jumping thru hoops

[wendyzski]

My 1 yr contract with verizon expired in late Nov. Since then I've been considering various pay-as-you-go options. I'm paying $53/month for 400 minutes, of which I use maybe 30. When I got it for the TSA gig, i needed nationwide coverage, and a decent sized minute pool. However, I knew this was going to change so I signed up for only one year. Really, I onlt use my phone to check messages and tell people when I'm running late someplace. I only call long distance for holidays and birthdays - my home phone doesn't even HAVE long distance on it - I'm still using that calling card Janet got me at SAMS a couple of years ago.

Verizon's ppu option sucks ass - there is a minimum $1/day charge, so I would end up paying the same and getting less service.

Cingular gets good reviews from my cell-phone-owning peeps, except thise in Chicago, who find service issue a problem.

My manager suggested TracFone. It's a pay-as-you-go program which will allow me to use as little as 20 minutes a month. You buy a card which is good for some number of minutes, and once you activate it the minutes expire is 60 days. The card prices look good, and you can find promo codes which can double many cards.

For the extremely low level of service I need, it soulds ideal. I did upgrade from their cheapest Nokia phone to a Motorola because of brand trust, but I still ordered a very basic model. I don;t need pretty ringtones, unlimited texting, a camera, games, or whatever.

So, the phone is on order, and shoudl arrive mid-late next week. Then I begin the tedious process of porting my number over. yay. Still, to save $30 or so a month, hell yay!

Comments

[alliesutherland.livejournal.com]

Clay has a TracFone, and one thing to keep in mind is that if you use it outside of Chicago, you'll likely be charged 2-for-1 minutes because of "roaming" charges.

During the holidays, they usually have a "double your minutes" gifty that you don't know about until you call to activate your card (20 min. will give you 40 when you activate).

Text messages charge you 1/2 min.

[ladyariyana.livejournal.com]

actually Chelsea says on hers they have been charging her a third of a unit for text messages...

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

the website says the current offer is 1/2 unit for messages. Which I don't use.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

*nods* I know about the roaming thingie, but don't plan to use it much if at all out of Chicago.

And I rarely text - my old plan cost me 5 cents per msg so I never got into the habit.

[ladyariyana.livejournal.com]

actually for Chelsea's trac fone I think it gave her 2 or 3 months of activation on a card,it used to be only 30 days but I think it has really changed.
Thats what i used to have and will likely have again... and unlike Chelsea (who has used over 600 minutes since Xmas *gasp* and went through a few hundred the month before and no I am not buying minutes.. dad gave her the money for the thing and calls her on it all the time (he hasn't called here at all or taked to Xander since she got it!) he can buy her minutes for it...

[agladstone.livejournal.com]

We got rid of our land lines completely and only use our cell phones. That saves us around $50 a month. When the kids get a bit older, we may have to rethink it a bit.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

My landline is used primarily for my computer. Yes, I still have dial-up.

[agladstone.livejournal.com]

We finally got rid of dial up this summer. The cost of a cable modem was only $5 more a month. So we deducted that from our normal land line bill and still came up with a large savings.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Bruce got a Trac-Fone when I moved down here and I really like it. Yes, it does eat up a lot of units when you're roaming. But while we were in Missouri this morning and way out in the country, my phone had service when Bruce's didn't!

I don't talk much on the phone so it works well for us; Bruce figures that it works out to about $20 a month or so. And yes, they have good specials when you can afford to take advantage of them.

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

Tracfone came into the Missouri markets late, and doesn't have towers in a lot of the areas. Down around Springfield/Branson, the best coverage is offered by US Cellular, I believe; as you get closer to the eastern side of the state, Verizon and Cingular are best.

Also the kind of phone you get (brand and model) makes a huge difference in rural areas (central and southern Missouri, anywhere outside the large cities in Kansas, eastern Colorado, southern Illinois, etc., etc.). If you spend a lot of time in those areas, you need a dual or tri-mode phone (one that supports an analog signal). There are still a lot of areas that do not have digital towers of any sort; if you have one of the fancy new 'All-Digital' phones that everyone pushes these days and you happen to end up in one of those digital-dead zones, your phone will cease to work (no signal) until you get within range of a digital tower again.

Having spent far too much time making multiple trips across Kansas, I can tell you with some certainty just where that digital divide is. It's getting smaller (more towers going up), but it hasn't entirely gone away. Verizon and I came to an agreement some years ago; they promised to tell me when Kansas is entirely digital, and I promised to buy tri-mode phones until they do.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good plan to me!

[starstraf.livejournal.com]

I have tracfone and love it, I also rarely use it.
and the minutes will roll over if you renew before the 60 days is up - you just have to buy more minutes every 60 days