Prepaid cell phones Att GoPhone or Verizon InPulse (1 Viewer)

[Jay H]

Anybody know the differences between the two plans/phones, just looking at a basic prepaid cell phone. Right now I'm paying $40/mo for a postpaid cell phone through Att and I have a RAZR v3 as the phone with a SIM card...

It seems that the two plans of Verizon and ATT are similar, nights start at 9:01pm and run to 6am.

I'm confused though a little bit. The daily charge to use it is .99/cents. It doesn't state what are the minute charges for daytime (M-F 6am-9pm). Is the .99 cents a per call charge or a per day charge.

In other words, if I call somebody at noon on a monday, I get charged .99cents. What about per minute charges? What if I make 1000 calls betwee Noon and 3pm on Monday?

Also, does the Samsung on Verizon use SIM card, would I be able to transfer my numbers on my SIM on my RAZR to the other phone? Are the Nokias on ATT's similar, use SIM??

I think with me emailing most of my friends via email/facebook, etc. I think it would be cheaper even if I made or received a phone call every day of the month which would be a base charge of $31... So I have $8 more or say 80 minutes of talk time after 9pm to equal that of my postpaid. Most of my family calls are before 9am and I do a lot of trip planning via email these days. I think if the 99 cents is NOT per call, then it would certainly be worth it for me... And if I get the $100 plan, it wouldn't expire in a year which brings my next question. I presume when I buy a $100 plan now, 12/8/08 and say I use it all up by 6/8/09 and buy another one, the $100 will go from 6/8/09 to 6/8/10 and NOT 12/8/09... In other words, when you renew your plan, you get the time from the date of the renewal, not the original plan?

Looks like there is a one time $25 activation fee for Verizon and none for ATT...


Jay

 

[Matt Stryker]

Jay -

Verizon doesn't generally use SIM cards as they don't use GSM networks, but you could always get Motorola phone tools or a similar suite to pull the numbers off your old phone and move them to your new one - Monoprice sells MPT for $4 I think with the cable.

I had a GoPhone for about 6 months, it worked OK but overall I found their rates to be pretty poor. I switched to T-mobiles prepaid plan which likewise offers the $100/1 year expiration, but the upshot is after you charge it with $100 once, ANY refill you add doesn't expire for one year. Great for me as I'm seldom using my phone, but I'm not sure if T-mo has service in your area.

If you move to another provider with GSM, just call ATT before you cancel and tell them you want to unlock your phone. They'll let you know what you need to send them, and then usually in a few days you'll get an unlock code - with that you can use your Razr on any GSM prepaid network.

Just a hint, you can buy refills much cheaper on the web by buying them thru sites like CallingMart.

 

[Jay H]

Which kind of makes me want to go to ATT prepaid right now. Plus it's a known thing, I get good cell reception at home already.. I wonder if I could even reuse my Razr which would be cool. I'll have to stop at an ATT store someday..

Jay

 

[Stan]

About four years ago I worked for Cingular(ATT) for about a month, the job from hell.

As for rates, don't know what they are now, but probably similar plans.

If you rarely use the phone, they had a plan with no daily charge, but your per minute is pretty high, $.25 at the time. If you use the phone more often, they had a plan where the per minute charge was cheaper, $.10, but then you had the daily $1.00 charge each day you used the phone.

So if you use the phone every day, you could be looking at about $30 a month, plus $.10 a minute.

Just using once in a while, a flat $.25 a minute.

I do remember something about the prepaid minutes expiring, unless as Matt mentioned, you buy the higher dollar amount refills. Might want to check that out.

If you do go prepaid, be sure to get every receipt, piece of packaging, etc. when you buy refills. It's an incredibly simple process to add minutes, but it's amazing how many people screw it up.

One little trick they don't tell people is your charges are based on when you start the call. May have changed, but it used to be if your call started at say 5:58 a.m., you could talk all day but be billed the night rates because that's when the call started.

 

[Jay H]

My first cellphone I had was a prepaid one from ATT, the expiration date was 90 days, then it was shrunk to 60 days, then I think shrunk again and at the time, didn't feel like sinking in for $100 for the year cause I didn't think I could use it all. I had a landline at the time. Now, my cell phone is my only phone but I also tend to email and plan via the internet so it kind of balances out, I'm sure using the cell phone more now but not enough to justify the postpaid costs and I don't Text or need the internet 24/7 so a basic cell phone is fine.

Jay

 

[Stan]

I haven't used a cell phone for years, but it looks like not much has changed.

It looks like you're aware of it, but just be sure you don't ever want options like texting, internet or some of the other fancier features. The prepaid system is pretty stripped down and you can't add/remove features like you can with most other phones, they just aren't available.

 

[Marianne]

I use ATT prepaid because others in my family use ATT regular cellphone service and you can talk to any other ATT user for free, apart from the $1 charge per day (only on days you use the phone). I use the $25 for 3 months refills. I used to have regular cell service but didn't use it enough to justify the $50 per month charges.

 

[Jay H]

Same here, except mine is $40 with a company discount. My father and one sister has ATT, my other sister has Verizon...

That $1 per day is for unlimited calls though right? So long as it is used once a day (midnight to Midnight) you get charged $1 and then if it's 9:01pm to Midnight it's 10cents/minute for the plan, right? Is there a per minute charge for daytime calls in addition to the initial $1 fee?

Jay

 

[Stan]

They may have changed, but I recall that once you use the phone, you get billed the $1, then you use up your built up account dollars at 10 cents per minute, no matter what time of day. They day/night rates don't really apply to prepaid, but the person you call will pay more to use their cell phone based on what time you begin the call.