S/O cell phone thread: what's your plan?

[boogiemomz]

we have verizon and hate it. DH and i have a family plan: 2 basic cell phones (not BBs or iPhones, but plain, boring motorola phones) with minimal plans and we pay almost $130/month. this seems outrageous to me and we both get angry every time we get a bill. i haven't been on a contract in many months (have been month to month) and his contract will be up soon. thinking about switching... if you love your cellular plan (or if it's at least better than mine), what is it? what are the perks?

[JBaxter]

I have the Sprint 450 everything data plan for my blackberry 69.99 + all the taxes Because sprint went to the cell to cell number I dropped my minutes down from the 900 everything data plan. Calls made after 7pm also do not use my minutes. I can call any cell number and it dowsnt take away from my minutes

Ive had sprint for 7 of the 9yrs Ive owned a cell phone. Ive never had an issue and my coverage/ service has been great. I had At&T for one year and it SO SUCKED.

[bcafe]

We have have our plan through Tmobile. It is for 3 phones, Favorite 5 numbers are no charge, 1800 minutes, free cell to cell on Tmobile phones, and unlimited texting. Our teenagers use texting more than they use talking minutes. It is $130 w/taxes. I probably could lower the talking minutes but they are a "safety net" for me as the kids are in college. I should add that we don't have a land line, so my cell is the main phone.

[wencit]

$130/month for Verizon for a plan you describe sounds high. I'm not sure of our exact plan, but DH and I have about 400? anytime minutes and pay about $60/month. We are also on Verizon and have the cheapest phones -- basically the ones that came free by signing up with a 2-year contract. No texting minutes on our plan, either. I think we do have some kind of perk that we can list up to 10 phone numbers that are free to dial, and Verizon-to-Verizon calls are free, too.

We've been with Verizon for a few years now and have been very happy with them. At least in our area, the quality is much, much better than their closest competitor, AT&T. We were with AT&T for a little while and were constantly dropping calls before DH and I realized, why are we paying for a service when that service doesn't even work for us?! Now we pay slightly more for Verizon (but not $130/month more!) and have been pretty satisfied -- very rarely do we have dropped calls. I wish the iPhone would work with Verizon!

[boogiemomz]

SO... i just called verizon to see if they could help me find a cheaper plan. the only thing the guy came up with was to add 250 text msgs to my phone for $5/month to avoid texting overages. DH already has this on his line and i thought i did too, but apparently i didn't. SO... that will save me a whopping $5-10/month. i told the guy that i would be shopping around with other companies, because even with the $122/month bill that this change will get me, that is TOO MUCH to pay for two very basic, simple cell phones. and he said, yeah, too bad we can't offer you anything else. are you kidding me???? this seems so absurd. we have 1400 minutes/month, in order to get our friends and family 10 numbers unlimited, free, because they don't offer F&F for lower plans than this. otherwise we could get less minutes. SO FRUSTRATED! and SO not looking forward to shopping around w/ other companies but i know they think they can abuse their customers because it is just easier to pay the outrageous amount than it is to go find a better deal and make the switch. but i'm going to do it. eventually. :32:

[codex57]

Original Sprint SERO plan. $30/mo for 450 minutes, nights starting at 7pm, unlimited data and unlimited texting. Yes, you read that right.

Since these are such awesome plans, if you look on eBay, you can see people selling them. You're a bit limited on which phones can be on SERO, but the savings can be worth it. Particularly if you're not a phone geek. I use a Blackberry 8830 Curve, altho my BIL just added the newer Blackberries onto his SERO plan. Basically, you can't get the newest and greatest phones, except for Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones (so far, we'll see if they start excluding WinMo phones once WinMo 7 comes out).

[aa2mama]

How many anytime minutes do you have on your plan? How many do you actually use per month? DH & I have our plan through Verizon and have been happy with them. We started out with 1400 anytime minutes and lowered it to 700 minutes because we never came close to using them up. Does your DH's employer (or yours if you work) get a discount with any cell providers? I get an 18% discount for Verizon and even with 500txts/mo on both lines($10mo/per line), our bill still comes out to $89. US Cellular is the only other provider that I would consider in our location. Sprint and AT&T coverage sucks here.

