cell phones and plans

[T2K]

I'm thinking about buying a couple of phones and a new plan via the net. Could save about $400 on the phones. Anyone bought phones on the internet and if so what experiences did you have. Any recommendations?

Thanks.

Keith

[jamesV]

Keith,

I purchased my gf and mine current phones, T-Mobile, from www.wirefly.com and made money on them. It was a form of rebates that I had to have a plan over so much and keep it for so long.

I am now looking to change carriers, AT&T, and I am going to purchase the phone again thru them. Again this time I will make $50 with the purchase.

The only real problem that I have seen is if you are getting a family plan you should wait to get any add-ons directly from the carrier, text message plans and so on. With just the one real time that I dealt with them it has been a great experience. You can also chat with a customer service rep. while on the site to help you with any questions, I have not used that before.

James

[Jeff Matthews]

I don't know what is being offered these days, but I feel I purchased a good plan through T-Mobile. It is either 3000 or 6000 minutes (I forget which) for anywhere in Texas and Louisiana for $50 (plus the taxes, of course). Whether it's 3000 or 6000 minutes, to me, it is the same as unlimited. By the way, that plan was not advertised. The rep. told me about it, and that's how I found out.

Re: phones, IMO phones have become the new "watch." For something meant to just tell you what time it is, a watch has become a status symbol, reaching prices exceeding $5,000 just to tell you what time it is. Phones.... same thing. "Hello," "Goodbye," "Here's a text," "You have 2 new messages and 1 saved message," "Click, what a pretty picture." That's about it. Might as well take the cheap freebie. $400 phone equals $33.00/mo. over 12 mos. For those pricey phones that offer nothing more than some sort of "Jones" appeal, you might as well wad up $30 a month and throw it in the garbage.

[T2K]

Thanks for the quick responses. I checked out Wirefly and LetsTalk in the last few days. LetsTalk had a litlle better customer rating on Bizrate, which probably means nothing.

I use a cell phone very little, for work only. Last month I must have talked quite a bit because I used 118 minutes.

I go in a local A T & T store the other day and they had about 10 phones and 2 million dollars worth of accessories. The salesperson was too busy addressing an envelope so I left. The phones would have cost $149 each after a $50 mail in rebate on each phone. I hate mail-in rebates.

I walked next door to Best Buy and the same phones and plan would cost $79. There was no salesperson there. I left.

At LetsTalk the phones are free. The A T & T (Cingular) plan is the same everywhere. I'll probably buy from one of the two mentioned sites unless someone offers up a bad experience or a better idea. Anyway, thanks again.

Keith

[T2K]

Yeah, I know what you mean Jeff. My work requires that I be on call 24/7. For the last 31 years. Before cell phones came along I used a pager, the regular old type that beeped. Then came those miraculous 'brick' cell phones. The ones about the size of the military radio Ernest Borgnine used in the old war movies. Now phones do almost everything. I use one to call people occasionally and to accept work calls. I've never taken the time to program phone numbers into my phone. I use a small phone book and write actual phone numbers in it. A young whippersnapper I work with laughed at me one day about my phone book. A few days later he lost his phone. He was flipping out about it as I held up my phone book.

As you say, I make calls occasionally on my cell. All that other crap does not interest me.

Keith

[fini]

Keith,

We got ours two years ago from Amazon. I think we got good deals, as I recall. We've got 4 phones (me, Cathy and the two girls), using AT&T. Man, my bill is expensive. 1400 minutes, unlimited texting (two teenage daughters, y'know). Way too high at $120-130/mo. THAT'S why they sell the phones so cheap...

[T2K]

Hey fini. I know what you mean. I try to hold down costs because when I decide on something I usually stick with it forever. Like my wife for example, 35 years. I've had my current plan and phone for 5 years. Time for an upgrade.

I asked A T & T customer service why a customer of 30 years has to pay $300 for phones to upgrade a plan when a new customer could get 2 new phones for free with the same plan. He mumbled a second or two and said something about attracting new customers. I told him that that was a brilliant marketing idea and I was switching to Verizon.

Keith

[Daddy Dee]

Keith,

That sounds familiar.

A few weeks after you switch to Verizon ATT will call and ask you why you switched and offer a good deal.

Go figure.

I'm getting ready to switch from Alltel to ATT for the very same reason. Alltel wants new customers but doesn't give a rip if I stay.

[Marvel]

I switched from Verizon to AT&T, mostly because of the technology. When I was planning traveling overseas, I checked and found out that my Verizon phone (CDMA technology) would not work other than in Canada and Mexico (mostly). AT&T uses GSM, which works in almost every country in the world.

International roaming charges are very high, however. So on my trip to the Philippines, I bought a sim card fro my phone that was with a local phone company. Works like a prepaid card. I ordered it and received it before I left on my trip. I put it in my phone and powered up... there was my local Phil. phone number. I gave that number to my gf, and while sitting in the airport in Detroit, I swapped out the cards. When I got off the plane in Manila, I powered up the phone and called her. A local call. Pretty cheap, too, and ALL incoming calls were free, even if they were from overseas.

The drawback is that phone was not purchased through AT&T and cost a lot... a quad band Sony Ericsson. Got it from Tiger Direct. I have since switched the whole family over to AT&T, getting their phones through the plan we set up.

Cheap phones, btw, will often have horrible reception.

They will all get your money, but the GSM technology was a no brainer for me. T-Mobile also uses GSM. I think some others in the US do as well. NOT Sprint or Verizon.

