I was near tears and ready to pull out my hair the first evening I had my Nextel phone. Thank goodness my husband knows more about the phone and the services than the Nextel reps!

I switched from Verizon (which has its own set of problems) to Nextel because my husband is on Nextel. Talked with four different customer service reps (phone and in person) and got four different versions of what plans were available.

Went to the local Nextel provider and got a plan that was actually written down on paper. 750 minutes for under $40

When I got home, I phoned the main 888 number to verify that the local info was correct. I'm pretty upset. The $34.99 phones they had on display should have been FREE!!!!!!

How the retail store gets around that is by "price bundling" the phone with the car charger. They give you a free phone with a $34.99 charger. You can't get the phone unless you buy the charger. I think that is kind of deceptive.

Also, the phone is very difficult for me to use. It has confusing little icons that are hard to read, and the buttons to move around on the phone are non-intuitive, as well as being so tiny they are hard to push only one at a time. And, I just can't for the life of me figure out how the *&%^ to get my messages.

It is chock-full of features I don't like and never use. The one non-phone feature I found useful - a nice simple alarm - is burried deep within the calendar function. The games, which I loath, are up front and in my way. All of the Nextel phones are like this.

Why bother offering different phones if they all have the same problems? It would be nice if the gazillion different phones they offered were actually different from each other in some significant way, rather than, IMO, your choice of "Would you like Start Trek II, or Star Gate," When I prefer Star Trek, the Original.

I am downgrading the customer service from "good" to "poor." The people are nice, polite, and respond quickly to questions, but the information they give me is sometimes inaccurate and sometimes incomplete. They are not familiar with the features of their products, and unable to help me set up the system to work for me.

I am upgrading my opinion of the product, itself, from "I hate this phone, I hate the Nextel features," to "Thank goodness for my husband who knows more about how to make this thing work than any of the product reps!"

I am upgrading my opinion of the company from "I seriously regret that I am stuck with this for the next two years" to, "OK, now that a non-employee has figured out how to make the ^%$# thing work, maybe I can get some use out of it."

If you are not a techie (I'm not), and you do decide to get a Nextel phone, I suggest you go in with a friend who really understands their phones and services and have the friend do the negotiating for you, and then teach you how to use the features.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 40.00