Family plan question / comment

I have an old family plan from the comcast days. i think 800 minutes 4
phones Unlimited Nights and Weekends and Unlimited Mobile to Mobile.
IT's great.. but recently we've been going over and just need more
minutes. Some guy keeps calling my mom and trying to get her to switch
to a family plan that doesn't exist on the cingular web site. Either
way i told my mom to stop talking to this glenn gary salesman. who is
selling a 1700 minute plan that cingular themselves hasn't even herd
of. either way

I call cingular and ask about their GSM nation plans. when it's all
said and done. the $149.99 plan turns into a $220.00 plan. there is NO
unlimited mobile to mobile on the family plan so when we call each
other it eats up minutes witch i think is redicilous for a FAMILY
plan, and if we want more mobile to mobile it's an additional $5(i'm
guessing on this price i don't remember) a month per phone for an
extra 500 minutes of M2M. And 9.99 PER month for 2 out of the 4 phones

It seems to me family plans any more are just a cash cow low on
features, designed to go over and usually if a family plan goes
over... it's like
$50-100 over, in our case at least. and if one person does a lot of
calling 3 others rack up the bill without even knowing it.


But i figured out with T-Mobile(here in NJ PA) we can get 4 different
plans one lesser plan $19.99 for dad(never uses it) and for brother
and mom 3 $39.99 600 min Unlimited nights and weekends AND pay $6 per
phone for unlimited mobile to moble for about $175 with taxes and no
one will go over(hopefully) and rack up the bill for everyone else.
And nationwide long distance included. I guess for our situation
individual is better and cheaper in the long run

Thanks for reading my rant

---

› See More: Family plan question / comment

Adonis wrote:
> I have an old family plan from the comcast days. i think 800 minutes 4
> phones Unlimited Nights and Weekends and Unlimited Mobile to Mobile.
> IT's great.. but recently we've been going over and just need more
> minutes. Some guy keeps calling my mom and trying to get her to switch
> to a family plan that doesn't exist on the cingular web site. Either
> way i told my mom to stop talking to this glenn gary salesman. who is
> selling a 1700 minute plan that cingular themselves hasn't even herd
> of. either way
>
> I call cingular and ask about their GSM nation plans. when it's all
> said and done. the $149.99 plan turns into a $220.00 plan. there is NO
> unlimited mobile to mobile on the family plan so when we call each
> other it eats up minutes witch i think is redicilous for a FAMILY
> plan, and if we want more mobile to mobile it's an additional $5(i'm
> guessing on this price i don't remember) a month per phone for an
> extra 500 minutes of M2M. And 9.99 PER month for 2 out of the 4 phones
>
> It seems to me family plans any more are just a cash cow low on
> features, designed to go over and usually if a family plan goes
> over... it's like
> $50-100 over, in our case at least. and if one person does a lot of
> calling 3 others rack up the bill without even knowing it.
>
>
> But i figured out with T-Mobile(here in NJ PA) we can get 4 different
> plans one lesser plan $19.99 for dad(never uses it) and for brother
> and mom 3 $39.99 600 min Unlimited nights and weekends AND pay $6 per
> phone for unlimited mobile to moble for about $175 with taxes and no
> one will go over(hopefully) and rack up the bill for everyone else.
> And nationwide long distance included. I guess for our situation
> individual is better and cheaper in the long run
>
> Thanks for reading my rant

I'm in TX and love family talk. In reading your post, I notice you have
'Dad' who doesn't use it much. Is there one more person who doesn't use
it much? You've got two pairs of people, each pair has one talker. You
got by on 800 shared minutes before, but you used unlimited
nights/weekends and m2m.

I punch in Allentown, PA on cingular.com, and,

Sounds like what you need is -two- family plans for the two pairs. You
can have Superhome (can use GAIT which works all over but you pay
roaming outside of home area) or GSM Nation (spotty GSM-only coverage
but good in cities. You could add nights/weekends starting at 7:00 for
the two talkers ($14.00). You could do m2m for the talkers only
($10.00). Their calls go against the m2m even if they call family plan
members without m2m (Dad, for example) but 'Dad' uses his regular or
off-peak minutes, as applicable.

