posted
My sister is going to hook me up with a cell phone today on her lunch break, to help me look for work. I've been trying to search out a good deal on the internet and having little sucess. The problem is:
there are hundreds of thousands of cell phone websites hawking their wares.
99% want to ship me one, but we want to do it today.
between local plans, cell phone manufactures, and other complexities, searching is getiing me no where.
even the shopping comparisons pages seem to have an agenda and are not helping much. Many only have 1 or 2 service providers
My options are
find a cheap or even free phone and activate it with a plan
get prepaid cell-phone, buy minutes as I go. We have found a phone for $100 at CVS drugstores, not sure how much minutes are
get a cheap phone and activate onto my sister's Sprint plan. She has found a phone for about $100 plus $20 activation.
I don't care about frills or long-distance, just want the cheapest phone with a dial tone and cheap minutes. With all the cheap/free phones out there, surely I can do better than paying $100 for a phone. Any help will be appreciated. I've looked at Radio Shack, but I can't get a quote over their website. Also looked at Best Buy and Circuit City electronic retailers, think I saw a phone for $65 at Best Buy.
Any help or links would be appreciated. My zip is 30080, area codes 404, 678, 770. I live in Smyrna, GA, but will have to shop near downtown Atlanta where my sister works. I have to go pick her up in less than 3 hours.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Look into Cricket... it's usually inexpensive and offers local calling at reasonable rates. There should be a business locally that sells them and sets them up.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Remember this, unless you plan on using alot of minutes all the time, you will probably not get a great deal. The cell phone companies only make money when you use the system. Actually they make more money when you buy a plan and don't use the time,but that is a different story. For example, I wanted a cell phone for just emergency use. When I sold phones, 10 years ago, there was a Safe and Sound plan. It was $10/month with no time, and time was 50 cents/min. It was a high rate, but I only used the phone in emergencies. At that time if I spent $10 on a cell phone in an emergency, it would be no big deal. The phone companies don't offer those types of deals any more, as far as I can tell.
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Cricket has stores in GA, but none near Atlanta. Thanks, though. Ayelar, amazon would ship it, we want to buy it today.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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If there is a sprint store near you. (you can find the listing of sprint stores online) I would go to it. They are always running rebate deals which gets the apparent $150 phone down to around $50. I would sign onto your sisters plan to begin with because it is only $10/month extra, evaluate how many of her minutes you are using, and then up the plan accordingly. It is much cheaper than having two separate plans. It is also only $5 additional extra for unlimited sprintpcs to sprint pcs calls. This means if you talk to your sister you won't be running up the mintues.
In fact after being gouged once again by SBC I am planning on adding Steve to my plan this month and discontinuing our land line. It will save at least $30/month.
posted
ARRRggh!Everybody wants to ship me a phone! Because if I buy it locally, it cuts into profit margins. I'm reduced to the damn newspaper and online yellow pages.
Thanks, AJ. I'm probably going to do that. I found cingular's pre-paid to be 10 cents a minute, might do that. This has been so frustrating because there are so many phone manufacturers, local carriers, retailers and online hustlers.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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If there isn't a sprint store, go to Radio shack, they actually carry a couple of different services and might be able to help you make a more educated decision.
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Yeah, radio shack is a definate possibility. But they won't give me a price online to buy locally, only if they ship it.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I always found that you get the best deals by going directly. Going directly also allows you to negotiate to an extent, rather than just take the deal they have.
When you go in person, you can also have the phone the same day.
In my experience, the places at the mall who represent multiple companies are rip-offs, because they make their money on the sale of phones, so they will not cut you a deal.
I have found, though, that if I go in person to AT&T, Verizon, Singular, Sprint, etc., I find better deals.
Rural coverage is important to me, so I have always stuck with either BellSouth (what are they now? Singular?) or AT&T (which I have had for 5 or 6 years). If you look at a coverage map for any of the others, you will see that outside of big cities and along the interstates, they have huge empty areas. They have the cheapest minutes by far, but that is their drawback. If you don't travel and you live in one of their covered areas, you might not care. It sounds like maybe you live in the country, though, so you may want to think about avoiding a discount provider who might not have much service near you.
Look in the phone book for locations of dealers for all the big companies.
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The service guys in my office investigated the quality of signal and coverage of a lot of different cell phones for a long while and chose Verizon as being by far the best. Verizon also has the biggest network of all, and on these things I figured there would be a snowball effect, that the biggest would be the best and so continue to grow, etc.
