BAMF

First,
I am looking to get a bank loan and purchase a used car.
I do not live pay-check to pay-check, but my bank account is not growing.

I looked at my bills, and my 2 year phone contract cost me ~$1,248 ($39.99/mo plan from verizon, actual bill is ~$52/mo due to taxes/fees)

So I am looking to go to one of the pay as you go plans since w/o a contract I would have more flexibility of my money month to month.

T-Mobile on a $100 perpaid card gets me 1000 minutes ($0.10 per min).
Cingular & Verizon - $0.25 per minute or $1 daily access fee and $0.10 per minute (the $1 is charged once a day if my phone is used that day).

I am leaning towards T-mobile now, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with any of these plans or know of any other wireless phone companies.

BAMF

And alltel
So the list is:
Cingular
Verizon
T-Mobile
alltel
Quest (only in the west I think)


I looked at alltels sight, but it looked like it took some work to find the cost

thingstodo

It all depends on a few things:

- quality of service; dropped calls, etc.
- how much do you use it? You're still paying the same fees on a prepaid plan and probably a higher rate/minute.

I'll bet you're wasting money on other things you don't recognize. Try keeping a spending log. You may be very surprised. A few coke or bottles of water from a convenience store add up. I used to buy a bottle of water on my way to work each day at a buck+ a pop and refill it during the day. Now I purchase by the case and leave it by the back door. A $25/month expense went to abiout $3 when I buy the 35 pack. That's $264/year!! On bottled water...

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Stangers have the best candy.

kutulu

OT, but how about instead of buying bottles, just buy one gallon and refill it at a water store? One gallon equals about 9 bottles and it's only a quarter to fill it!

JumpinJesus

BAMF,

I'm not sure which services you've used in the past, but from my experience, Cingular is by far one of the absolute worst out there. I rarely ever was able to complete a conversation with anyone without losing the call. Verizon isn't bad, but I think it could be better.

From what I've heard and read, T-Mobile and US Cellular are supposed to be the best two.

Of course, I also think your location plays a part in how good service will be. For example, US Cellular seems to be rated the best in Chicago, but T-Mobile seems to do better in other locations.

The only ones I can say I will never, ever, EVER do business with again are AT&T and Cingular.

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

MooseMan3000

Wrong on all counts.

First things first: prepaid phones blow.

Reason #1: no roaming. You can ONLY use your phone company's towers, which means your coverage will NEVER match that of a contract phone. T-Mobile prepaid phones use T-Mobile towers ONLY. Go Phones use Cingular towers ONLY. With a contract phone, you can roam on other companies' towers, usually at no extra cost to you (unless you go with a regional plan, which is generally a bad move).

Reason #2: They're more expensive. With no free nights and weekends on MOST plans (some of the Verizon InPulse have free nights, some of the Cingular Go Phone have free nights and weekends/free Cingular to Cingular calling), you are using minutes every time you call someone and every time someone calls you. Cheapest you can possibly get is $.10/minute. The MOST EXPENSIVE contract phone you can get works out to less than $.09 a minute, plus you get free nights and weekends, and free in-network calling. If you use the phone more than about 5 minutes a day (that's five calls, even if they only last 3 seconds each - prepaid rounds up), prepay is more expensive than contract.

Reason #3: Shitty phones (usually). For the most part, a prepaid phone is one that never sold well on a contract. So companies had a bunch leftover in their warehouses, so they converted them over to prepay. You pay more for an old phone that was never very good to begin with only so that you can get raped with the minutes.

Reason #4: Bad customer support. If you don't have a contract, you get pushed over to the most retarded, inept customer service department in existence. Talking to Cingular customer support and Go Phone customer support is night and day. If you have a broken prepay phone, good luck getting any help with it.


As far as the companies go:

T-Mobile is rated the best because it gets you the most minutes for the money. On most of their high-minute plans, however, you don't get free nights and weekends, and they often charge long distance. Furthermore, their coverage is the worst of the bunch. Of course, with a contract phone, you can use other companies' towers, so this is sort of a moot point. On a prepay however, watch out.

US Cellular: Smaller carrier. Again, more minutes for the money, but your coverage suffers. Many of the plans you get through US Cellular are regional plans, which means if you ever call long distance, or if you ever travel (like, out of your county), you get raped in the ass with roaming charges. Hell, sometimes even when you roam within your home area you get roaming charges. Definitely not a good choice.

Verizon: Right now, the best coverage out there in most places. So what do they do about it? They advertise over and over and over that they have the best coverage, but they don't ever do anything to defend that title. Example: Last year in Maine, Cingular built 9 towers. In the past two years, Verizon has built two. In Maine, Cingular already had better coverage. Now it's even betterer. Now that Cingular has all of the former AT&T towers, they're in the process of converting them from TDMA over to GSM, as well as building new ones where AT&T had the rights to build, and their coverage is getting better daily. On the plus side, Verizon sells mostly national plans, so there's no roaming anywhere, as well as free long distance. One of the best carriers.

