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I am thinking about getting one again. I had one last year for a few months with Boost mobile (what a joke), on a month-to-month plan , but I let it go. Who has a good plan that they like? I live in a rural area, so I need good coverage. This girl I'm talking to wants to send me pr0n on my phone. Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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Best adice is to get the same service of who ever you talk to the most, since most companines give you free minutes in network. They all seem to cost about the same these days anyways. I think Cingular is best for giving free phones for signing up, and I love their rollover minutes. Cingular and Verizon I think offer the best coverage.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I keep seeing commercials for Alltel, which seem like they have the best deal out there, but then, you can't trust commmercials. Anyone try this service?
I use T-Mobile. It gets one of the best plans out there if you don't use your phone much, but I have noticed that when I go out into BFE I don't get very good service.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I have a Verizon cell phone, and it's the only phone I have. I live in Philadelphia and have family in both Connecticut and Illinois, so it's just more convenient that I can call long distance without thinking about it.
I get great service from it, except when I'm in the subway.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I use T-Mobile. I'm not particularly attached to their service, although I have no complaints, but I also live in an urban area (Seattle) where more or less everyone gets good coverage.
I use a pre-pay plan, because I rarely ever use my cell phone and don't see the point in paying $39.99 a month plus fees for ~100 minutes a month of use. This way, I pay $50 for 500 minutes, and it lasts me 4-5 months. $10-$12/month for cell service makes me happy. Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I use Alltel, and have for about a year. Most everyone I know in my part of the state also uses Alltel, because they have the best reception in our area (at least that was true a year ago, I don't keep up on things like that).
Be careful what plan you get, Pre-Pay seems the best way to go to me. Also beware of roaming charges, when I was in California I got crushed with charges, something like $4 just to connect to someone in Michigan (home state).
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: I use T-Mobile. I'm not particularly attached to their service, although I have no complaints, but I also live in an urban area (Seattle) where more or less everyone gets good coverage.
I use a pre-pay plan, because I rarely ever use my cell phone and don't see the point in paying $39.99 a month plus fees for ~100 minutes a month of use. This way, I pay $50 for 500 minutes, and it lasts me 4-5 months. $10-$12/month for cell service makes me happy.
I've been considering to switching to such a plan. I was paying almost $80 a month for my cell phone, then realized I didn't need basically ANY of the extras I was paying for, so I got rid of them all and reduced my bill to $50. I get 500 anytime minutes, and 5000 nights and weekends, and my anytime minutes get rolled over. I have like 4000 rollover minutes, since I never come close to using all my minutes during any given month.
I wish my bill was like 10 dollars less, but I don't want to get caught somewhere with insufficient service. Cingular is the "all over network." I'll test that out during my road trip down south this August.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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It's almost always better pricewise to get a contract over pay-as-you-go(unless you really NEVER use the phone). I finally convinced the rest of my family to get cellphones, so now we're all on the same family plan and we got rid of our landline. The price is great at 100 bucks a month for 4 of us, and all of the phones were free. Cingular's got great customer service/support, too if anything goes wrong.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I have Cingular. The rollover minutes are great. and the service is decent. My phone sucks (I have a RAZR, and I'm trying really, really hard to get rid of it). The only issue I'm having is with the cost of text messaging. My boyfriend and I text message each other a LOT. A whole, whole lot. We have to pay for data packages as a result, so that part sucks, and we've been considering switching to a provider that has unlimited texts/multimedia messages to other phones on the same service.
But if you'll only be using it as a phone, that won't matter.
quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: It's almost always better pricewise to get a contract over pay-as-you-go(unless you really NEVER use the phone).
The price per minute, even when comparing the top tier prepay to the bottom tier monthly, is always in favor of contracts. The only people who really benefit from prepay are people like me, who use wouldn't use enough minutes to make monthly plans worth it, or people who for whatever reason cannot be in a contract (visitors, people who move a lot, people who are planning an extended international vacation, people with bad credit, people who use their phones for illegal business).
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I have Verizon. Everyone I talk to on a regular basis has Verizon. I'm also on a family plan. Verizon has the best service in both the area my family lives in in Hawaii and the area I live in here.
I agree with Stephan's advice.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I've got Cingular and have had it for a few years now. I like it a lot - I rarely don't get coverage and the plan I'm on is decent. My sister and I are considering switching up to a "family plan" this summer, but that may or may not happen. Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I was one of the last holdouts, and I used to consider this a point of pride.
