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Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

charge.co

61–70 of 195 posts

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge CEO here. We can definitely disable voicemail for you. I actually have it disabled myself. Just send us an email to get it removed. We should probably just add a checkbox for it in the management UI though now that I think about it.

And this is how you run a company, everyone please take note. User feedback is actually seriously considered and responded to in an acceptable manner.

It's great to see someone from a company pop up in a discussion to help out a user, but this is absolutely not the way to run a company. It leads to the Google approach to support, where you can only get a non-automated reply only if you raise enough stink by on social media, or happen to know someone who works there.

Now, each individual case where an employee unexpectedly helps out is great, but this is NOT 'how you run a company'. You should focus on getting your general customer service and support lines to be good.

I've never dealt with this company before, or even heard of them until today, so their normal lines of support might be great. This isn't meant to be a specific criticism of Charge.

However, it does seem odd to me that a phone company appears to give no contact phone numbers on their web site. That's not a good sign!

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#63
The $3/month for an active SIM with billed-as-you-go data in $ per GB rate is a great deal like the "Ting" MVNO:

https://ting.com/rates

For something like emergency OOB access via HSPA+/LTE modem into critical infrastructure it's hard to beat $3-4 per month per active SIM card, when the actual amount of data moved in a month might be less than 50MB.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#64
post #16

I was initially quite intrigued, They have some great nice to have features but are missing some useful must haves when compared to Google Fi such as 1. WiFi calling, Extremely useful, Many places that I go to have terrible reception and calling and texting via WiFi has saved me many times. 2. Simple international calling / travel plans. I use this a lot and again WiFi calling + international roaming on Google Fi has…

Is it just possible to do WiFi calling using Hangouts? I'd rather do that, personally.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#65

Price is not competitive with T-Mobile 5GB @ $30/mo plan. I guess the only interesting use case is for low-bandwidth use on data-only plan just to get a device connected.

For group use it's really not competitive with AT&T's own-brand Cricket MVNO either, you can get five active LTE lines/SIMs with 2.5GB data each (not a shared pool) for $100/mo including tax. Data drops to 128kbps full duplex after the 2.5GB.

$20/mo per active phone.

https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/account-management/a...

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#66
post #51
post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

Back in the 1980s I was taught that callers should always count to 10 rings before giving up. It is rude to give up earlier because you may have interrupted somebody. The phone starts ringing, so they start to put away what they are doing and then go to the phone. By the time they get there, you might have hung up if you don't wait for 10 rings. When getting a call, normally you'd try to get to the phone unless you c…

Doesn't matter with caller ID

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#68

Price is not competitive with T-Mobile 5GB @ $30/mo plan. I guess the only interesting use case is for low-bandwidth use on data-only plan just to get a device connected.

Even less if you consider free international roaming and the fact that most streaming media sites (Netflix, YouTube, etc) don't count against data. Not sure if that's the $30/mo on T-Mobile though, could be contract but for similar price.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#69
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 1980s I was taught that callers should always count to 10 rings before giving up. It is rude to give up earlier because you may have interrupted somebody. The phone starts ringing, so they start to put away what they are doing and then go to the phone. By the time they get there, you might have hung up if you don't wait for 10 rings. When getting a call, normally you'd try to get to the phone unless you c…

Doesn't matter with caller ID

I can't be busy if I have caller ID?
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