Cingular: Identical rate plans to Verizon, except they have the rollover minutes. Any unused minutes go over to your next month, and they don't expire. Free Cingular to Cingular calling, and since they are now the biggest wireless company (54 million - 1 in 6 Americans, roughly), chances are that's a good deal of free calling. Their plans are also national plans, which means no roaming anywhere on the network, no long distance charges, etc. Cingular has also made a special effort to make sure that ALL of their roaming partners have upgraded towers. What does that mean for you? Where ever you can use the phone, you can use ALL the features of that phone. With other carriers, you can usually make a call when you're roaming, but you often can't check voice mail, you can't go online, you can't use many of the carrier-specific features. Again, this isn't true always, but with Cingular you can always use all the features.



Next part of the equation: GSM/CDMA? I'm going to leave out iDen and TDMA for now, because they sort of suck. Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular: CDMA. Cingular, T-Mobile: GSM. Alltell: I don't know, because we don't have them here.

What's the difference? The most relevant difference is that GSM is a more popular technology worldwide. With the notable exception of China, just about everywhere else in the world uses GSM. This means that your quad band Cingular or T-Mobile phone will work in most places in Europe, in Japan, in most places in the Middle East, right when you step off the plane.

This ALSO means that, because there's a larger market, cell phone manufacturers (Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, etc) make phones for GSM first. I'm sure you're familiar with the RAZR. Cingular's flagship phone for a year or so now. T-Mobile's had it just as long. Verizon and US Cellular got it a month ago, because Motorola just got around to converting it over to a CDMA phone. GSM companies almost always have the newest technology.

The other notable part of the technology: SIM cards. In a GSM phone, all your account information is stored in a small flash media card, called a SIM card or Smart Chip (depending on who you ask). What does this mean for you? If your phone breaks and you need to replace it, all you do is take the SIM card out and put it in the new phone. No programming required. You have your phone book, address book, and account information all already in the new phone. CDMA phones are identified by ESNs, which means that you need to program your phone specifically to work with the network (which, with many carriers *cough Sprint/Verizon, cough*) extends your contract another two years every time you do it. Verizon also charges you $20 just to switch it out. Also, you have to transfer all your contact info manually.


So I think you can probably figure out which company I have my phone with. And you can probably also tell that I sell phones for a living. Heh.


JumpinJesus: As far as your experience with Cingular goes, I'm sorry to hear that, but I've had none of the same problems you have. The only person I know that drops calls with them only drops them because he has a bad phone. The software version in his phone is simply incompatable for whatever reason, and he loses his connection regularly. I can make calls with no trouble everywhere he drops them, so it's not the network.

Then, as far as T-Mobile being one of the best, with Cingular being one of the worst, if you read my explanation of roaming, you'll know that's simply not possible. On a contract phone, they roam on each other's towers in most places, so the coverage should be identical.



If you have to go prepaid, go with Go Phone. It's sort of a toss up between Verizon InPulse and Cingular Go Phone, but I think Go Phone wins.

Coverage will be very similar, with Verizon winning by a very small margin.

Plans look similar at first: $1/day connection fee, $.10 a minute.

The differences? Verizon charges you that dollar a day no matter what (even when you don't use the phone), Cingular only charges it on days when calls are made or received. With Verizon, you get free nights. (Not free weekends, mind you.) With Cingular, you get free Cingular to Cingular calling. Sort of a trade off there.

With both of them, the phones suck, for the reason I explained above. But Cingular has SIM cards, which makes changing phones a breeze.

Don't go with any other prepay - the coverage will bite you in the ass.

The only prepay phone that gets better coverage than Cingular or Verizon is TracFone. The reason? TracFone has no towers. So instead, they rent every other companies' towers. This means that their phones will work in more places than other prepay options, but you also pay for it. The best POSSIBLE rate you can get with them is $.10/minute, but that's only if you buy the $80 card, and you have the $130 double minute card. Plus, their customer service is the absolute worst, bar none. I swear, there's one guy named Raul who I get every time I call. I'm pretty sure he's the only one that works there.


So I think I've flooded you with enough information for now. If you have any more questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

JumpinJesus

Mooseman,

Yeah, I must definitely concede that your knowledge far surpasses mine. My information was entirely anecdotal, as well.

It's interesting that you mentioned a bad phone. The reason I say this is because we originally had AT&T Wireless. We live in a high rise which causes its own problems, but we never had a problem when outside. Then, when Cingular bought them out and our service switched over, our service went downhill. We were getting our calls dropped anywhere, anytime. The irony was that Cingular placed a billboard right outside our window advertising their "Raising the Bar."

What caused us to switch service, though, and where most of my beef with Cingular originates, is when we tried to contact customer service. Each time we spoke with them, they seemed entirely unconcerned with our problems. It was the indifference with which we were treated that caused the bitterness.

Your post clarified a lot for me, though.

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MooseMan3000

JumpinJesus,

Chances are that when you were on AT&T, you had one of the old TDMA phones. Coverage was pretty abysmal for that to begin with, since they were pretty much the only major TDMA carrier left.