A cell phone immediately doubled the complications of my life, but -- if finances are to believed and linked causatively -- it tripled my productivity.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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We only have a pay as you go phone for emergencies and it works just fine for us. We don't feel any desire or need to be on call 24-7 and neither of our jobs requires it, but it is nice to have something just in case. Yeah, it's 25 cents a minute but as we maybe use 10 minutes a month (liberally), it's a ton cheaper than any cell phone plan.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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What Celaeno said. But with Kansas instead of Hawaii.
I got my first cell phone in 1998. Just two years prior to that I'd made fun of a friend of mine for getting one, scoffingly asking him what he could possibly need it for. After my car burst into flames on the turnpike on the way to a job interview, though, I suddenly saw the wisdom in carrying one. Would have come in really handy to have been able to call for help in that situation.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Back in 1998 I was the only person in my junior high class who didn't have a cellphone. I still have massive traumas because of that.
I did get a cell phone the following year. But it was my Dad's old one, and an ancient model at that.
It's amazing how much less and less I'm using my cell phone as I've gotten older, though. I mean, these days I mainly use it for important and necessary stuff, such as making calls. Incredible! (My phone bills have also decreased year by year...)
Posts: 247 | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote: Back in 1998 I was the only person in my junior high class who didn't have a cellphone. I still have massive traumas because of that.
Hahaha <gasp> Hee hee hee
Junior high. And I remember how I laughed at "Clueless" when all those kids had phones in class. I was ... 30? - when I got my first.
I resisted getting one too, because I didn't want people to be able to reach me everywhere. I finally got one when my first son went to Kindergarten - I did want the school to be able to reach me.
As it turns out the only person who ever calls my cell is hubby, which I'm pretty happy about. It has added to my life instead of taking from it - I can now talk to him whenever, but I don't get "other" calls on it. And I do feel reassured to have it in an emergency.
We have a pay-as-you-go plan too, since I use it so little.
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I had one for a little while when I was 16...my parents gave me a cell phone so that I could call for help if my car broke down.
That stopped when I turned 17, and then I was lost and alone and cell-less for a year, until my 18th birthday, when I marched into a Sprint store and signed me a contract.
Except Sprint sucks, so when that contract ran out (it was only one year), I switched to Cingular.
The coverage we get with Verizon is great--much better than Cingular in our area (in fact, the Verizon salesman showed me--after I had already decided to switch--a letter from Cingular to a local customer asking them to cancel their service, since it was costing Cingular too much to support them on leased towers!)
The cost, though, was a little steep:
For a family of 4 (4 lines), ignoring all physical phone costs, was $560 for the first month, and $740 for the second month.
Yeah, they screwed it up, royally! It took me about a dozen phone calls, two return visits to the "store," and about 3 hours on the phone to (knock on wood) get it straightened out. I did get a bunch of credits, though, for things like activation fees.
I think (still not quite sure, as I've never gotten a "correct" bill from these guys yet) that it will wind up ruinning us $130/month for all 4 of us, with all taxes and fees and what-not. That's high...but acceptable.
Oh, and my 15 year old son had signed up for "free" ringtones--which were costing us $9.99/month for the service, and over $50/month in excess text message fees. I called the ringtone company, and cancelled (I accused them--correctly--of entering into an illegal contract with a minor). I also called Verizon to confirm,. and got all the excess text message fees credited, as well as all the monthly fees. Same ploy on my part--they were assisting a third party in entering into an illegal contract with a minor.
Who knows--I may even get reimbursed twice for the monthly fees--once from the Ringtone company, and again from Verizon!
Then I blocked all non-phone access to my son's phone (no Internet, no videos, no ringtones, no downloads, etc.)
BTW, when the ringtone company said that they were within their rights to enter into the contract with my son, they said, "He's supposed to get your permission, so we take his agreement with our terms as representing your agreement." To which I answered, "He's still a minor. You don't need to get his permission. You need to get mine. Now, if you can show me where he falsely represented himself as being of majority age, I'll back off. but otherwise..."
Maybe this will help some of the other parents out there...
And the Treo...got to have it! A very robust (OS-wise) Palm Pilot, and a phone...and great "integration"!!!
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Hahaha <gasp> Hee hee hee 