Bruce

[Tom Adams]

This is slightly off the subject, but what I've noticed is that the plans for PDA type phones with their internet connectivity & such are darn near as cheap as plans for just voice service only. It's as if the cell companies are pricing the plans in order to get customers to move to those types of phones which will ultimately net them bigger returns.

I'm like many of you in that I have a cell phone mostly for emergency and for those times when I send the wife to the hardware store for 2" wood screws only to realize that I need 3" screws, so I call her BEFORE she gets back home! LOL.......

It's rare when I exceed 80 minutes a month, yet the cheapest plan I can get from Verizon costs me around $70/month. That just irritates me 'cause my wife is with Alltel and because her phone is surgically imbedded in her ear (cough), she uses well over 500 minutes/month and her bill is around $80. AND, if I were on her plan, it would costs us just $10 more (yes, we're gonna do that when my contract runs out).

Tom

[Duke Spinner]

i use 2000 minnits a month ..

and ..

verizon never drops a call , all over the eastern us ...new york to north carolina

[Marvel]

verizon never drops a call , all over the eastern us ...new york to north carolina

Glad it works for you. Our school uses Verizon for a lot of the staff. Calls are dropped all the time. I have an AT&T account and get far more reliable service on our campus, but we're on top of Lookout Mountain (you know... See Rock City!)

[T2K]

I ended up going with a new plan/phones from Verizon. I get a 20% discount thru my employer so that helped. I'll find out in the next few days if they're service is up to par with 'the new AT&T'.

Thanks for all the replies and comments.

Keith

[Coytee]

I checked and found out that my Verizon phone (CDMA technology) would not work other than in Canada and Mexico (mostly). AT&T uses GSM, which works in almost every country in the world.

I'm a bit late to this conversation however, regarding Verizon... (which is what I have)

They have a loner program. They sent me two phones that were GSM phones. They charged me $20 (each or total??? I forget) for them. They let me use them for 30 days with NO charges other than air time.

If I used them domestically, then the use was free as per my plan with them.

If I used them internationally (I took them on our trip to Europe/Turkey), then it was something like $1.20 or $1.50 per minute (I forget rate)

The only caveot was... if I called my wife on the other phone, then BOTH phones were racking up the charge by the minute. If I called home, then it cost me half as much.

Since we were together 99% of the time it didn't matter and there'd be no charges. For the couple times we were seperated (her shopping & me getting sick [:S] ) we were able to keep in contact for a nominal amount of money.

I returned from the trip and sent them back in the box they provided.

The only "hard" part was, when they arrived I had to deactivate my phone and activate them (they took over my phone number). Upon returning, I then had to deactivate the loner phones and reactivate my phone.

All in all, it was a VERY positive experience and a very nice, if not expensive, service they provided me.

[Coytee]

I was wrong... they give you the phone for 3 weeks, not 30 days. Regardless, here's their webpage

http://b2b.vzw.com/international/Global_Travel/index.html

[Marvel]

That's funny. I called them and to ask about overseas phones and wasn't pointed to this at all. Just that they have Blackberry phones with gsm that I could buy.

[Coytee]

The only reason I had that website...

When I was talking to them on the phone about this...to put it bluntly, I did not believe them that it was in essence, a free loner plan. She gave me the details of how it worked (as shown on the webpage) and I asked her if she could put it into writing...

She said sure...it's on our website and then led me to that page.

There was a glitch with one of the phones in that... they did not ...what to call it....?.... they did not un-activiate it from the PRIOR user so here I am over in England or Italy with a phone that did not work. I wasn't happy. Fortunately, I had the second phone which WAS working and I was able to call Verizon on it and explain the problem.

They cleared the prior users code (or what ever it was) and in about 10 minutes, had it up & working for my benefit.

Truth be told, I was impressed with this service and liked it. I was even able to use their backup service to download all my existing phones information (names & numbers) into the loner phone. One of the busy-body tasks I did on the long flight home was manually delete them since I was shipping the phone back first thing on Monday.

I have no idea how to delete all the saved phone numbers as a group.

[jamesV]

I ended up going with a new plan/phones from Verizon. I get a 20% discount thru my employer so that helped. I'll find out in the next few days if they're service is up to par with 'the new AT&T'.

Thanks for all the replies and comments.

Keith

Keith,

May I ask what site you ended up getting the phones off of?

James

[T2K]

I ended up going with a new plan/phones from Verizon. I get a 20% discount thru my employer so that helped. I'll find out in the next few days if they're service is up to par with 'the new AT&T'.

Thanks for all the replies and comments.

Keith

Keith,

May I ask what site you ended up getting the phones off of?

James

Hey James. I wish I could give you that info but I bought via my employers web site which gives a link to Verizon, which then shows appropiate discounts. Only employees can log on to the site. Sorry.

For info, in case it helps, I bought 2 Motorola W755 phones with a one year 700 minute 2-line Family plan for $57.99 per month. The phones cost me $19.99 each, they were free with 2 year agreement, and overnight shipping was free.

Verizon has improved their coverage here in the last 5 years while I've been doing bidness with AT&T. What little I've used the service I'm happy with it.

You might check the usual sites such as LetsTalk dot com and Wirefly dot com.

Keith

[jamesV]

Keith,

No problem, I seen on Letstalk that they have a refer a friend and both people get some money kick back. I was just seeing if that is where you got your phones as that is where I am going to order mine from. So why not get a little extra money for them.

Thanks for the info.

James