[JBaxter]

I like best buy. They have several different carriers there and you can compare right on the spot. Check them out.

[AnnieW625]

Lets see DH and I haver Verizon and we've had our current plan since 2005 (and been with Verizon since 2002). We share 700 anytime minutes (I think that's base talking plan they are currently offering) and have unlimited mobile to mobile minutes, and unlimited night and weekend minutes. I get a 15% discount from my work so my bill for the two phones is somewhere between $66 and $68. I don't text so I don't have the texting plan so if I spend an extra $2 a month on texts that people send me I don't get all mad or anything. We've been out of contract since 2007 and are still using the same phones from 2005. We are techie simpletons.

Most of our friends and family have Verizon for cell so that's why we still have them because if we call our friends on our cell phone then it's considered mobile to mobile minutes. Also unless you guys talk on the phone a lot and don't have a land line you may not need the unlimted minutes for 10 people esp. if they already have Verizon as their cell service because I believe you should have mobile to mobile minutes included in your original plan (I am not sure if Verizon as home service counts for that too; we've only used 36 minutes so far on this billing cycle!)

The sales people at Verizon work on commission (I believe) so they want you to buy the most expensive plan that you want because they get more money for it. I would renew online. I would just type in your zip code and find what plans are available in your area. You can easily get two phones with 250 text message plus 700 shared minutes for about $80 to $90 a month (based on $10 text fees+$69 base and then taxes). Here is the link:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/planfamily.jsp

I would also use this link to see if either your employer or DH's employer has a corporate discount plan too (I am not 100% sure this is the right site, but I think if you are on verizonwirless.com and you click on business you can get to the same link; my site is connected to my discount plan):
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/ecpd/ryl?execution=e2s1

[Karenn]

We just switched from T-mobile to Verizon. T-Mobil was cheaper and better in a lot of ways, except for the fact that there's no coverage at our home. All of the carriers I looked at had coverage maps and Verizon was the only carrier that had coverage in our neighborhood. We live in fairly close in suburbs too, it's not like we're out in the boonies. So anyway, that's something I'd consider if I were shopping for a new cell phone carrier.

[BillK]

AT & T Family Share - 700 minutes a month w/rollover - 4 phones.

2 iPhones w/200 txt's each
2 regular phones with nothing extra

$190/mo.

[wellyes]

OP your plan sounds way wrong. I had 1400 minutes & 4 lines for about $90/month. No texting. But could texting be worth $40/month?

I agree with PPs that you should look at your actual usage. We recently dropped to 700 minutes & there was no charge for the change. Will save us $20/month.

[boogiemomz]

OP your plan sounds way wrong. I had 1400 minutes & 4 lines for about $90/month. No texting. But could texting be worth $40/month?

I agree with PPs that you should look at your actual usage. We recently dropped to 700 minutes & there was no charge for the change. Will save us $20/month.

we apparently had 250 texts for $5/month on DH's phone and got charged $0.20/text for my phone (i swear i thought i had the $5 thing on my phone bc i text more than DH does, but neither of us uses 250 per month so that works). i was getting charged $5-15 per month for texts, so $5/month would save us $5-15/month max, and our baseline plan would still be $122/month. i told the guy on the phone that this was WAY too much to pay, and he said there was nothing he could do. we do not get into overage b/c we have 1400 minutes, and we can't go below that because we would lose our friends and family numbers (free all the time), and if we didn't have that feature, just talking to our family members would probably exceed the next lower plan. this is blowing my mind.

[scrooks]

It does sound high. We are on Verizon and pay about $145 a month for 5 lines with unlimited text on each and 1400 minutes between the phone (which we never come close to touching because of free nights and weekends, free mobile to mobile on verizon and the free 10 numbers of our choice)...I get a 15% discount from work but it's still seem cheaper than what you are talking about....

Can you potentially add family members on your plan to cut costs? We have my dad, MIL and FIL on our plan. We all split the costs and plus then we all have Verizon phones so calls between us are free.

[SpaceGal]

I have T-Mobile pay as you go. I have a cheesy Nokia phone but it does the job. I spend $100 to get a 1000 minutes that have a year expiration. I can send/receive text messages for like 5 or 10 cents. I don't text much and I have not used up my 1000 yet...I have about 200 left for the last 2 months. It works for me since I'm not a big cell phone user and at home I have digital phone. This is my first year having this pay as you go plan but it's worked and saved us a ton of money.

I used to have the base Verizon phone plan and spent $40 a month to only use like 20-50 minutes of my 400 and I just used my phone to use minutes. Now that I have 3 kids I'm not out and about as much so I use the home phone line more.

DH has a cell phone for work so a family plan wouldn't work for us just yet. But maybe later with the kids getting phones and what not.

[kozachka]

I have Tracfone's Straight Talk (http://www.straighttalk.com/ServicePlans)prepaid plan for $30 per month (fees and taxes are >$1), which includes 1000 minutes, 1000 text messages and 30MB data. I use this as my only phone (and supplement with Skype) and only ran out of minutes once when I was doing a lot of 30-60 mins phone interviews and networking as part of the job search. An unlimited plan would have been $45 per month, and you can switch between plans from month to month.

It runs on Verizon Wireless network, at least in the SF Bay Area, and the reception is OK. My Motorola Razr phone cost me $100 or $130. You can get Straight Talk phone and minutes either from the website directly or at WalMart. Service has been rolled out nationwide as of October '09 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473152469575162.html). Customer service was good the couple time I had to use it.

[randomkid]

I have Tracfone's Straight Talk (http://www.straighttalk.com/ServicePlans)prepaid plan for $30 per month (fees and taxes are >$1), which includes 1000 minutes, 1000 text messages and 30MB data. I use this as my only phone (and supplement with Skype) and only ran out of minutes once when I was doing a lot of 30-60 mins phone interviews and networking as part of the job search. An unlimited plan would have been $45 per month, and you can switch between plans from month to month.

It runs on Verizon Wireless network, at least in the SF Bay Area, and the reception is OK. My Motorola Razr phone cost me $100 or $130. You can get Straight Talk phone and minutes either from the website directly or at WalMart. Service has been rolled out nationwide as of October '09 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473152469575162.html). Customer service was good the couple time I had to use it.
I'm assuming this is per phone? If DH and I both have phones, can we be on one plan or does each phone need a separate plan? I am intrigued.

ETA: I just read that there is no roaming on these phones. So, does that mean if you travel to another state, you can't use it unless you pay per minute or how does that work?

[kozachka]

I'm assuming this is per phone? If DH and I both have phones, can we be on one plan or does each phone need a separate plan? I am intrigued.

ETA: I just read that there is no roaming on these phones. So, does that mean if you travel to another state, you can't use it unless you pay per minute or how does that work?

Prices are per line, but DH spends so much time out of the country that he does not have a monthly plan, we just buy minutes for from NET10, not a good option if you talk a lot, and not the best service either. I have yet to travel out of state after getting this phone so I am no help as far as roaming is concerned. It's a nationwide network (https://www.straighttalk.com/Coverage), I think the way it's described on the site roaming refers to international roaming, and I was never willing to pay for that even when it was an option. It is way cheaper to get a local card.

[Penny's Pappa]

My wife and I have the 700 anytime minute Family Share Plan (or whatever it's called) with Verizon and pay ~$80 a month including $5/phone for 250 texts. We virtually never go over our allotted minutes as most of the people we talk to are on Verizon's network so those are free mobile-to-mobile minutes. Other times we're talking during free night and weekend minutes.

To the OP: I assume the people in your Friends and Family list are either not on Verizon's network or don't have cell phones?