OK, in 5 days, I buy a new cell phone and get a new plan. I got my first cell phone 2 years ago, whilst being sucked into the ‘free cell phone’ thing at the stand in the mall. Everyone has told me how bad my plan sucked, but I couldn’t get out without paying a fee ($150.00) to Verizon and a $300.00 penalty to the folks who signed me up (I didn’t realize this till I read the contract back at home). But that time is almost up.
So, whose got the best phones and best plans??
Well first off, I would not put a deadline on starting a new service until you made sure you are going to be happy with the new cell provider. If you have to cancel your current plan in 5 days or re-up your contract then by all means cancel the plan. After some contracts expire you still have the same plan but you are free to cancel at anytime after (Check your contract wording). Just don’t rush into a new plan without checking all your options first. Isn’t that what got you into this mess in the first place?
Since you have been using a cell for two years you are familiar with the availability and service. If you are happy with Verizon you may want to see if they can offer you a deal (outside of the shack you signed up with) to keep you on board. I did this with Sprint (although I signed up at a Sprint store) after my contract was up and they gave me a sweet deal. They made me two or three offers to stay before I agreed. Even then I made them wait a few days for me to think it over.
If you want out of Verizon you should check with friends in your area that use other cell phones. Find out what they have and what they like and don’t like. Make sure you trust their opinion and they just don’t want to seem like they have a bad plan. For some reason some people don’t like to admit they made a mistake when it comes to cell phone plans. Probably because of the long commitment factor.
If you travel a lot check to see how the plan and phone work in other areas. With Sprint, for example, I can use my phone in Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas or LA and it only costs me minutes (as long as I am on the Sprint network) . I believe other companys offer this now too but I don’t know how their plans work,
Without knowing your calling habits and if you are into the new phone features (camera, internet, etc) it is hard to say what is best for you.
What times during the day do yo use it most? How many minutes a month do you usually use? Would you use it more with a better plan? Do you want text messaging ™? Are you charged per TM? Is unlimited TM included? There are many other questions as well you need to ask yourself…
Check the local papers as there are ads everyday with specials. With Xmas right around the corner there should be a big push to get your money.
Oh and don’t get lured by the “free phone” gimmick again. The reason they are free is usually because they are either outdated models or the calling plan really stinks. The plan/service is what should matter more. Check into the phones after you decided or narrowed your cell provider search.
Oh before I forget, if you can cancel your current plan at anytime after the contract expires you may want to hold on for a few weeks/months. I believe we will have the right/option to keep our cell phone numbers when we change service. I just don’t know when it comes into effect. It would be nice to not have to inform everyone that you have a new number.
Good luck.
According to Sprint’s website you can start tranferring you cell phone number on November 23rd. As usual ther are exceptions (your current carier has to agree, local transfer only, etc).
Here is the link from Sprint explaining their process. I would assume that the process is the similar for all carriers.
They call it “Local Number Portability” but I am not sure if that is the industry term or Sprint’s.
Maybe so, but I’d rather get a serviceable free phone than have to pay $50 for a new, fancy phone.
The two best overall plans are with AT&T and Verizon - they’ve got the best range of service. With AT&T, at least, sign up online for the free phone. It maybe be a bit outdated, but it’s better than paying $50 for a new fancy one, IMO. T-Mobile has horrible reception from what I’ve heard and Sprint isn’t bad, but it can get choppy outside of major metro centers.
My point was that the phone itself is secondary to the plan/service. Which is why I said “Check into the phones after you decided or narrowed your cell provider search.”. If you find a good free phone after you made your provider choice by all means take it. I just wouldn’t recommend having it as criteria for your decision making process.
To each his own I guess. I would rather invest $50-$100 dollars on a newer phone than have an outdated phone that I can’t use if I want to have (or later upgrade) service with internet, pictures etc. Or even worse a free serviceable phone with a crappy plan.
At the rate cell phone technology is going you are pretty much gettting an outdated phone when you buy it. There is always a better model coming out or dropping in price shortly after you make your choice. It all depends what you want to get out of your phone. I sitll know people geting use out of phones that are three or four years old but they are in the dark ages with all of the newer technologies.
Here is another link about Local Number Portability:
I got my first cell phone ever just last week. I did research, talked to cell reps, and decided that Cellular One was the way to go for me. In my case, I don’t plan to travel very far from my home city; when I do travel, I’ll be mostly staying in the Texas panhandle. Cellular One tends to have better coverage along little highways and in rural areas. Plus, they had some good promotions running, so I’ll have plenty of minutes to suit my needs.