That doesn't, of course, explain the customer service problem. Bad customer service is definitely a problem I haven't had with them before. A major part of my job consists of dealing with various wireless companies' customer service departments for any number of issues, and from what I've seen (and heard from others in the business), Cingular is head and shoulders above the rest. The very fact that 95% of the time you get someone who speaks English puts them ahead of the pack, and even then they tend to be the most helpful. They know more about their systems than most, and they're more willing to help you out.

Maybe the problem you had was tied to the AT&T/Cingular switchover? I'm not really sure.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Cingular. They're just one of various companies that pay me to sell their phones, which means I need to know the field.

Glory's Sun

Alltel is CDMA. They just got the Razor about 2 months ago and they got the PPC-600 around the same time. I enjoy the coverage I get with Alltel although in one spot US Cellular hits better. Alltel has pretty good support but they don't really compete with Verizon and T-Mobile for minutes/$. Verizon is set to launch in this area very soon so I may be switching over, not because I'm unhappy with Alltel but I'd like to have newer technology faster.

I've had Sprint, and I hated them.. in fact I still hate them. Dropped calls constantly.. and this was in a highly saturated tower area.. maybe that was the issue? :shrug:

I've also had AT&T, but got rid of them before they switched, so then I went to SunComm.. way too pricey. I was with Cingular for a while, will never go back. Why? I hated their service. They constantly fucked up my bill and tried to blame it on me. I paid their ETF and told em to shove it.

The only problem I have with Alltel is they sometimes add a few bucks for hidden charges. They are alot better than they used to be though. I'd say that if you're in a Verizon area, go with Verizon.

BTW, I have a national plan with Alltel that has something like 1000 minutes for $59.99/month with voicemail, 750 text messages, picture, video, internet, free nights and weekends and more. It's not too bad but their text messaging packages suck the fat one.

BAMF

So your $59.99/mo alltel plan translate to what actual monthly amount?

My $39.99/mo Verizon = $52/mo, as mentioned. I was wondering if the $12 dollar markup was typical.

I think I am leaning to a contract now instead, but I am only going to do yearly contracts instead of 2+ years.

Thanks for all the info so far. I think it would have been too difficult for me to digest web-marketing on each site.

shortynickel

Funny thing is AT&T owns Cingular now due to a merger/buyout with BellSouth.

I had Cingular for a while and I talked my way out of my contract that would have ended this year but I thought they got worse from 04 to 05. I now have Verizon for 2 reasons: 1)The inlaws have them and they havent had any problems with them and 2) I cant get T-mobile cause their website says that according to my zip code they dont have service for me but I know that they do.

If you can get T-mobile, I would go with them.

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Glory's Sun

I'm not sure what the actual amount is. I let the company pay my bill so I'll have to really check on it for you. Sometimes you can get away without any contract and have the same pricing on the plan you just pay more for the phone you want. I did that with sprint back when I had them. Not sure if you can still do that though.

Back to the bill, I think the plan is rated at $59.99 but I pay about $65 on the actual check. My girlfriend has a $59.99 bill and only pays $59.99 but she isn't nationwide and has other limitations. I'll do some more checking for you and let you know.

As far as T-mobile goes, I'm not a fan of their phone technology at all. The Sidekick II is a piece of shit tbh.

thingstodo

The actual service from area to area will differ. I travel all over and since I've had Verizon for the past 1.5 years I had had one - count it - one dropped call.

Taxes add to the cost of any plan and can easily be $10-15, none of which is the phone company, it's all government. Hell, we're still paying a communications tax that originally financed the Spanish-American war!!

Oh, over the course of 2 years a 2-year agreement is less expensive. And Verizon does transfer your contact info on the spot.

By the way, I had AT&T and also went through their merger. AT&T was goo din FL but sucked everywhere else. I dumped them and my wife's phone for Verizon. I also know about 20 other poeple that did the same thing and are happy with it. In fact, a Verizon phone was the only one that worked during the midwest/NE blackout several years ago.

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If you're wringing your hands you can't roll up your shirt sleeves.

Stangers have the best candy.

xepherys

BAMF-

I primarily agree with MooseMan3000 and his lengthy bit of info. Personally, pre-paid phones are a generally bad thing unless you HAVE to. If so, his assessment was good... and also stay FAR away from TracFone.

As for carriers, while CDMA is not as high-tech, I still recommend Verizon. I've used T-Mobile ant AT&T and both had terrible call quality across the nation, and AT&T had the worst customer service ever (even worse than Sprint). I have Sprint for work and it's okay... but it's JUST okay. I use Verizon for my personal plan now and have been VERY pleased. No dropped calls, great quality, great customer service, good selection of phones. They also have high-speed cellular PCMCIA cards for laptops that are reasonably priced AND are truly highish speed.

As for the price markup, it appears to be relatively fixed. My plan is $98.96/mo (discount plan through employer) and I actually PAY (with taxes and fees) $117.18. It's the same everywhere, more or less. In the long run it's worth it to have reliable service.