Question for Current First Semester Students

[Sakuger]

How do you guys setup for cell phones/ internet/ bank problems? Also, do you guys think a car is necessary?

Any feedback is appreciated! 8)

[levator]

How do you guys setup for cell phones/ internet/ bank problems? Also, do you guys think a car is necessary?

Any feedback is appreciated! 8)

hey! i am not a first semester student but i think i can answer those questions: first of all, i think a car is necessary. the closest grocery store is about 5-10 minutes away with a car. there is nothing around the school within walking distance except for a couple of places to eat, golf courses, a casino and the beach. you will get differing opinions on this. i ended up getting a car with a friend here and we split the cost.

as far as a phone, i am only familiar with ECC (east carib. cellular). they dont use phones with a card in them. there are certain phones you can bring with you like startacs that will work here. for the last two semesters they have had a special offer for incoming students that included a phone and prepaid minutes for a reasonable fee. they are here during new student registration which is nicer than having to go into town.

as far as internet, there a couple of options. i use caribserve and i think the other company is idl. with idl, you lease their equipment per month and then pay for their service. with caribserve, you buy their internet equipment and then pay the monthly service fee. i dont know the specifics for IDL but for caribserve the equipment is 400 dollars to buy and then its about 48 dollars a month for service. my advice to you if you go with caribserve is to buy the equipment off a departing student. there a few for sale at the end of each semester.

as far as banks: i know of two major ways that students handle their finances. there might be more options but these are the two big ones i know of. first option is to fedex your loan checks back home to someone that can deposit them for you in your bank and then use an atm card down here for cash. the only catch with this is you cannot fedex more than 9999dollars on one check or the US customs dept will tax you or give you a fine. either way you will lose about 800 dollars. if your refund is more than 9999 dollars then you must ask the school to split it up into two separate checks. the other option, which i use, is to open an account down here with a bank and wire money home if needed. this option is for students like me that dont really want to mail their checks home or students that dont have someone they can mail the checks to. i use scotia bank. from the three different banks here its the one i have never heard of any complaints about. i usually go deposit my loan check there, wait 4 days for it to clear and then go back and wire some money back home for bills. scotia gives you an atm card so i use that for cash here. one last thing, scotia bank is associatted with bank of america so you can use your scotia atm card in the states during breaks without any fees. there are two other banks on the island.

later,

[WantMD]

How do you guys setup for cell phones/ internet/ bank problems? Also, do you guys think a car is necessary?

Any feedback is appreciated! 8)

On my first day here, I drove to Simpson Bay (10 minute drive) and got a GSM phone from UTS. I've been satisfied of the price and service. I've had no problems. I've heard some people complain about UTS before but in my case everything works fine.

I was able to purchase a Caribserve antenna from a student leaving the island. I use Caribserve, it costs $48/month, the service is pretty reliable. Setup cost me $70 install + $125 Ethernet conversion. (If USB is fine with you, this extra fee doesn't apply, in my case, I wanted to connect my wireless router and use it with my laptop).

In *MY* opinion, I could not/would not live here without a car. I would go crazy. 'Need my wheels! Others I know have no car and are perfectly happy. This is completely up to you. It is certainly possible to do without one, but for me the extra expense was worth it. Most people choose to have a car.

I have not setup a bank account yet. I will follow Speros's advice and get one at Scotia. I went to RBTT to get one on my first day here and they wanted a letter from my hometown bank, letter from school, color of my underwear...etc... I decided to walk out and go have a beer at Sunset instead. I'll tackle the bank thingy soon.

My 2 cents.

WantMD :-)

[anencephalic]

How do you guys setup for cell phones/ internet/ bank problems? Also, do you guys think a car is necessary?

Any feedback is appreciated! 8)

Buy a car...don't lease. You'll be glad you didn't.

Cel: ECC, TelCel, UTS
I use ECC and am satisfied with it. They program your phone and you add prepaid minutes to it to make calls.

Internet: Caribserve or IDL
Caribserve has uneven service at best...excellent if you have line of sight to one of their towers and shotty if you don't. ~$500 to set you up with your wireless box. I haven't heard many positive things about IDL.

Bank: Keep your current account and draw funds from it off local ATMs during banking hours to avoid any problems with cash disbursement (or lack thereof).
ScotiaBank (Simpson Bay is closest) is the only one I trust thusfar...I recommend staying away from Windward Island Banks (WIB) 'cause they could care less if their ATMs rip you off.

Aloha,

[MushieCookie]

I can't speak for IDL throughout the island...but I know at Campus Village (which is pre-wired for IDL, therefore you don't have to buy or lease any equipment) and areas around here (like Cote d'Azur, etc.) has a great connection through IDL. It's a little choppy sometimes, but for the most part, I have no complaints with IDL. The price isn't bad either...I believe it's $45/month, but I prepaid for 6 months and it cost me $40.00/month.
Not too bad.

