I’ve been putting off getting a cellphone for so long I had to make a New Year’s Resolution about it. So last night I finally joined the ranks of the phoned when I picked up my Samsung and signed a two-year contract at the Verizon kiosk in the mall. For $60 a month, I now have 700 daytime minutes, 1000 mobile-to-mobile, and unlimited night and weekends.
So it hits me as I’m walking out of the mall that 700 minutes is almost 12 hours. I don’t think I spend 12 hours on the phone in a year. Am I insane? No, this might actually be a good thing. It will force me to make some new friends and talk to the ones I have more often. I’ll be calling people up out of nowhere, people I haven’t seen in years. They’ll say “What’s up?” and I’ll respond “Oh, nothing. It’s just the last day of my billing cycle and… say, are you doing anything today? You wouldn’t mind talking to me for about 500 minutes, would you?”
My plan is 60 minutes with 250 evening/weekend minutes. I never come close to using all of them. Of course I HATE talking on the phone, I’d much rather visit in person.
Well, I’m planning on getting rid of my long-distance service on my home phone. I’m hoping that will offset some of the cost of this plan. If I would just stop being a cheapass and get the cable modem, I could get rid of my house phone once and for all.
"I thought she said, “bring home a monkey with a cold!”
Congrats on accomplishing your New Year’s Resolution just 3 days into 2003, cuauhtemoc! Best of luck with your Exciting New Space Age Communication System.
I want to get one, but being deaf, this is rather pointless. Therefore, I might take up a 7eleven ATT free2go phone, free after rebate, but you get unlimited free text incoming messages & $35 time credit…or least that was the idea until Jan 1st.
A “night” is 9PM to 6AM. What I liked was that it doesn’t matter what time it is where you’re calling to, only where you’re calling from. Like if I want to call somebody in California after 9PM I’ll be on unlimited weekend minutes even though it’s only 6PM there. It must suck for people on the West Coast though, because they’re not on unlimited minutes until it’s 9PM there, which means if they want to call somebody here it’ll be midnight already.
JoeyG, I think we have the same phone.
Kn*ckers, that’s not the only resolution I made. There are a few more that might be slightly harder to keep.
Be careful cuauhtemoc, 700 minutes will go faster than you think. Just remember that 1 second is a minute, and a minute and 1 second is two minutes…etc. Also try to find out if your phone counts time when it’s ringing. My old phone didn’t start timing the call until the person answered but my new one starts timing as soon as it starts ringing. This makes trying win radio contests…etc a bad idea eg 10 busy signals = 10 minutes used.
I knew two brothers that both got cell phones at the same time with multi hundred minute plans that they thought they could never used up and they both had $3,000+ bills at the end of the month.
$3000?!? :eek: Thanks for the admonition, Cisco, I’ll be careful. I’m new to the mobile phone experience, it will take some getting used to.
And yes, Opal, long distance is “free”, meaning that you can call 100 or 2000 miles away and it’s all included in the minutes, as long as you’re standing in an area serviced by Verizon when you call. I think I finally understand it, which is good because the reason I put off getting one for so long was that the plans were so confusing to me.
Might want to keep the landline. Some businesses that require contact information and are still trapped in the 20th century don’t feel comfortable with getting just a mobile number.