Phones: Movistar/personal/claro?

[PhilipDT]

Reviving this thread to ask a question:

I'm on Personal (prepago) and yesterday I had 67 pesos of credits, and today 54 pesos.
I didn't make any call, didn't use the phone, didn't activate internet but I received a call from an Argentine mobile -> is it possible that I pay for a call I receive?

I for one am getting sick of adding 100 in credit.. make virtually no calls and suddenly being told my balance is 0.

If you have added credit to your phone recently on any sort of bonus day then that is probably why. Promo credit doesn't last forever, if you don't use it (with in 10 days for Personal, 7 days for movistar), you loose it. Disappearing credit is often just some bonus credit evaporating. Either way you can go to personal.com.ar or movistar.com.ar and check out what you are getting charged for.

I just called Personal to complain that in Caballito I constantly lose my signal, so they assume my new iPhone 5 is the problem and I assured them it wasn't since I was abroad and it worked perfectly. They didn't want to take the blame so the credited me $50 for the next three months. How generous of them. LOL.

That's actually not quite as dumb as it sounds. If your iphone 5 has a nano sim which has been cut down from a full sized one (which is every SIM I've ever seen from personal) it's not unlikely that the sim itself could be breaking down and causing serious connection problems. You should at least try getting a new sim and see if that helps.

Of course it's also probable that the service is just shit, as it usually is.

 

[nlaruccia]

If you have added credit to your phone recently on any sort of bonus day then that is probably why. Promo credit doesn't last forever, if you don't use it (with in 10 days for Personal, 7 days for movistar), you loose it. Disappearing credit is often just some bonus credit evaporating. Either way you can go to personal.com.ar or movistar.com.ar and check out what you are getting charged for.



That's actually not quite as dumb as it sounds. If your iphone 5 has a nano sim which has been cut down from a full sized one (which is every SIM I've ever seen from personal) it's not unlikely that the sim itself could be breaking down and causing serious connection problems. You should at least try getting a new sim and see if that helps.

Of course it's also probable that the service is just shit, as it usually is.

But what's strange is when I use my iPhone 5 with wifi when I'm traveling abroad it doesn't have signal problems and before I used and iPhone 4 with Personal and still had bad service, and before that I used an iPhone 3 which uses the common size sim card and still had connection problems with both Movistar and Personal. Here's the strange thing. When I'm in Benavidez or Nordelta I have no connection or signal problems. As soon as I enter the Capital, the signal comes and goes. It can take ten to fifteen minutes for my phone to receive a Whatsapp message when I'm in the city.

 

[nlaruccia]

I called Personal back to complain about the lack of signal in Caballito. I was informed that I would be receiving an email (some day if at all) with instructions to manually re set-up my iPhone to get better signal. Then I was told that during the month of July and August, un tecnico would be working on improving the signal by introducing a "nueva tecnologia". I asked him: "you mean 3G might be installed?". "Exactly," he said to me. I started laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair. "New technology? In other countries they're about to start using 5G". The poor kid in Personal didn't know what to say. So he just repeated, "Si, estamos trabajando en una nueva tecnologia". Great. We can all look forward to finally going from 2G to 3G.

 

[GS_Dirtboy]

Yes, but you have to believe that the phone service now is much better than it used to be. This government has gone from -1G to 2G in 8 years. Under the militars the only cell phone service was two tin cans with a string between them. We had to go to work with the strings hanging out of the bus windows to get any reception. There were strings running all over the city. If a string broke you lost reception completely! Using the string cell phone was very dangerous on airplanes.

We used to have the militars. Now we have democracy. Be happy with democracy.

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

 

[Bricky]

@nlaruccia: is your iPhone 5 a US CDMA model? (model number A1429) - just a curiosity.




Edit: I suppose I should explain why I ask.

From what I understand, personal uses the GSM 1900 band. And I believe in the us CDMA uses 1900 also. It could be that there's some kind of incompatibility there. (although I don't know enough about this to say for sure).

On the flip side - I have an old iPhone 4 (GSM-only model) which, on Personal, has excellent coverage all the time. My wife's blackberry (an old 8900, which supposedly has the exact same GSM capability: 850/900/1800/1900), has intermittent coverage. When held side-by-side on the same network, the iPhone will show a consistently strong signal, where the blackberry has trouble staying connected. It's all very odd

(not very helpful I know - I'm probably best ignored!)

 

[Rich One]

Reviving this thread to ask a question:

I'm on Personal (prepago) and yesterday I had 67 pesos of credits, and today 54 pesos.
I didn't make any call, didn't use the phone, didn't activate internet but I received a call from an Argentine mobile -> is it possible that I pay for a call I receive?

YEs this happens to many people I was advised that I had purchased a subscription to a computer game for $ 16 per month. Must call *611 and verify any subscriptions and have them removed.

For GS_D when the service is interrumpted it works to me to restart the phone.

 

[Dublin2BuenosAires]

Movistar are a shower of clowns.

Took a contract with them, gave them my email address & address. 3 months tick by, no bills. Receive a call from movistar debt recovery folks, probably my fault for not following it up. So i paid, they quoted me a made up email address (my name + hotmail) and an address nowhere near (phonetically or geographically) to me. They cancelled my plan.

I now have exactly what I wanted, the cheapest android phone with wi-fi that I could find with whatsapp installed and no service! I wanted a phone for whatsapp only, no calls, no texts as I have work mobile for that. Sits at home and I look at it every couple of days to do a bit of whatsappery.

In your face Movistar.

 

[GS_Dirtboy]

I now have exactly what I wanted, the cheapest android phone with wi-fi that I could find with whatsapp installed and no service! I wanted a phone for whatsapp only, no calls, no texts as I have work mobile for that. Sits at home and I look at it every couple of days to do a bit of whatsappery.

In your face Movistar.

I've been sending you smoke signals for days and no response yet!

 

[Bricky]

...I look at it every couple of days to do a bit of whatsappery.

I heard the verb "wasapear" for the first time the other day (or maybe it's "whatsappear"?). Had no idea that was a thing now


Edit: seems I'm really falling behind on this: http://www.unocero.com/2013/07/02/es-oficial-ya-puedes-decir-wasapear/
feeling old now.

 

[nlaruccia]

@nlaruccia: is your iPhone 5 a US CDMA model? (model number A1429) - just a curiosity.




Edit: I suppose I should explain why I ask.

From what I understand, personal uses the GSM 1900 band. And I believe in the us CDMA uses 1900 also. It could be that there's some kind of incompatibility there. (although I don't know enough about this to say for sure).

On the flip side - I have an old iPhone 4 (GSM-only model) which, on Personal, has excellent coverage all the time. My wife's blackberry (an old 8900, which supposedly has the exact same GSM capability: 850/900/1800/1900), has intermittent coverage. When held side-by-side on the same network, the iPhone will show a consistently strong signal, where the blackberry has trouble staying connected. It's all very odd

(not very helpful I know - I'm probably best ignored!)

It's an iPhone 5 Model A1533. According to Apple's website it's a GSM model. I've used iPhone 3 and 4, always GSM, here in Buenos Aire with internet signal problems. My friend has a Blackberry and is always connected to the internet and my other friend with a Samsung doesn't have any problems either.