You could have two 1000/5000 Superhome plans for 49.99 each or two
700/5000 GSM Nation plans for 49.99 each. Then your cost is

$ 99.98 basic plan charge
19.98 family talk additional lines
14.00 nights/weekends at 7:00 for two talkers
10.00 m2m for two talkers (only Cingular to Cingular)
-------
$143.96 total service fees before taxes
28.00 approximate taxes/fees (usually about 20%)
-------
$171.96 total monthly charge

for 2,000/10,000 regular minutes plus up to 1,000 m2m (Superhome), or
for 1,400/10,000 regular minutes plus up to 1,000 m2m (GSM Nation)

and you get rollover. Hope my math is okay (my head hurts) and maybe
you can re-think and juggle plans. But with the airtime I think you
need, this may be what you want to look at.

[email protected] (Adonis) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> I have an old family plan from the comcast days. i think 800 minutes 4
> phones Unlimited Nights and Weekends and Unlimited Mobile to Mobile.
> IT's great.. but recently we've been going over and just need more
> minutes. Some guy keeps calling my mom and trying to get her to switch
> to a family plan that doesn't exist on the cingular web site. Either
> way i told my mom to stop talking to this glenn gary salesman. who is
> selling a 1700 minute plan that cingular themselves hasn't even herd
> of. either way
>
> I call cingular and ask about their GSM nation plans. when it's all
> said and done. the $149.99 plan turns into a $220.00 plan. there is NO
> unlimited mobile to mobile on the family plan so when we call each
> other it eats up minutes witch i think is redicilous for a FAMILY
> plan, and if we want more mobile to mobile it's an additional $5(i'm
> guessing on this price i don't remember) a month per phone for an
> extra 500 minutes of M2M. And 9.99 PER month for 2 out of the 4 phones
>
> It seems to me family plans any more are just a cash cow low on
> features, designed to go over and usually if a family plan goes
> over... it's like
> $50-100 over, in our case at least. and if one person does a lot of
> calling 3 others rack up the bill without even knowing it.
>
>
> But i figured out with T-Mobile(here in NJ PA) we can get 4 different
> plans one lesser plan $19.99 for dad(never uses it) and for brother
> and mom 3 $39.99 600 min Unlimited nights and weekends AND pay $6 per
> phone for unlimited mobile to moble for about $175 with taxes and no
> one will go over(hopefully) and rack up the bill for everyone else.
> And nationwide long distance included. I guess for our situation
> individual is better and cheaper in the long run
>
> Thanks for reading my rant

Here in Kansas City, Cigular still sells the $20 family plan with
unlimited mobile to mobile. They do not advertise this fact.

I noticed in the Philadelphia market you can get 1500 rollover minutes
a month for $100 then add three phones for $60. Or you can get 900
shared minutes for $70 a month. You also get 5000 night and weekend
minutes. Remember, that with shared minutes, if one goes over, there
is a possibility that another user will be under. This isn't possible
with non-family plans. Seconly, with rollover, you need only buy your
anticipated average usage rather than the peak usage.

Try calling Cingular and tell them you are leaving for T-Mobile. Don't
be surprise if they offer a discount for staying with them. This
number portability issue is giving Cellular providers nightmares.




