Pay As You Go Plans

Hello-

My wife currently uses the "cheapest" AT&T Wireless plan on her
mobile. I put quotes around the word cheapest, because the monthly
bill is around 45 dollars, once you add the taxes etc. This is a bit
of a rip off, because she uses the phone very infrequently, but I'm
reluctant to cancel it because she does a fair amount of driving.

I'm thinking of switching to a "Pay As You Go" plan, but I'm a little
confused on how this works. It seems like you still need to pay
monthly (which isn't really, "As You Go") in order to continue to roll
minutes over that you don't use. My initial thought was that I'd just
send them 100 bucks and then fill it up again once she used 100
dollars worth of minutes, regardless of how long it takes her to get
through them. However, it seems like it might work better if I send
in like 10 bucks a month in order to get the minutes to roll over.

Is this really how it works? How has your experience been with the
AT&T PAYG plan? I heard something about newly announced PAYG plans,
but the ones on their site do not appear to be any different than the
last time I looked.

Thanks a lot.
troy

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At 07 Jun 2007 09:40:36 -0700 Troy wrote:

> I'm thinking of switching to a "Pay As You Go" plan, but I'm a little
> confused on how this works. It seems like you still need to pay
> monthly (which isn't really, "As You Go") in order to continue to roll
> minutes over that you don't use.

AT&T offers two options- "Pick your plan" which has a monthly minimum
purchse, and a true "Pay as you go" ("true" in the wireless industry
definition- you plunk down some money and buy prepaid minutes that expire
by a certain date.)

> My initial thought was that I'd just
> send them 100 bucks and then fill it up again once she used 100
> dollars worth of minutes, regardless of how long it takes her to get
> through them. However, it seems like it might work better if I send
> in like 10 bucks a month in order to get the minutes to roll over.

A $100 prepaid card gives you 400 minutes that won't expire for a full
year. $10 only buys 15 or 30 days (I forget which.) Either will
"rollover" if you add new time before the old time expires.

For example, you buy a $100 card today, 6/7/07. Let's say 365 days from
now, she still has 100 minutes left, due to expire that day, 6/7/08. You
add another $100 card, and she has 500 minutes (the old 100 plus the new
400) now good until 6/7/09. However, if you waited a day, until 6/8/08,
she'd lose her 100 remaining minutes (they'd have expired) so your $100
card would instead give you only it's own 400 minutes, expiring on 6/8/09.


> Is this really how it works? How has your experience been with the
> AT&T PAYG plan? I heard something about newly announced PAYG plans,
> but the ones on their site do not appear to be any different than the
> last time I looked.

AT&T PAYG is pretty expensive per minute compared to other PAYG plans,
and doesn't roam in all the same places as "contract" AT&T service, but
for limited usage in areas AT&T provides native coverage it's fine, plus
she can use her existing phone (no reprogramming phonebooks, no "learning
curve" etc.)

T-Mobile's PAYG is only 10-cents/minute with a $100/1-year card, but has
a smaller national footprint than AT&T.

PagePlus Cellular has a very unprofessional website, but offers cheap
minutes and excellent coverage (roaming costs extra, but at least you CAN
roam!)

Check out Dave Markson's excellent cellguru.net site for an excellent
prepaid comparison chart. It's a tremendous resource.




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Yep, T-mobile has the best pay as you go around.

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> T-Mobile's PAYG is only 10-cents/minute with a $100/1-year card, but has
>> a smaller national footprint than AT&T.
>
> Not anymore. Used to be, but they fixed that. Big time.
>
> T-Mobile's pay as you go plan is far, far superior to the others.
>

Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> T-Mobile's PAYG is only 10-cents/minute with a $100/1-year card, but has
>> a smaller national footprint than AT&T.
>
> Not anymore. Used to be, but they fixed that. Big time.
>
> T-Mobile's pay as you go plan is far, far superior to the others.

The big problem with T-Mobile is coverage. Their prepaid plan is the
best in terms of cost, no doubt about it. But the coverage leaves a lot
to be desired. For example, at my house, in a very non-rural part of
Silicon Valley, there is no T-Mobile coverage, and you can't use the
AT&T 850 MHz GSM network because T-Mobile does serve this market, albeit
poorly.

That's where you get in trouble with T-Mobile, places where they serve a
market (so you can't roam onto AT&T) but where the coverage in that
market is poor. I have no idea how many such areas there are, but I know
of at least two just in my immediate vicinity, and I'm sure there's a
lot more. To T-Mobile's credit, the local store maps your address and
discourages you from signing up for service if there is no coverage at
your house.

Todd Allcock wrote:

> PagePlus Cellular has a very unprofessional website, but offers cheap
> minutes and excellent coverage (roaming costs extra, but at least you CAN
> roam!)

I don't know why PagePlus doesn't do something about their
unprofessional sales and marketing. They're the best prepaid in terms of
coverage, and not much more than T-Mobile in cost.