Since wireless companies and quality differ so much throughout the country/world, I thought it would be interesting to find out who has what wireless provider and how much they're paying for what types of services. Terminology: AT = Anytime minutes N&W = Night & Weekend minutes I'll start... Sprint PCS since 10/2000. Current Plan: 750 AT 3500 N&W minutes starting at 8pm Unlimited PCS Vision (wireless web, especially useful on my Treo) Unlimited PCS2PCS minutes (in network calling) $40 for the voice plan and $10 extra for Internet - Total of $50/month. Those of you on Sprint can dial *2 and say "Credit for Dropped Call" up to 20 times per month to get a $0.50 credit everytime you drop a call - total of $10/month. (Hint hint, you can do it even if you don't drop a call).
T-Mobile: 1000 AT minutes $40/mo (actually comes to almost $45 after all the taxes and other stuff) since Nov. '03 There were other options available with unlimited NT/Wknd, or off peak with fewer AT minutes, but I rarely use more than 200 minutes (usually closer to 120 minutes)/month as it is and the last thing I wanted to do was worry about what time of day or whatever. I actually got my T-610 BT phone for free with the one year contract AND, after rebates got $50 back--ok, just $15 after the $35 activation, but still, a free BT camera phone with a contract rate that's about standard.
Excuse me but................ :Wth: Sprint since June of 2003. $45 for 500 AT. $15 for Unlimited PCS Vision. N&W minutes start at 9pm. Unlimited PCS2PCS is NOT included (extra $5/mo). Am I getting hosed or what? Also, I read my agreement thoroughly and didn't see anything in it about credit for dropped calls. But thanks for the tip. I'll try it next time I drop a call.
I called back in 1/03 and called saying I wanted to cancel. I was bluffing, but they transferred me to their retention dept where I was offered the deal I got. I had to coax them for 8pm N&W and Unlimited PCS to PCS. Here's a huge thread over on Fatwallet about SprintPCS retention plans.
Thanks for the link, er, uh, Danny! My contract expires next month and I'm considering switching my wife and two of the kids from Verizon to Sprint. Maybe I can get some leverage out of adding three lines to the deal. Also, I get thrown into the standard menu system when I hit *2. Must be doing something wrong there (e.g. "press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish....."). Of course, now I seem to be having battery issues with my Treo 300! ............charged in the cradle overnight and crapped out after a 10 minute call.
I think your prefered carrier probably varies with your location... However, here in the NJ/NY area, Cingular provides very nice plans (inexpensive) with a lot of nice perks (rollover minutes) and their network doesn't seem to be as congested as some other networks around here (Verizon). Top off the nice plans and the good network with some decent phones (more than a few bluetooth phones available) and you've got a winner
Sorry, yes, you need to do 1 for English, then say "Credit for Dropped Call." You can do it multiple times in a row on the same call if you want to make up for credits you've missed out on before. I love my 600 A BT version is supposedly coming out in the Fall.
I have a prepaid plan from Verizon Wireless. The minimum required payment is $30 every 60 days, which is about $15/month. The $30 is applicable to calls at the rate of $0.15/minute for nights and weekends, or $0.30/minute for other times. So this amounts to somewhere between 50 and 100 minutes per month. Unused money is retained (i.e., "rolled over") so long as you keep paying the $30 every 60 days. If you need to make more calls, you can add more money at any time to your account, as needed. There is no annual commitment; at any time you can just stop making the every-60-day payments, and your service lapses. Prepaid plans are ideal if you hardly ever use a cellular phone but just want one because your mother nagged you to have one just in case God forbid your car should break down. See, this is Toyota-related after all. Actually, there has been only time when I have ever needed to call AAA from my cell phone to rescue me. I was very excited, because for once I was prepared for an emergency. (The problem, by the way, was due to some extreme negligence on the part of an unnamed Toyota dealer in Watertown, Massachusetts.) (But, happily, it was diagnosed and fixed quickly and inexpensively by an honest car repair place in Stowe, Vermont.) This was at about 150,000 miles, i.e., 80,000 miles ago, so that was probably in the year 2000. Over several (5?) years I have also had similar prepaid plans with Cellular One (which is now Cingular) and with AT&T Wireless (which is being acquired by Cingular), before switching to Verizon a couple or three years ago. The AT&T plan, at first, had a much lower minimum payment ($25 every 6 months), but then they kept changing the rules to require more frequent payments. Soon after I switched to Verizon, the AT&T plan changed again, so that its minimum required payment was, at least for a while, less expensive than Verizon's. But, as of today, I can't find information about the current AT&T prepaid plan, so it's quite possible that they have changed it, yet again.