Like I said, I don't know how other places are with IDL...but I do know IDL 'wired' a whole bunch of new sites on the island. Check out their website:

http://www.networkidl.net/

[AUCMD2006]

again goes with what you want, i didn't want some crappy ten year old island car abused by a previous med student for 3k then deal with shady mechanics....i lease share with one person costs me 150 a month and every time it breaks i get another car. it also depends on your luck with a car jon lucked out and hasn't had any problems and i also know a second semester student who has driven the car one week out of 7 months....good luc-k

[Sakuger]

For those of you who live in the dorms, what kind of internet do you guys use, IDL or Caribserve?

Thanks again

[djsoar]

I had my internet setup about 3 weeks ago. My roomate uses Caribserv but after comparing and playing with both services in other rooms for awhile I personally decided to go with IDL.

It seemed to be a little faster and more reliable (post-upgrade), ~80-100k sustained compared to sporadic 20-80k for Caribserv. IDL uses pre-wired pjacks in the dorms (DSL) and Caribserv uses a wireless receiver dish that they install on your window.

I just visited IDL's central office and had everything setup, however since no one used IDL before in my specific dorm room a couple of techs came over the next day and got into a networking closet on campus to activate my jack.

The first week I got IDL they had problems and the downtime was depressing; they were in the process of a major upgrade for AUC students, BUT when that was done I haven't had any downtime.

So in the end,
IDL: $225 for modem rental and 3 months, faster, auto DHCP, able to split signal with router.
Caribserv: $300+ for equipment and 3 months, non-routable, log-in based.
Make your own inferences.

Lee

[levator]

For those of you who live in the dorms, what kind of internet do you guys use, IDL or Caribserve?

Thanks again

i use caribserve and depending on which tower you get your service from kinda constitutes the speed of the internet. at least with the two diff. towers i have used. (ie. which tower they aim your internet antenna at)

later

[Sakuger]

this really helps. :D

[xsbb]

I think that a car is an absolute must. It makes life a whole lot easier. I went with UTS for cell phone and I have not had any problems. As far as internet is concerned I wanted to get IDL due to the ethernet cable (so i could use my wireless router) but they could not istall the equipment in my place (or it could have something to do with the fact that the istaller was being an a#* and I threatened him with a Machete and told him we needed cadavers in the anatomy lab!) but I digress, anyways I eventually went with caribserve and it seems to be prettty good.

As far as banking is concerned, I just signed the back of my checks, wrote "for deposit only" and wrote my account number and fedexed it to the States. I increased the limit on my ATM card to $5000 and so I can withdraw large sums if I have to. You can only take out something like $600 at a time through the ATM, but if you take your US ATM card inside the bank they can swipe the card and give you any amount you ask for.

Hope this helps
Sohaib

[Ditch Doctor]

Another option is to ship your car from home... it costs ~1500 to ship plus about 500 in administrative **. We used cargoship.com. That costs about the same as an "island car"- less overall than leasing- but you run the "mechanic" risk- at least you know what you're getting into, though. And by looking at other prices my guess is that resale value is better than in the US, so you might even make some of that shipping money back. I would only do this on <$4000 car though, because you'll be hard pressed to sell it to another student and have fun trying to sell it to a local. My guess is it's only really feasable from the east coast as they are shipped through Miami, but I have no idea about that.

For internet, I have IDL and service is great, but they are the definition of "island time". It took about 2 weeks of calling everyday to get set up-- "We can't today, but we'll come by tomorrow, call us in the am"

As an aside: I haven't figured out how to do pier to pier sharing yet, so no MP3's for me. Anyone figured out how to do this? I tried all of them, Limewire, Bearshare, Kazaalite, Edonkey, Morpheus... none of them work. I called IDL, but they didn't even know what I was talking about.

I use UTS and coverage is poor, but rates are the best... calling US is only like ~50 cents a minute... Local calls are around 30, but I may be wrong. Coverage is spotty. I live less than a mile from the UTS store and have no signal, but I am behind a mountain. I get decent coverage everywhere else on the island.

Hope this helps

[microphage]

As an aside: I haven't figured out how to do pier to pier sharing yet, so no MP3's for me. Anyone figured out how to do this? I tried all of them, Limewire, Bearshare, Kazaalite, Edonkey, Morpheus... none of them work. I called IDL, but they didn't even know what I was talking about.


take off all their stupid spyware that they install on your computer. I doubt this will make it work still but file sharing does work with Beacon Hill IDL service(although you'll be downloading at a "blazing" 2.5 kb/s).

John, Just come up to the caf and join the 3rd semester file swapping community. You'll have to cross over to the dark side of Apple iTunes as Arkansas Chris described it. :lol: