Home › Forums › Open Discussion › What do you pay for cell service?
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March 18, 2014 at 3:20 pm #610768
amaliaParticipantNot West Seattle-specific, but I could use help figuring out a new plan. I pay nearly $70 for a cheap (non-Smart) phone plan, 75 GBs of internet, and no texting. I only need a basic plan, and I’m out of the country (and not using the phone) for 3 months of every year. Anyone have experience with this kind of non-standard service?
I’m loathe to call customer service – they seem ill-equipped to deal with anything more subtle than a phone upgrade.
Thanks!
March 18, 2014 at 3:37 pm #805870
skeeterParticipantI use Virgin Mobile. I pay 18 cents per minute plus $1.99/mo for 50 texts. I don’t use my mobile phone much.
March 18, 2014 at 3:58 pm #805871
berthaParticipantI also use Virgin Mobile. I have an Iphone and pay $35/month for unlimited texts, data and 300 minutes of talk time. When I had a nonsmart phone I paid about $15-20/month.
March 18, 2014 at 4:18 pm #805872
amaliaParticipantHoly cow. Thanks, Bertha, you just cut my bill in half.
March 18, 2014 at 5:56 pm #805873
JanSParticipantanother vote for Virgin Mobile. Just remember, you have to buy your phone from them, and you do not get a deal on phones. An iPhone is gonna cost you upwards of $350, depending on which one you buy. They do have other Smartphones for less.
March 18, 2014 at 6:20 pm #805874
skeeterParticipantAlso keep in mind Virgin Mobile DOES NOT work in Alaska. If that is a concern…
March 18, 2014 at 7:10 pm #805875
trickycooljParticipantYou can have your service paused while you are abroad, I had many friends do that when studying abroad in college. Gym memberships also have that offer as well for injury or extended work travel.
Also check with the various providers whether or not your employer or something you are affiliated with has any kind of discount that you may not have realized was available. AT&T even had the same discount for UW employees and students which was around 15-20% off.
A friend of mine has had Virgin Mobile for probably close to 10 years now (early 2000s) and loves it. I would just double check that inactivity (when you are away for 3months) doesn’t turn off your service or anything.
Oh and one other thought on Virgin Mobile, they utilize Sprint’s network which is good in the city but if you go out of the city they do tend to have more service gaps. Notably 2 friends (Sprint and Virgin users) can’t get service when visiting our friend in Burien, a stone’s throw from Seatac (you can see it from his front yard!). So definitely check the service and coverage maps for any of the pay as you go carriers, many use Sprint.
March 18, 2014 at 8:05 pm #805876
amaliaParticipantThis is all really helpful, thanks. Looks like Virgin will only suspend phones for active military. And their list of compatible phones varies between 2 places on their website. Prices have gone up on the PayLo accounts, but still good!
Any cheap options with other carriers? (Yeah, I am looking it up myself, but it’s so much easier to ask the helpful people here :) ).
March 18, 2014 at 8:55 pm #805877
trickycooljParticipantT-mobile is definitely the leader in lower cost plans, they’ve been driving down the big 2 (AT&T and Verizon) in price lately with very different types of offerings than the plans we have been used to. I would definitely see if any of their new options fit your needs. Again check their service map to see if it fits your needs, they seem to do great in urban areas but not as much rural. They are also adding some inexpensive international roaming plans since they are a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and it’s easy to roam in Europe.
AT&T has some new plans to compete with T-Mo that you choose the amount of monthly data you need for your phone and it comes with unlimited minutes/text messages for a flat rate per month, the device can add extra depending how you purchase it (on contract or up front). I’ve been happy with AT&T for many years since it has the best coverage in the more rural areas each of my parents live in, and I share a plan with my mom still to split the cost, plus her employer has a 19% discount. :)
March 18, 2014 at 9:24 pm #805878
amaliaParticipantThanks, Tricky – Just got off chat with Verizon. I swear, if one more robot or phonebot tells me they “can definitely help you with that” (and then proceeds to do anything but), I’m gonna lose it :).
March 18, 2014 at 9:34 pm #805879
KevinParticipantIf you are not a heavy phone cell user, you might want to consider the ATT TEN CENTS per minute plan. You can also send and receive text messages for TWENTY CENTS each. No data, but you can activate data for $40 and $60 for as little as ONE month at a time. You can buy a new “pay as you go” phone from ATT – or – buy a used ATT phone off of ebay or craigslist.
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Bottom line, my cell phone service runs anywhere between $5 – $20 per month on average.
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PS – most of the newer phones have wifi which means you can use the phone to surf the internet for free from your favorite coffee house.
March 18, 2014 at 10:17 pm #805880
trickycooljParticipantIf you can, go into the carrier stores. My colleague used to work in a T-Mo store and they know all the ins and outs of plan options better than the phone operators. Lay out your situation, such as I use only X minutes, don’t need text messaging, Ygb of data.
“I’m sorry I didn’t catch that can you repeat it?” Is stupidly annoying. I mash zero until someone picks up. :)
March 18, 2014 at 10:44 pm #805881
squareeyesParticipantI am not a user of this service but you might consider checking out PagePlus specifically purchased through Kitty Wireless http://www.kittywireless.com/ (NOT a pretty website). I considered PagePlus for awhile because it’s insanely cheap, but opted to keep my ancient AT&T prepaid account since I am grandfathered in at a cheaper daily use rate and I barely use my phone anyway.
PagePlus customer service does not appear to get good reviews, hence specifying Kitty Wireless which does get good reviews. Tiny variety of compatible phones.
