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Photo Credit: Ramit Sethi
So I’m trying to optimize our cell phone bill based on reading Ramit’s post on lowering cell phone expenses.
I was going to see if I could downgrade our plan since we have 8,000 rollover minutes accumulated, but that would lead to us losing those minutes. AT&T’s policy:
The following conditions would cause you to forfeit your Rollover minutes:
Changing to a new Rollover plan where your existing Rollover balance exceeds the Anytime minutes of the new plan. Only minutes in excess of the Anytime minutes in the new plan are forfeited. This will take effect at the end of the billing cycle.
My husband talked to a representative of AT&T wireless to see if we can get a discount and to see if they’ll offer an Android phone in the near future. Starting with our next bill we’ll see a discount of 8%. As for the Android, no comment can be at this time. For now we’ll stay with AT&T, but I’m looking into T-Mobile as another option.
We’re going to see if anyone we know uses them and how they feel about their customer service and reception. If we get a T-Mobile family plan with my favs include, we may be able to save $15/month, but it won’t be worth it if service is shoddy.
At the very least, we saved 8%, that’s $87 for the year with little effort.
Does anybody have any suggestions (either for or against) on cell phone providers?
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We were long-time T-Mobile (from Voicestream days) customers and switched to AT&T because we wanted iPhones. Coverage in the US is better on AT&T, although lack of any coverage wasn’t a huge problem on T-Mobile because of roaming carriers for voice. AT&T is VASTLY better for advanced features coverage and years ahead of T-Mobile for 3G coverage. So it depends on what is important. If it is just voice calling, T-Mobile is fine. If you want SMS texting, still not bad but I found spots where roaming carriers didn’t support it. If you want advanced digital features and data, check the T-Mobile coverage maps for your areas of interest very carefully.
Android has some interesting potential. I’m not giving up my iPhone 3G for it, though. May give up my work BlackBerry for it if I can get work and other stuff all to co-exist on the iPhone (now technically possible and allowed by my work). I’d love to only have one device. BlackBerry is also on AT&T through work corporate plan and has outstanding coverage – way better than I ever had with Treo on T-Mobile.
Check out Lee Hermans last blog post..Vote for Obama
Thanks Lee for your feedback on T-Mobile and AT&T. Our reception in NC by our apt hasn’t been great and we were looking at T-Mobile. Guess we might use Skype for making calls in the apt.
I have the iPhone as well. When reading the cell phone post I looked at my plan (again) but I actually cut expenses on my cell plan about a month ago when AT&T screwed up my bill by not putting the iphone data plan on my iphone!!! It doubled my cell phone bill!!
I thought about T-Mobile (before the iphone) because I think you can use your phone in a WiFi and not use min! I thought that was WAY cool and it would cut down on the number of mins used. At least for me because I have wiFi in my home and at work.
Check out Joes last blog post..Poem
I should mention that the 8% discount is because of a deal with AT&T and the company I work for and not my suave negotiating ability with sales reps.
As for iPhone vs Android, I’m disappointed with the lock-in with the iPhone and the hit-or-miss developer support (e.g., developers having apps they worked hard on rejected for reasons they couldn’t have known about when they started). Android looks like a much more enticing platform to develop applications for, from my perspective. But most end-users probably don’t care about that right now.
Anyway, the AT&T rep said that the company is “in talks” with other companies about Android phones. My guess is that they will get Android phones eventually, but I’m not sure if I want to wait however long it’s going to be.
Maybe another mobile carrier will pick up the Android platform. However, it looks like Verizon is going to pick up Alltel (the FCC just approved it) and I left Verizon for a reason, so that leaves.. um.. Sprint? On the other hand, Verizon will have to honor the “open access” clause of the spectrum it bought last year, which may be useful once more Android phones come out.
But I ramble. Basically, I want to wait and see, but I don’t want to wait, y’know?
You left a comment after I went to bed?! LOL, I love you!
[...] AT&T Wireless: Can’t Quite Optimize, May Leave for T-Mobile [...]