Nextel's web site, type in the phone number for the person I want to leave a message for, type my message and push send. The message appears on their phone in an instant. This is great when I want the hubby to pick something up on his way home for work, or remind him of dates or times we have to be some where. He has no excuse he forgot because the messages are saved right there on his phone.

The final thing I love about my service is Nextel's customer service. First when we purchased service no one tried talking us into services we didn't want or put us into the bigger bill area. The only thing that I was surprised about, not that it was terribly bad or anything, was that it took 2 days for the phone to be set up and ready to go.

The next time I spoke with customer service was when I had my phone for about a week, and it started ringing, I didn't recognize the number but I answered it anyway. It was Nextel's customer service on the other end. They were just calling me to make sure my phone was working alright, that I was enjoying my service, and asked me if there was anything I didn't understand or needed help in setting up. She answered a few questions for me and told me I would receive another call in about a month just to make sure things were still going well and I was happy with my service.

I have spoken with customer service here and there since then and they're always nice to talk to and can usually answer my questions and get me back on my way in a matter of minutes.

My bill arrives each month with a detailed explanation of services and charges, it lists each and every phone call and how many minutes are used, who I direct connected with and for how long. My husband and I realize now that we spend way to much time talking, spending over 1000 hours of direct connect time. This also made us realize that we made a good choice, if this had been cell minutes, we'd be out of minutes in no time. Now we don't have to worry about going over our cell minutes or how many minutes we have available at what time of day, or feel guilty about using cell time just to say I love you, with the push of a button he is on the other end of my direct connect and we can talk anytime.

The final thing I like about my Nextel service is being able to pay my bill online. I know you can do this with a lot of companies now so it's not really a big deal, but it's an easy way for me to pay my bills.

Now after all that I will admit the $49.99 price tag is a bit high, especially when you have 2 phones that each cost that. For our family though it means constant communication when we can't always be together. A lot of our friends and other family members have also purchased Nextel phones and service so keeping in touch has become really easy.





Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 49.99