I had purchased a T-Mobile Concord (Shown as the ZTE v768 when you go into “about phone” on the phone itself) as an inexpensive way to test the network because I must use an app for captioning because of my lack of good hearing. I found service plenty fast for the one I wanted to use (Hamilton CapTel: Smartphone: Android ) which needs 3G or faster and simultaneous voice & data right in the town where I live. The coverage map for T-Mobile did indicate that it drops off as you leave town which is also the case for a number of other towns around here. But . . . to my surprise it is even closer than I thought it was. I even discovered an area less than 20 miles away where the phone showed “no service”. At least that is the case when on their pre-paid service.
In the meantime I discovered that AT&T had finally upgraded us in September of 2013 from just 2G service to 4G (but not LTE). Then when I checked coverage maps discovered 3G shown over most of the general area. Because I can’t understand on a phone call at all unless I am using an app for captioning I decided I wanted to try an MVNO that uses AT&T towers. Rather than get yet another phone (I had check band available on the Concord before buying just in case I wanted to do this down the road) I requested an unlock code. T-Mobile did send an unlock code.
The BIG problem came as I was trying to make use of that code. I have a certain amount of essential tremor and have never liked virtual keyboards but they have gotten so rare! This one turned out to be very hard to use and I kept thinking that I was just backspacing to change the number when one beside what I thought I was hitting appeared. BUT suddenly I was told that I had “too many tries and the phone was permanently locked”. The way it actually appeared on the phone was phrased in such a way that I thought it was written by someone who’s first language was not American English.
Just to make sure that there was no way around this at all and that I was stuck with a phone that I had purchased and could now only use on T-Mobile forever I contacted T-Mobile. At one point I was waiting for an “escalation” that I never heard back from. After additional contacts it finally was discovered that the wrong thing had been escalated. They also blamed there being no way around an honest mistake such as mine on the manufacture.
Since all this I have double checked and found that many small keyboards, physical or virtual, have the problem of the backspace key immediately above the enter key which I now think is what tripped me up — trying to hit backspace but tremor resulting in it registering as enter.
In the meantime I discovered that AT&T had finally upgraded us in September of 2013 from just 2G service to 4G (but not LTE). Then when I checked coverage maps discovered 3G shown over most of the general area. Because I can’t understand on a phone call at all unless I am using an app for captioning I decided I wanted to try an MVNO that uses AT&T towers. Rather than get yet another phone (I had check band available on the Concord before buying just in case I wanted to do this down the road) I requested an unlock code. T-Mobile did send an unlock code.
The BIG problem came as I was trying to make use of that code. I have a certain amount of essential tremor and have never liked virtual keyboards but they have gotten so rare! This one turned out to be very hard to use and I kept thinking that I was just backspacing to change the number when one beside what I thought I was hitting appeared. BUT suddenly I was told that I had “too many tries and the phone was permanently locked”. The way it actually appeared on the phone was phrased in such a way that I thought it was written by someone who’s first language was not American English.
Just to make sure that there was no way around this at all and that I was stuck with a phone that I had purchased and could now only use on T-Mobile forever I contacted T-Mobile. At one point I was waiting for an “escalation” that I never heard back from. After additional contacts it finally was discovered that the wrong thing had been escalated. They also blamed there being no way around an honest mistake such as mine on the manufacture.
Since all this I have double checked and found that many small keyboards, physical or virtual, have the problem of the backspace key immediately above the enter key which I now think is what tripped me up — trying to hit backspace but tremor resulting in it registering as enter.