I signed up for 2 years of basic service and got a free phone. Basic service cost me $39.99 a month plus $4.99 for total coverage and another $5 for fees and taxes and stuff. I've been very happy with my service, though I'm not sure how great my outgoing sound quality is. Incoming it seems to be fine. I get free long distance inside the 48 states, and unlimited minutes after 9pm and before, I think 6am. I get 400 minutes a month during peak times, and I've never used up my minutes yet. Also there are 1000 free minutes a month during peak times talking to any other Verizon user, which don't come out of my 400 minutes.
It's been great, cause I've been able to call friends every night and talk for hours if I want, with no extra charges. I'm sure you can probably find something cheaper than this but I thought I'd let you know what I have, just for comparison.
[ October 01, 2003, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Is the Verizon the one that used to be Bellsouth?
When I investigated coverage, a task I've repeated three or four times in recent years, I found that BellSouth (or whatever it is now) and AT&T had the fewest and smallest gaps. (You can simply ask each provider for a map of their coverage areas.) Doesn't mean that they have the best signal in any one particular place, though. For instance, cell reception in Celebration (::groans at the thought of the puns that line will evoke:: ) is lousy for all the major companies, though one of the smaller companies has a tower near here. I find the reception barely adequate when I'm around town; the only place I really can't use my cell phone is inside my house. Of course, inside my house I really don't need to . . .
I have Verizon and love them. They have the best customer service of any company (including non phone companies like Nordstrom) I have ever had to deal with. Personally I hate Sprint and wouldn't wish their customer service (and I use those two words loosely) on my enemies. Cricket works well if you are only going to use it locally. ATT and Cingular aresimilar to Verizon with not as good customer service, but may have a better plan for you.
I would love to help you out with what I know and have researched, but I need a bit more info.
First, how much are you willing to spend per month? $30 will get you a basic plan with few minutes in a local (statewide) area. $40 will get you a good share of minutes and possibly a national or regional calling area. $50 and above you can get whatever you want.
Second, Where will you be using your minutes the most? For most people, a local plan will work and then you can offset any roaming charges by your increased monthly minutes allowed. Personally, I have a plan that covers anywhere in the western US because I never travel back east and in the west there are more roaming areas that I don't have to worry about with a regional plan. However, I could have more minutes if I stuck with just a local plan.
Third, do you have any idea how many minutes per month you will be using this phone? Do you want free nights and weekends? Will this be used for a lot of long distance calls? How much do you usually talk on the phone?
With a bit more info from you I could do a better job of recommending something that would work well for you.
As was said before, going to the provider's store directly will give you the best deal. I wouldn't recommend radio shack personally.
Posts: 995 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Thanks again for the help. I think that was the most frustrating internet search I have ever done. If I was just willing to have it shipped, it would have worked. I could have found 100 free phones, picked the one I liked and had it shipped. Because my sister and I wanted to get one today, in one hour or less at lunch, it was rough. We ended up getting a nice $100 phone--a Sprint LG model 1200 PCS with 1100 anytime minutes, unlimited night or weekend minutes, long distance included, roaming extra.
Icarus was right, retailers are willing to dicker, probably because everybody and their dog are trying to hawk cell phones nowadays. The salesman gave a $50 instant rebate (instead of mail-in like the displays said) with a 1 year contract, and waived a $36 activation fee. And we didn't even negotiate hard. I'm sure part of that is that my little sister is so adorable.
One thing that was so frustrating in my 4+ hour search is that all of the local cellular service providers except I think one, maybe two were unwilling to link to local retailers. That's what I meant when I said "everybody wants to ship me a phone!" They didn't want me to leave their website. So I had to find local retailers, often link through to the subcontractors that actually sell the phone, see which providers they had, see if they covered Atlanta metro well. Repeat 30 times and it starts to wear on you. It became impossible to compare prices, rebates, coverage, plans, ...oh make it stop! I totally stressed out about it. At 11am I found myself scrolling through lists of car dealers intermingled with cell phone dealers and other crap I didn't need.
Ah, well, it was a learning experience. My advice to anyone looking for a cell phone is to get it shipped! Or if you want to get it locally, buy a newspaper and use the yellow pages. Otherwise you become overwhelmed by too much info as I just did.
But I have a tiny little cell phone! ::goes off to download annoying jingles::
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Because if I buy it locally, it cuts into profit margins. I'm reduced to the damn newspaper and online yellow pages.![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