I have Virgin Mobile prepaid service It costs $20 for 3 months of service Minutes are rolled over, but you have to put $20 every 3 months Calls are charged at 25c per minute from that pool of money It piggy-backs on the Sprint PCS service so coverage is good I have been very happy with it.... until I get my Prius Virgin Mobile has no bluetooth phone available... oh well Chris
I have Sprint. 2000 AT, unlimited night/weekend, unlimited Sprint to sprint, free long distance, nationwide coverage 4 phones sharing the plan, all with Vision and picture service. with the 25% corp discount paying $125/month with all taxes, phone protection, etc. Oh, we also uses sprint as our LD carrier, get 50 free minutes/month. Between that and the cells I haven't paid a LD bill in over 6 months. Works great with a college student 400 miles away, calls home on her cell to her sister's cell and talks forever for free. If ReplayTV didn't need to call home every night I'd give serious thought to dropping the land line. Fred
Started with AT+T 7 years ago, switched to verizon after my contract expired then to sprint and last week to cingular to get bluetooth. Verizon and sprint were great with coverage, but verizon was so expensive. I was very happy with sprint, but I am 5 yeas old and I need the newest coolest things, so bluetooth was required and sprint does not have it.
Thanks, Danny. Great information. I just blew the credit deal today. A call dropped and I had to return it in a big hurry..........no time to dial *2. So, lesson learned = cell call to wife, then *2 multiple times! The battery life on my 300 is getting, well, pretty sucky. Of course I can always buy that battery extender for a mere $99. :x I was seriously considering the 600 but, unlike quite a few other Treo owners, I actually like the cover on the 300. But a 600 w/BT sounds great. Is that for real?
There have been rumors for a while of a Treo 610 that would have a higher res screen, no camera, and bluetooth! It does appear that there probably really is a 610, but the bluetooth seems to just be speculation at this point. No FCC filing as yet, and the addition of bluetooth (new radio) would mean that if it's true it'll show up at the FCC first. -- delrey Waiting anxiously for a Bluetooth phone that can be used on Verizon
I use Verizon's "FreeUP" plan. Basically what I do is leave a stack of cash on the table and watch as street urchins steal it. In all honesty, I greatly dislike the prepaid plans. You don't get as much for your money, the phone itself is pretty crappy, no free nights or weekends, text messaging costs an arm and a leg, and you really have no recourse if your phone is lost or stolen. On the upside, I live in the middle of nowhere and I get service in a closet in the middle of my house.
I'm not a big fan of cell phones, period, but the prepaid plans are good if you want to have a cell phone available for only occasional use. I have the same plan (Verizon FreeUp), and the text messaging costs five cents per message. I had my phone stolen last December, and I thought that the Verizon Wireless customer service people were pretty helpful. They put my account on hold, and said that I could reactivate it after I got a new phone. It turned out that I managed to recover the stolen phone, using the information on their Web site that showed the calls that the phone thief had made, and then I just reactivated the old phone. If I were going to have my cell phone stolen or lost, I would prefer to be using a prepaid plan, because I could not lose any more money than I had already spent (most recent $30). With a post-billed plan, it's possible for the thief to run up a bill before you realized it.
Pssssttttt....you can do it anytime whether you drop calls or not And what is this Bluetooth stuff all about, anyway? I mean, come on, you have to buy a big fancy expensive car to have it integrated into it.... :mrgreen:
I have Cingular wireless, and use it as my only phone. 500 anytime minutes with rollover (300 in the "bank" for later) 3000 night and weekent minutes (never run out of these and are not on the rollover plan) I have all the usual fluff that goes with it like voicemail call waiting, etc. It is a nationwide phone as well. Cost: typically around $56 per month.
I have Verizon. No other company would sell me service because I have no credit history, because I NEVER buy anything on credit. I pay for what I buy. No borrowing, no credit history, no cell phone... until I stumbled on Verizon, who figured that a (then) 53-year-old with no credit history had no bad credit either! I have their digital-150 local plan (grandfathered but no longer available to new customers) $25 per month plus taxes = $30 per month. 150 anytime minutes/mo 1850 night/weekend minutes/mo Minutes not used during the billing period are lost. Free long-distance So it costs me nothing to call my mom on weekends. Other than that, I use the phone for emergencies and when I need to make a call away from home.