Cingular, I did not like. The rollover minutes is nice, but I heard from many friends who hated their coverage. And of course there’s cost; I’m getting about 33% more minutes for the same cost with Cell One (on top of that, 200 bonus minutes the first three months). And there were other issues, like their “smart chips” which sound like a good idea but seem pretty fragile and easy to burn out (and thus a cash cow for Cingular). So, no Cingular for me.
Phonewise, I didn’t go for any extras. I needed a phone, not a PDA or a camera. So, I got what’s probably the bottom-end of their line these days, the Kyocera Phantom KE414. But, I dig it. The screen is greyscale but has a great backlight and looks very nice, the ringtones are distinctive, it’s very small and light so it’s easy to carry, and the sound quality is superb. That was my main consideration, actually; in general, the more extra features you add to your phone, the worse it becomes at actually being a phone.
So, less than a week in, I’m pretty happy overall. The above advice is valuable, though: look at plans first. Only when you’ve decided on a plan should you consider what kind of phone to get. The plan is paramount.
Some considerations, filtered through bias and bile.
There are two kinds of technology floating around in the U.S. One is “TDMA”, the other is “GSM”. TDMA doesn’t do cool stuff like let you take a picture and send it to your squeeze. GSM is in an early phase, which seems to be divided evenly between “It won’t work there because we don’t have a network” and “It won’t work there because we are sharing our tiny network with everybody else and it’s busy right now”. It’s kind of like having a VCR in the early '80’s when you could watch movies in the privacy of your own home but the only place you could rent them was a hardware store and they had a stock of 15. Given your location, you might be okay if you don’t travel.
Dealers lie. They lie like dogs in 145 degree heat. They lie reflexively, and don’t even notice they are doing it. If your plan sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Get a printed map of your coverage area, a printed definition of your rate plan, and call the customer service number if you’re going anywhere marginal so you don’t wind up with roaming charges. Then call it again, because about one in three reps can actually read a map.
If it doesn’t work to your liking, get out NOW! If you call me on Tuesday I can refund your activation fee, prorate your bill, tell you where to take the phone to return it, and let you know when you can expect to have the purchase price refunded. If you call me on Wednesday, I can explain that you have a new paperweight and owe us a couple of hundred dollars which can be paid now if you cancel or in installments if you just pull the battery and leave it in a drawer.
Make somebody explain the deal. They tell you it’s 1000 minutes. It’s probably 700 minutes in the plan plus 200 minutes in a promotion plus 100 more minutes in a special promotion, and somebody somewhere is going to screw up with putting all that together.
Dealers lie and independant dealers lie to a degree that makes regular dealers look like George Washington’s good twin. A deal that saves you $50.00 on a phone and costs you $150.00 if you want to return it, assuming they’re still in business, is no deal at all.
Prepaid. It’s not cool or hip, the per minute rates are higher, but you can’t get screwed out of any money you don’t put on the table.
Consider the freebies. At least once a day I deal with someone who’s just noticed that they have Feature X and are paying for it. They got it free for the first month, and never really noticed that they were paying for it. Feature X is given away because nobody in their right mind would want it.
The devil’s in the details. When they say 2500 Free Minutes, do they mean if you have the 2500 Free Minutes, and the person you’re calling has the 2500 Free Minutes, and you’re both in the same 2 square block area of the industrial district during a full moon, and that they charge each of you 2 minutes per minute? Chances are they do.
Manufacturers rebates are provided by the manufacturer, not the telco. If you don’t mail in the little card you are hosed, and your free phone suddenly costs a lot of money. Details.
Read your bill. It has important stuff on it, like the three months worth of warning notices that your special weekend minutes promotion is going to expire. Nothing makes the scum in the marketing department giggle more than knowing that at any given time somebody who’s been paying $49.95 every month because he makes most of his calls on weekends is just about to make a single call that will cost him $99.95 because he didn’t look at line 26 on page 3 of the bill.
“With a contract extension”. We don’t like to let go. Beware of telcos bearing gifts.
