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Help Is it the Motion or MetroPCS?

HunnieBunnie

HunnieBunnie

Well-Known Member
Since I have had my LG Motion with MetroPCs, I have noticed that I rarely have more than one or two "bars" indicating the strength of the signal. My phone drops calls fairly often, even at home, and in some places, e.g. the library, the phone gets no signal at all. I see many people in the library using their smart phones with no problem, so I do not think my being inside the library is the problem. I find it irritating that most of the time I cannot get more than two bars on the phone regardless of where I happen to be.

So, I am wondering if anyone else out there has this problem? Is it the phone that is the problem, or is it MetroPCS that is the problem? I never had this problem with my old cell phone with Metro, but it was not a smart phone.
 
It depends, and the only way you're going to find out is to ask people using their phones in places you can't who their carrier is. If people on MetroPCS are using their phones where you can't, it's your phone. If everyone is using AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, it's Metro not having good coverage where you are (which is the first thing you should have checked before choosing them - the first thing to check is which carriers have coverage where you need coverage - you don't choose the phone or the price of the plan first).
 
I have used metro for years and never had a coverage problem (if that is indeed the problem) before. My previous phones where not smart phones, though. I live in a very large metro area. Makes me think it is the phone that is having a problem.
 
HunnieBunnie said:
I have used metro for years and never had a coverage problem (if that is indeed the problem) before. My previous phones where not smart phones, though. I live in a very large metro area. Makes me think it is the phone that is having a problem.
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I see you're in Texas; so am I. I live in the Garland area, and travel all along LBJ to and from Coppell. I work primarily in the Irving/Coppell area. I don't have any problems with dropped calls or data (although, out in western Irving south of LBJ along Freeport Parkway, there are a few areas that I go in and out of roaming every now and then, but few and far between). I've also gone along I-30 between Garland and Dallas and further out towards Ft Worth.

If you are in the DFW area, generally where are you?
 
alfick3 said:
I see you're in Texas; so am I. I live in the Garland area, and travel all along LBJ to and from Coppell. I work primarily in the Irving/Coppell area. I don't have any problems with dropped calls or data (although, out in western Irving south of LBJ along Freeport Parkway, there are a few areas that I go in and out of roaming every now and then, but few and far between). I've also gone along I-30 between Garland and Dallas and further out towards Ft Worth.

If you are in the DFW area, generally where are you?
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I am in west Fort Worth. It may be my phone. It dropped three calls yesterday. Also unable to receive a text from MetroPCS to recover my Metro website PIN. :(
 
sammyz said:
Time to go to the store.
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Hi Sammyz,

I went to the store last week. I told the woman at the desk all that was going wrong, and she fiddled with the phone for a while. Finally, she handed it back to me and told me that my SIM card could no longer be used for some reason. She never gave me any other advice except to offer to sell me a new SIM card and tell me once I got home to press *228 and choose option five, which I have done numerous times to no advantage that I can detect. She said that by July or August, my phone would hardly work at all due to the failing support for CDMA. That was it.

I am sorry I went in because I now have a new problem. I can hardly hear anyone speaking on the other end of the phone. I have checked the settings and everything is turned up as loud as it will go. I doubled checked with the buttons on the side of the phone. Nothing helps. I have been asking people to speak louder, but even that does not help much as folks do not want to shout on the phone. Now what?
 
HunnieBunnie said:
Hi Sammyz,

I went to the store last week. I told the woman at the desk all that was going wrong, and she fiddled with the phone for a while. Finally, she handed it back to me and told me that my SIM card could no longer be used for some reason. She never gave me any other advice except to offer to sell me a new SIM card and tell me once I got home to press *228 and choose option five, which I have done numerous times to no advantage that I can detect. She said that by July or August, my phone would hardly work at all due to the failing support for CDMA. That was it.

I am sorry I went in because I now have a new problem. I can hardly hear anyone speaking on the other end of the phone. I have checked the settings and everything is turned up as loud as it will go. I doubled checked with the buttons on the side of the phone. Nothing helps. I have been asking people to speak louder, but even that does not help much as folks do not want to shout on the phone. Now what?
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This phone uses ICCID cards not SIM cards. A SIM card won't even work on this phone (unless she's just saying SIM because the average person that knows nothing about phones will call it a SIM). Pretty sure it's the phone not the card, try another store with smarter employees. If it were the card's fault at all, you'd probably wouldn't be able to get 4G at all and the phone would say to please insert SIM card (it still means ICCID card). She is only correct about one thing, it won't work much at all by July/August.