KCTOM

tom <[email protected]> wrote in article
<[email protected]>:
> Adonis wrote:
> > I have an old family plan from the comcast days. i think 800 minutes 4
> > phones Unlimited Nights and Weekends and Unlimited Mobile to Mobile.
> > IT's great.. but recently we've been going over and just need more
> > minutes. Some guy keeps calling my mom and trying to get her to switch
> > to a family plan that doesn't exist on the cingular web site. Either
> > way i told my mom to stop talking to this glenn gary salesman. who is
> > selling a 1700 minute plan that cingular themselves hasn't even herd
> > of. either way
> >
> > I call cingular and ask about their GSM nation plans. when it's all
> > said and done. the $149.99 plan turns into a $220.00 plan. there is NO
> > unlimited mobile to mobile on the family plan so when we call each
> > other it eats up minutes witch i think is redicilous for a FAMILY
> > plan, and if we want more mobile to mobile it's an additional $5(i'm
> > guessing on this price i don't remember) a month per phone for an
> > extra 500 minutes of M2M. And 9.99 PER month for 2 out of the 4 phones
> >
> > It seems to me family plans any more are just a cash cow low on
> > features, designed to go over and usually if a family plan goes
> > over... it's like
> > $50-100 over, in our case at least. and if one person does a lot of
> > calling 3 others rack up the bill without even knowing it.
> >
> >
> > But i figured out with T-Mobile(here in NJ PA) we can get 4 different
> > plans one lesser plan $19.99 for dad(never uses it) and for brother
> > and mom 3 $39.99 600 min Unlimited nights and weekends AND pay $6 per
> > phone for unlimited mobile to moble for about $175 with taxes and no
> > one will go over(hopefully) and rack up the bill for everyone else.
> > And nationwide long distance included. I guess for our situation
> > individual is better and cheaper in the long run
> >
> > Thanks for reading my rant
>
> I'm in TX and love family talk. In reading your post, I notice you have
> 'Dad' who doesn't use it much. Is there one more person who doesn't use
> it much? You've got two pairs of people, each pair has one talker. You
> got by on 800 shared minutes before, but you used unlimited
> nights/weekends and m2m.
>
> I punch in Allentown, PA on cingular.com, and,
>
> Sounds like what you need is -two- family plans for the two pairs. You
> can have Superhome (can use GAIT which works all over but you pay
> roaming outside of home area) or GSM Nation (spotty GSM-only coverage
> but good in cities. You could add nights/weekends starting at 7:00 for
> the two talkers ($14.00). You could do m2m for the talkers only
> ($10.00). Their calls go against the m2m even if they call family plan
> members without m2m (Dad, for example) but 'Dad' uses his regular or
> off-peak minutes, as applicable.
>
> You could have two 1000/5000 Superhome plans for 49.99 each or two
> 700/5000 GSM Nation plans for 49.99 each. Then your cost is
>
> $ 99.98 basic plan charge
> 19.98 family talk additional lines
> 14.00 nights/weekends at 7:00 for two talkers
> 10.00 m2m for two talkers (only Cingular to Cingular)
> -------
> $143.96 total service fees before taxes
> 28.00 approximate taxes/fees (usually about 20%)
> -------
> $171.96 total monthly charge
>
> for 2,000/10,000 regular minutes plus up to 1,000 m2m (Superhome), or
> for 1,400/10,000 regular minutes plus up to 1,000 m2m (GSM Nation)
>
> and you get rollover. Hope my math is okay (my head hurts) and maybe
> you can re-think and juggle plans. But with the airtime I think you
> need, this may be what you want to look at.
>

Hm.

I broke it out a little differently.

$49.99 base plan - 1000 min, plus 5000 n/w
$29.97 for three extra lines
$14.97 for 500 m2m minutes on 3 lines (not on Dad's)
---------
$88.93

Bump-up options, if needed:

+$20 next plan up, adds 200 more anytime minutes
+$14 start nights/weekends at 7pm, not 9
+$15 non-Dad lines get 5000 m2m, not 500.
---------
$137.93 with all the bells and whistles.

[posted via phonescoop.com]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 03:47:34 GMT, tom <[email protected]> wrote:

>Adonis wrote:
>> I have an old family plan from the comcast days. i think 800 minutes 4
>> phones Unlimited Nights and Weekends and Unlimited Mobile to Mobile.
>> IT's great.. but recently we've been going over and just need more
>> minutes. Some guy keeps calling my mom and trying to get her to switch
>> to a family plan that doesn't exist on the cingular web site. Either
>> way i told my mom to stop talking to this glenn gary salesman. who is
>> selling a 1700 minute plan that cingular themselves hasn't even herd
>> of. either way
>>
>> I call cingular and ask about their GSM nation plans. when it's all
>> said and done. the $149.99 plan turns into a $220.00 plan. there is NO
>> unlimited mobile to mobile on the family plan so when we call each
>> other it eats up minutes witch i think is redicilous for a FAMILY
>> plan, and if we want more mobile to mobile it's an additional $5(i'm
>> guessing on this price i don't remember) a month per phone for an
>> extra 500 minutes of M2M. And 9.99 PER month for 2 out of the 4 phones
>>
>> It seems to me family plans any more are just a cash cow low on
>> features, designed to go over and usually if a family plan goes
>> over... it's like
>> $50-100 over, in our case at least. and if one person does a lot of
>> calling 3 others rack up the bill without even knowing it.
>>
>>
>> But i figured out with T-Mobile(here in NJ PA) we can get 4 different
>> plans one lesser plan $19.99 for dad(never uses it) and for brother
>> and mom 3 $39.99 600 min Unlimited nights and weekends AND pay $6 per
>> phone for unlimited mobile to moble for about $175 with taxes and no
>> one will go over(hopefully) and rack up the bill for everyone else.
>> And nationwide long distance included. I guess for our situation
>> individual is better and cheaper in the long run

