Cell phone woes

Here's what I don't understand: cell phone carriers that provide poor service.  I wonder if they want my business or not.  Where shall I start?

I'm a graduate student, so money is tight.  If you're paying $25,000/year for schooling and there is no time for employment (it is graduate school, after all), and then you have to pay rent, food, internet, and your phone bill, things can get expensive fast.  Therefore, I've always tried to have the least expensive phone bill possible.  So I was with Tracfone, Net10, Virgin Mobile, and now Boost Mobile.  I had to ditch Virgin due to a lack of minutes and poor customer service, and even though Boost is the same company, they seemed to have better customer service, cooler phones, and (eventually) less expensive service.

Now that I've been on Boost for six months, I am really loving having unlimited minutes.  I like being able to talk with my family for hours at a time.  But ever since I got my Samsung Galaxy S II on Boost, I've had one problem where the phone will randomly turn off and then not turn back on again until I've removed and replaced the battery.  This gets very annoying and I'm tired of missing calls and emails, so I called Boost to get my phone replaced because it's still under warranty.

They wouldn't help me.

They told me that they cannot replace the phone, but that I would have to go through Samsung to get my phone repaired.  So I called Samsung (who seems to have excellent customer service) and they set up a repair.  It occurred to me: what will I do without my phone?  So I asked Samsung if they would send me a replacement in the interim, but they told me that I would have to go through Boost for that.  Upon calling Boost back, they said that they couldn't help me and all they could do is suspend my service for two weeks.

Show of hands, kids, who all can go without their cell phone for two weeks?  No one?  That's what I thought.  Maybe if I had a landline, but I don't.  It's times like these that I strongly wish I were giving out my Google Voice number instead of my actual cell number.  I think that's what I'll do for the future.  That way, I can get any phone in the interim and still have call forwarding service.  Perhaps I should pay the $20 to get my number transferred to Google Voice so I can just keep using my current number.

So why haven't I switched to someone else?  Well, mostly due to cost.  I wouldn't mind switching to T-mobile, but they've thus far screwed over my brother and his wife.  I'd like to get a family plan with them, but instead of just paying the difference between their current charges and the charges that would be with me added, they want me to pay half.  I understand "fairness" and all, but consider that he lives in my mom's five-bedroom, two-bathroom house with three family rooms, a laundry room, and a food storage room on a quarter-acre of property for $189/month.  I pay $550/month for a two-room (not bedrooms, literally two rooms) apartment that's about a sixth of the size of the house they live in.  You can always count on family right?

So while I try to minimize my debt and maximize my scholarships with grad school, he gets to live in a large house for less than what I pay for an apartment with a kitchen and a bedroom.

Back to my point: I don't understand cell phone carriers that give poor service.  If you want business, shouldn't you strive to be the best?  When you're the best, you can charge for being the best.  Even if you're no-contract, your service should be outstanding in order to attract customers.  When competitors see you rolling around in the dough, they'll be motivated to do the same.

I'm considering options for getting around this.  But if I had to recommend a cell phone carrier to anyone, I'd just tell them NOT to use Boost, Virgin, or Sprint at large.  That's too bad, too because I like Sprint.  If Cricket weren't such garbage, I'd consider them.  Maybe I should get an iPhone on Virgin and just be done with it.