Get a new phone, don't waste money on buying a SIM that's not even going to work with the phone in the first place...
 
sammyz said:
This phone uses ICCID cards not SIM cards. A SIM card won't even work on this phone (unless she's just saying SIM because the average person that knows nothing about phones will call it a SIM). Pretty sure it's the phone not the card, try another store with smarter employees. If it were the card's fault at all, you'd probably wouldn't be able to get 4G at all and the phone would say to please insert SIM card (it still means ICCID card). She is only correct about one thing, it won't work much at all by July/August.

Get a new phone, don't waste money on buying a SIM that's not even going to work with the phone in the first place...
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Oh, do not worry, I would never buy another card for this phone. The strange thing is none of the pictures I took with this phone were ever saved to the card. They must all be on the internal memory of the phone, although I do not know why they did not go directly to the card. Good thing they did not, though.

The one other thing the woman told me was that Metro had all of the 4G phones on for $30 and the sale ended just the day before I came in. She said messages were set out, but I never received any. I asked if they could still sell me another phone for $30, but she said no. I asked to speak to the manager, and she said they are not allowed to do it. So, my hope is that they will have another sale before my phone completely dies. I am not at all happy about this because my phone is not even a year old yet, and it cost $150 plus $50 worth of accessories. Does not seem right to me.
 
SIM card has nothing to do with pictures..... and there's a setting to change where pictures are stored in the camera app. Also tell someone there you aren't receiving any texts from metro including your pin number
 
sammyz said:
SIM card has nothing to do with pictures..... and there's a setting to change where pictures are stored in the camera app. Also tell someone there you aren't receiving any texts from metro including your pin number
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I did tell her that I have not been receiving texts. I cannot even receive the text they sent me to change my PIN on their website. She just ignored what I said. I guess since the phone is going to be obsolete pretty soon they just do not care.

I took it to the biggest Metro store here, too. It a Metro only store not a store that sells for all companies.
 
Yea, most employees at metro don't know everything they're talking about. It's definitely time for a new phone though.
 
sammyz said:
That's a maybe still, they might not start till 2015, but some rumor it can start as early as then.
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I am not smart phone savvy. Are the choices for "platforms" for these phones basically Android and Apple? Is that it? I have no idea what phone to get to replace the Motion, but I am bloody annoyed with Metro for this. My phone will not even be a year old until 24 April 14, and already it is obsolete. : (
 
HunnieBunnie said:
I am not smart phone savvy. Are the choices for "platforms" for these phones basically Android and Apple? Is that it? I have no idea what phone to get to replace the Motion, but I am bloody annoyed with Metro for this. My phone will not even be a year old until 24 April 14, and already it is obsolete. : (
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It's not really Metro's fault. Since Metro and T-Mobile merged, the CDMA network is going away. The Motion is a CDMA phone, therefore it has to go away with that CDMA network.
 
alfick3 said:
It's not really Metro's fault. Since Metro and T-Mobile merged, the CDMA network is going away. The Motion is a CDMA phone, therefore it has to go away with that CDMA network.
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I just spoke to someone at Metro. She told me I could get one of their free phones and keep the same plan rate. She said there was an instant in store rebate and a mail-in rebate. The mail-in rebate can be applied toward accessories or my phone bill. This sounds like good news, but I am not sure if the free phones one can choose from are good or not. Can anyone address whether the free phones offered are good ones?
 
HunnieBunnie said:
I just spoke to someone at Metro. She told me I could get one of their free phones and keep the same plan rate. She said there was an instant in store rebate and a mail-in rebate. The mail-in rebate can be applied toward accessories or my phone bill. This sounds like good news, but I am not sure if the free phones one can choose from are good or not. Can anyone address whether the free phones offered are good ones?
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I'd say just buy the $50 LG Optimus F6, but idk if you can still keep the same plane rate. I've seen the Alcatel in my own hands, it seems decent. Idk about the Samsung exhibit though.
 
I'd say put up with it until the switchover to GSM (T-Mobile's network) is complete, because at that time, ANY CDMA phone you've bought from them becomes recyclable electronics, not a usable phone. And if that happens in your area by this summer, you've spent money on a phone that's only good for a couple of months.