yeah, thing is for example you have 2 phones that share minutes
(family plan) one phone calls the other your using 2 minutes for every
1 minute u talk...1 for each phone, a sort of double **** you from
cingular... you have to set up 2 lines on your account, 2 seperate
numbers (1 for each line, duh) then get a phone adden on each line to
chare the minutes with that line only then dont call the other person
your sharing minutes with...so you sorta get a family plan and sorta
dont get charged for calling the other 2 people...i agree, for a
FAMILY plan it should automatically be free to talk to the other
members on your FAMILY plan...either way it will cost around $50 to
$100 or more a month, A MONTH with cingular and a """""family plan""""

just exercise extreme caution with cingular, if you go out of town
make sure you get the nation plan or else they will rape you on
roaming charges, when i had cingular they said "free roaming" but what
does "free roaming" REALLY mean? it means within your sandbox...i
drive 300 miles away and make a call i'm "roaming" on t-mobile, and
what do u get in the mail? a fat bill for roaming charges that were
free, but ohn wait they never told u it was in your little cubicle
only. but it's no problem to get real "free roaming" from cingular,
you have to give up 100 to 200 anytime minutes to get the real "free
roaming" ....just be careful and ask every little question about every
little thing, this probably wont help because cingular is notorious
for saying one thing to you then changing it the next month...tread
softly, and carry a big lawyer.

> yeah, thing is for example you have 2 phones that share minutes
> (family plan) one phone calls the other your using 2 minutes for every
> 1 minute u talk...1 for each phone, a sort of double **** you from
> cingular... you have to set up 2 lines on your account, 2 seperate
> numbers (1 for each line, duh) then get a phone adden on each line to
> chare the minutes with that line only then dont call the other person
> your sharing minutes with...so you sorta get a family plan and sorta
> dont get charged for calling the other 2 people...i agree, for a
> FAMILY plan it should automatically be free to talk to the other
> members on your FAMILY plan...either way it will cost around $50 to
> $100 or more a month, A MONTH with cingular and a """""family plan""""
>
Like I said, here in the KC market, you get unlimited phone to phone,
not just family members, with the $20 per additional phone option.
This seems fair. For $10 you get no phone to phone, for $15 you get
500 minutes, 250 actually, and unlimited for $20. My guess is that you
cannot mix the unlimited with the limited.

Right now you can get 700 minutes of prime, 5000 night and weekend,
rollover, free long distance and unlimted phone to phone with four
phones for $110. That beats what Verizon is offering based on their
WEB site.

Tom

>> yeah, thing is for example you have 2 phones that share minutes
>> (family plan) one phone calls the other your using 2 minutes for every
>> 1 minute u talk...1 for each phone, a sort of double **** you from
>> cingular..

Actually the Cingular to Cingular calls = 0 minutes deducted (at least on the
family plan that my family has).

>Like I said, here in the KC market, you get unlimited phone to phone,
>not just family members,

This is how it works in the DFW market too.



--
John S.
e-mail responses to - john at kiana dot net

On 17 Oct 2003 07:03:55 -0700, [email protected] (Tom) wrote:

>> yeah, thing is for example you have 2 phones that share minutes
>> (family plan) one phone calls the other your using 2 minutes for every
>> 1 minute u talk...1 for each phone, a sort of double **** you from
>> cingular... you have to set up 2 lines on your account, 2 seperate
>> numbers (1 for each line, duh) then get a phone adden on each line to
>> chare the minutes with that line only then dont call the other person
>> your sharing minutes with...so you sorta get a family plan and sorta
>> dont get charged for calling the other 2 people...i agree, for a
>> FAMILY plan it should automatically be free to talk to the other
>> members on your FAMILY plan...either way it will cost around $50 to
>> $100 or more a month, A MONTH with cingular and a """""family plan""""
>>
>Like I said, here in the KC market, you get unlimited phone to phone,
>not just family members, with the $20 per additional phone option.

so $100 for all four. excellent deal.


>This seems fair.

yeah for cingular.

>
>Right now you can get 700 minutes of prime, 5000 night and weekend,
>rollover, free long distance and unlimted phone to phone with four
>phones for $110. That beats what Verizon is offering based on their
>WEB site.
>

wow 175 minutes per phone, a real steal. throw in the $20 per line to
get unlimited mobile to mobile (the real family plan) and your looking
at $210 a month according to your post for unlimited mobile to mobile
within a family plan plus 175 minutes per phone, t-mobile has a better
deal with 1000 minutes only thing is their coverage sucks balls so it
isnt really a better deal.