Keeping in mind point 11, when you finally hit the point where you can’t take it anymore, vent here, get calm, then call the customer service number. I can, if I am so minded, give you about a grand worth of the company’s money any time you call. So can anybody I work with. It’s amazing how much more often the people who don’t start off by refusing to speak to anyone lower than the CEO, or the people who don’t start off by suggesting biologically impossible obscenities be performed by the person answering the phone, get a chunk of that money. As much as it horrifies me to think it, given some of the people I work with, there is a lot of judgment involved at the front lines.
Did I mention that dealers lie?
Don’t hang up. I know, you’re tired and pissed off and you’re right, damnit, so you should just get the money back. The idiot you are talking to says she needs to talk to somebody else. She asks if you’ll hold. You agree. Five minutes later, you hang up.
Whoops. At least three times a night, I’ve just finished calming the rep down, trying to extract useful information, given up, reviewed the file myself, pointed out where the policies say you get the money back, told her how to find it, explained where she clicked wrong and how to find it again, read it to her, explained what all the long words mean, refreshed her basic math skills, and urged her to go back and tell you that you get the money back, assured her that I will hold on and walk her step by step through giving the money back only to hear that you’ve hung up.
Policy says she will call you back. I have some doubts about how often that happens.
Phones break, coverage changes, but plans are forever. I have a prepaid plan. I work in post-paid customer service. Yes, I’m a cynical misanthrope, but it might be worth keeping that in mind.
Having had mobile service in the Republic of Georgia and the Czech Republic, is there any provider in the US where you do not pay for incoming calls?
In the rest of the world, nobody with a mobile pays for people to call THEM.
That’s part of thing though. I’m told my plan sucks, because whoever I talk to says they get more minutes and whatnot. But I’ve always been able to make a call from wherever in the country I happen to be.
But I HATE the phone itself. I need a flip phone. I know, you’re supposed to be able to lock the key pad so it doesn’t dial numbers when you put it your pocket. But mine doesn’t lock. AND it turns itself on. I swear to GOD, I turn the damn thing off, come back 8 hours later and thing is on and draining the battery…
Verizon said I could change phones during my 2 year contract for a modest fee. But Verizon and I define ‘modest’ quite differently.
All I want is flip phone. I don’t need to play games or take pictures or any of that.
If you get a phone without checking www.virginmobileusa.com you deserve what you get, I have no contract, no bills come in the mail, no roaming charges, free long distance and better reception than most AND my phone bill runs about $10.00 - $12.00 A MONTH!.
unclviny
Hey now, don’t leave out CDMA. I believe it’s the most common technology in the US since Sprint, Verizon, and Alltel all use it, and IMO it’s technically superior to the others. It provides better coverage in weak areas because it can contact more than one tower at a time, and it’s much harder to eavesdrop on a CDMA call than a GSM call. With 1xRTT (high speed data) you can send pictures and whatnot over CDMA, and connect to the internet at twice the speed of a modem.
There’s also iDEN, which Nextel uses. I think it’s similar to TDMA.
I got a Nokia 6800 free this past August from AT&T with my plan. (special offer… but it’s still a far from out of date phone) I pay about $60 a month for 300 anytime minutes, unlimited night and weekend minutes for life, 100 outgoing text messages/unlimited incoming, 1 MB of data service, taxes, fees, and – this is important here – calling to and from Canada out of my regular minutes. For me, that was what did it. When you’re calling internationally every night, savings are important. I actually think it’s cheaper for me to have this plan than it would be to have no cell phone and by phone cards.
I looked at the website. What concerns me is the coverage area. They say up front that there are areas where the phone is not going to work.
That really gives me pause…
As a Verizon customer who’s considering switching, hear are some thoughts:
If you’re on Verizon and you want to change your plan, you can do so at any time. The catch is that if you take a plan with promotions (unlimited nights and weekends, 1000 mobile-to-mobile, etc), you reset your contract date.
If you’re going to switch carriers, at this point I would suggest waiting until after the 24th so you can take your number with you.
If you switch, you’ll have a return period (usually 14 days) to return the phone and cancel service if you’re not satisfied. Try the phone in as many places as you can in that time. If the carrier has crappy coverage in your usual haunts, find another one.
if bluetooth is important to you, you’ll want to look to the GSM carriers: T-Mobile, AT&T, and Cingular
Amazon.com carries AT&T and T-Mobile phones and usually (but not always) offers better deals than the company stores/website.
Phonescoop is a great resource for phone info.
HowardForums is a good source to see what others think of various carriers and phones.