As far as the "free" phone (it probably costs THEM about $50-$100 if the industry hasn't changed since I sold out of it), it's probably an assortment of the worst phone of each manufacturer, and unless you're in a strong signal area, won't do you much good. But, since it's free, you might want to try it.

And to expand on what sammyz said, employees in most cellphone stores don't know what they're talking about. (Blame the managers, not the employees. In most stores, if you can fill out a W4 [meaning check a box and sign and date the form] you get the job - which is sales, not knowledge.) If my employees (back when I had my stores) couldn't diagnose a problem like yours, they stayed back in the shop area to learn until they could. She should know her carrier's coverage, at least foot by foot on all the surrounding roads and streets. (There were some people I wouldn't allow to "buy" the free phone, because I knew they'd be back the next day because it wouldn't work where they lived. And a whole town I wouldn't sell a Nextel phone to, unless they clearly understood [and I had a paper they had to sign saying that they did] that the phone wouldn't work in their town. Nextel had between no and zero coverage for the entire town. If they understood that the phone would only work once they were on the road, or near the interstate [the only places Nextel really had coverage] that was fine.)

But I wouldn't waste money on buying a phone, even for $50, that might be obsolete by the end of the summer. Unless you're a collector - then contact me, I have lots of obsolete (can't even be legall used any more) phones in my garage.
 
sammyz said:
The $50 F6 will not be obsolete after the switch, just to clarify. The free phones will not be obsolete either.
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+1. Unless a physical store still has some CDMA phones, everything that Metro now sells is GSM, and won't be obsolete when CDMA is shut down. If a store still has some CDMA phones, it'd be kinda shady for them to try and sell 'em.
 
Rukbat said:
I'd say put up with it until the switchover to GSM (T-Mobile's network) is complete, because at that time, ANY CDMA phone you've bought from them becomes recyclable electronics, not a usable phone. And if that happens in your area by this summer, you've spent money on a phone that's only good for a couple of months.

As far as the "free" phone (it probably costs THEM about $50-$100 if the industry hasn't changed since I sold out of it), it's probably an assortment of the worst phone of each manufacturer, and unless you're in a strong signal area, won't do you much good. But, since it's free, you might want to try it.

And to expand on what sammyz said, employees in most cellphone stores don't know what they're talking about. (Blame the managers, not the employees. In most stores, if you can fill out a W4 [meaning check a box and sign and date the form] you get the job - which is sales, not knowledge.) If my employees (back when I had my stores) couldn't diagnose a problem like yours, they stayed back in the shop area to learn until they could. She should know her carrier's coverage, at least foot by foot on all the surrounding roads and streets. (There were some people I wouldn't allow to "buy" the free phone, because I knew they'd be back the next day because it wouldn't work where they lived. And a whole town I wouldn't sell a Nextel phone to, unless they clearly understood [and I had a paper they had to sign saying that they did] that the phone wouldn't work in their town. Nextel had between no and zero coverage for the entire town. If they understood that the phone would only work once they were on the road, or near the interstate [the only places Nextel really had coverage] that was fine.)

But I wouldn't waste money on buying a phone, even for $50, that might be obsolete by the end of the summer. Unless you're a collector - then contact me, I have lots of obsolete (can't even be legall used any more) phones in my garage.
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I think I might go in just to take a look at what they have, but I do not think I will switch to another phone just yet. Thanks guys. : )
 
HunnieBunnie said:
I think I might go in just to take a look at what they have, but I do not think I will switch to another phone just yet. Thanks guys. : )
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If they throw you a Huawei (Valiant or Vitria), take it. I own both, they are great phones for the money spent on them. Valiant is a 3G compatible handset, Vitria is a 4G LTE model with a few more features. Either handset is even better if free :) I can't vouch for any Alcatel one touch or Lumia phones they may offer you; quite honestly I haven't heard anything good about them.
 
Spec2nirvash said:
If they throw you a Huawei (Valiant or Vitria), take it. I own both, they are great phones for the money spent on them. Valiant is a 3G compatible handset, Vitria is a 4G LTE model with a few more features. Either handset is even better if free :) I can't vouch for any Alcatel one touch or Lumia phones they may offer you; quite honestly I haven't heard anything good about them.
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Lol your the only one i hear good things from about wowway
 
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