March 18, 2014 at 10:51 pm #805882
dcnParticipantI had a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go cell phone for many years. It was cheap, which I liked, but I got tired of the very poor reception that the Sprint network (used by Virgin Mobile) gets. I-90-yes, Hwy 20-no (at least as of 1.5 years ago). It was very spotty. I now have Verizon, and I rarely ever lose reception or even get bad reception. I’d check previous blog posts about reception in West Seattle for cell coverage before you choose your carrier.
March 18, 2014 at 11:41 pm #805883
MrsLMemberWe have a friend who is really happy with Ting
(https://ting.com/rates). It’s on the Sprint network and rates are based on usage. If you are with Sprint you can use your own phone. I personally have a t-mobile pre-paid plan for my smart phone. The plan was a T-mobile web deal a couple years ago (I think Walmart also offered this for a short time); 100 min, unlimited text and web for $30/month. Reception in my house was poor (i.e. I had to go outside) until recently; they must have increased range/frequency(?) of towers near High Point.
March 19, 2014 at 12:00 am #805884
JanSParticipant@dcn…I’ve been using Virgin Mobile for years. I’m in the Admiral District, just east of Safeway, and my reception is exceptional. VM uses Sprint. I have never, ever not had 4-5 bars, never ever a dropped call. But, I live AND work at home, so YMMV, especially getting off the peninsula. And the times that I have checked the map for different companies, it looks like there is an area just a few blocks north of me where the reception for Sprint may not be as good.
March 19, 2014 at 12:06 am #805885March 19, 2014 at 5:18 pm #805886
amaliaParticipantfollow-up: After more than 2 hours on the phone/chat today trying to fix something Verizon messed up during their attempt to remove data from my phone, the FOURTH person I talked to made the following changes to my account: 350 minutes changed to 700 minutes; 75 MB data changed to 100 MB; no texting changed to unlimited texting; base price changed from $55 to $35.
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When I asked why no one had told me about this option previously, I was told I had to ask for it. Odd, since I just asked for a cheaper option YESTERDAY when I started all this. Unbelievable. It makes me want to dump Verizon more than even, but they also claim that they will let me suspend my account when I’m out of the country, which Virgin can’t do.
Thanks for all the help here.
March 19, 2014 at 6:03 pm #805887
kgdlgParticipantI know this is a convo about scaled down cell service. But if you are in the market for an unlimited phone and texting plan, with decent data, the cheapest that I recently found was $70 a month from T Mobile, for 2.5gig of data. The trade off is that T Mobile isn’t as good while traveling, compared to Verizon for example. I was willing to make this trade after years of gauging by Verizon who in my opinion is crazy expensive for their unlimited and data plans. Also, T Mobile has no contracts…
March 19, 2014 at 10:39 pm #805888
JeanineParticipantAnother vote for Ting here. Husband and I paid 45$ for both of us last month (including taxes!) You only pay for what you need/use, so your bill can fluctuate.
Like MrsL said above, Ting uses the Sprint network. I haven’t had any issues with calls or data.
March 20, 2014 at 3:11 pm #805889
hammerheadParticipantok SO I decided to call att, I have had them for years and very happy with their services. (I will never travel so that is not an issue).
Well I have 2 phones, a cheapy phone and a smart phone. I was paying almost 200.00. Well they got my phone bill cut in half. Still have all of the same gb and unlimited stuff. They even gave me a 50.00 credit.
While I know a lot of the bill is taxes, I was pretty pleased with how quickly they did it and no issues. I of course did say I was looking into a different company for a cheaper plan.
I will say all the info above was awesome.
March 21, 2014 at 5:59 am #805890
CEFMemberIf you’re not fussy about phone you can’t beat Republic Wireless at, $19/mth. Only two phone choices – older Motorola smartphone for $99 or more recent model for….some amount I don’t recall cos older model suited me fine.
Runs on Sprint network and includes UNLIMITED talk, text and data. Yep, you read that right. For $19/mth.
Catch is they encourage you to leverage wifi wherever possible, but there’s no restriction or monitoring beyond reminder screen when wifi available.
I like it cos it’s cheap – duh! – plus I get coverage via wifi in office where Sprint signal is weak.
March 24, 2014 at 3:31 pm #805891
amaliaParticipantWell, silly me – I don’t trust Verizon, so I checked my account, and they did NOT give me what they said I was buying. Not only is there NO data (they promised 100MB), but they even charged for email, which was included previously. And $6 for a data function that I can’t use because I don’t have data! Another hour wasted on the phone, to no avail, and now I’m headed to the Verizon store. Unbelievable. I made the woman selling me this “deal” repeat it THREE times. Then I became suspicious when I didn’t receive a confirmation email.
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So canceling today and checking out the advice I received here. Thanks again.
March 24, 2014 at 3:59 pm #805892
amaliaParticipantHoly *&^#$. I just called Ting and a HUMAN picked up after 2 rings, answered my questions, and emailed me more information. I’m nearly in tears.
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It’s basically pay-as-you-go, Sprint network, BYODevice includes all Sprint devices, and you can suspend the service while just paying the $6 device fee.
March 25, 2014 at 10:36 pm #805893
JeanineParticipantYup, I’ve been a Ting customer for nearly a year and wish more companies were like them. Recently they posted somehting on their Facebook page about how you should buy the new Google phone….but not from them (Ting) because it was cheaper on Google’s store! Crazy good customer service. They recently lowered data rates too.
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