Cell phone questions...

[forgotten_aria]

First, I love my current phone and would be sad to give it up. But I pay about $23/month (I know to most of you that sounds small, but I don't use my cell that much.) That means I spend about $267 a year on my cell phone contract. This includes no web service.

If I read things right, I should be able to serve my cell phone needs by getting a $100/year pay as you go from verizon. It's a must that my phone have a full keyboard, but verizon has offered the "blitz" with pay as you go. Bestbuy is currently selling it for $150 as a pay as you go. This would be about my t-mobile cost for the year, with a future savings of $150 a year, which is noticable. I would, if I'm reading things right, also get the added service of web browsing (which t-mobile would charge me an extra $5/month for.)

However, I would loose a phone I like. The camera in the bliz is ~ 1 Megapixel compared to the 4 I currently have. My current phone can also take video, which the blitz cannot. I also give up all my custom ring tones (I'm not paying for ring tones.) I'm also sure I misread something in the service termsor have miscalculated my usage a little bit.

I bet there are a few other things I'm not thinking of. Any advice, stories or other things I might not have thought about is very welcome.

EDIT: Oh, I just thought of something. I can't go back if I give up my t-mobile plan. It's grandfathered.

Comments

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there would be a way to register your current phone with one of the other services like TracFone? It might need a sim card from them or some other shenanigans. And for the $23 a month, consider how much free time you get. A lot of the pay as you goes are painful when the minutes run over.
And the Verizon deal looks like you pay them for a month if someone calls you, even if Verizon calls you. I am really suspicious of their plan. It sounds . . . well, as presented on tv it sounds sleazy.

The deals are all designed to get about the same amount of money out of you, because that's what it costs them to run the service, so you will get a whole lot of different deals to compare to the point where you will need a spread sheet. The nice thing about no contract time cards is that you can quite any time they annoy you or pull a fast one.

For example: to keep a Net10 active for 6 months you could buy their 1000 minutes and 180 days card for $100. To keep a TracFone active for 6 months you could buy two of their 60 minutes and 90 days cards for a total of $40. Which is a better deal?
http://www.fone-review.com/Net10.html

Have you noticed that the companies that offer cable, phone, and net all want $100 a month? Have you used someone else's Verizon phone to find out if the service makes fast clear connections? Does Verizon start charging 10 minutes as soon as you connect?

Loving your phone probably matters more than what service it connects to.

Big decision. I am happy I don't have to make it.

Maybe you can keep your phone

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

Verizon Wireless’ new Month-to-Month agreement gives customers the freedom to purchase new devices at full-retail price, or use their own CDMA devices without the commitment of a one- or two-year contract.

http://news.vzw.com/news/2008/09/pr2008-09-22b.html

Re: Maybe you can keep your phone

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that verzion uses a different frequency band than t-mobile, At&T and cingular, (and therefor not compatable with my phone) but I might be wrong about that.

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

I have been told of some pay-as-you-go systems that have, in addition to the per-minute charge, a flat fee for each day that you actually use the phone, nominally "to connect to the system". (I read this fee as "for our gratuitous profit".) Check the fine print on the billing to make sure you're not going to get nailed with something like this.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I actually already found that in the fine print and calculated it into my usage. I'm fairly certain that I don't use my phone more than 50 times in a year, but I should, if I'm serious about going forward with this, go check my records and verify that.

They infact have three different day charges. Some will give you unlimited minutes during certain times for a larger day fee. I would likely go for the smaller ($1) day fee and the .10 a minute plan, but I think the fear of loosing my current plan may keep me from changing.

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

This sounds like the day fee is applied every time you turn your phone on, yes?

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

My understanding was it was any time you used any minutes.

[kelkyag]

The tmobile pre-pay plan I have does not -- it seems to be straight up cost-per-minute for phone calls. (I think it's flat cost per text message, too, though I hardly ever use them so I don't remember.)