Claro dongle vs Orange dongle vs Viva dongle (in Bavaro)

Another option is Tricom. They have a wireless set up without a landline. I know a few people that have it and it seems better than a dongle. However in Bavaro a Claro landline will be the best option.

Where are you in Bavaro?

I posted in another thread regarding this (You can do a search). I use both Orange and/or Claro when I'm down there. The differences I found is that Orange is much faster when you have a connection, but it seems very flaky. Claro is more consistent IMO, but it tends to be slow if you're in an area that doesn't have excellent coverage. Also note that while Claro is cheaper, they give you an amount of data to use and when that's done, you're done. Orange on the other hand will not completely fut you off, just throttle your speed down.

to be honest...

Claro stinks... they do not deliver their promises, far from, and they are incredibly inconsistent. Even when you are supposed to get full speed, you will not even get close to it. When you complain, it is always your fault. In order to become a customer service manager there, you have to be a female of around 40, with a huge chip on your shoulder, problems with the menopause, and absolutely no interest in customer relations.

Orange is a hell of a lot better, but they have issues as well. Problem there is, I suspect, frequent changes of operations managers with a new set of rules each time. For a number of months I had excellent service, and more important here, customer service. Since a month now I still get the friendly service but the rules are ridiculous. When I got the contract for the flybox I got a free choice between 5, 10 or 25 GB per month. I chose 10 GB, but if I want to upgrade now it is a lot of hassle with credit cards, approvals, etc... We are experiencing a technical problem at the moment, and had to go to the main office in POP to "sort" it out. When we got there, they registered the complaint in their computer system, promising an answer within 72 hours (have not passed yet, so hoping). I have no problems with that, except for the fact they could just as easily have done that in Cabarete, which they would have done a month ago.

No experience with the other carriers.

The biggest problem in this country is the frequent change in policies all those companies do.

every3monthpuntacana said:

Great to hear you have experience with both services but this sounds like my best choice will be the lesser evil....
When you say "flaky" do you mean the internet connections comes and goes (Orange)?
Also have you tried to make video / phone calls with your Claro dongle? I am not dowloading music / videos so if Claro is more reliable it may be the better choice as long as the slower speed does not downgrade the quality of calls which iis my main concern.

Click to expand...

I make calls with either of them all the time - Phone calls, not video. With Claro the calls were clear enough as long as I'm in an area with good service, but whenever I'm only getting two bars or less of service I had terrible delays and feedback on the line. However Claro always seems to connect, even when you're only getting one bar whereas Orange seems to be a crapshoot, even though I was about a mile away from one of their towers. When connected though Orange is definitely much faster, which may make it a better option for video calls. I consistently got about 2.7 mpbs downstream, which is almost as fast as my home internet connection in The US. I was sharing my connection with three other laptops and we all had good download speeds, with my kids sometimes watching videos and what not.

Orange gets my vote too. I've used the Claro and Orange dongles in Punta Cana and we had fewer issues with Orange. Claro was a non-stop nightmare. The bonus with Orange is you don't need to deal with the hellish suspended animation that is the Claro office and the minions that inhabit it.

No wonder Carlos Slim, owner of Claro, is the richest man in the world! He's a thief! I use a prepaid card for their wireless internet service, and used to keep a balance on account, and then I would activate for a certain amount of time. However, when the activation time was over, my entire amount in balance was gone. I lost thousands of pesos, until I resorted to calling a friendly colmado, asking them everyday to credit my number for 65 pesos. Then I would activate my Claro wireless internet service for one day (which is 64 pesos for 200 mg (which sometimes is gone in only a few hours). I pay the colmado about once a week. That way, I'm only loosing one peso every day. Orange is out of range here in Las Lomas de Azua.