Why I love Pageplus....

[email protected] wrote in news:[email protected]:

> Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>That $942 let's me buy a Cricket unlimited AIRCARD for my mobile router
>
> Just found out no Cricket service for me here
>
> I will have to use Virgin Mobile Unlimited broadband
> service I guess
>

Leap Communications (Cricket) is building out in all kinds of areas where
there is a license to be had. Check the data coverage map from Charleston,
SC, to the South into Georgia. It's all 3G EVDO Rev A almost all the way
to Brunswick from here. N and NW, there's no licenses for them to
operate...all taken up.

Don't know how good Virgin Mobile data is....

---

› See More: Why I love Pageplus....

tlvp <[email protected]> wrote in
news[email protected]:

> 14-character (alphanumeric) "MEID".
>

That's it....that's the number.

Find the battery direct from HongKong or Shenzhen, China on Ebay. I paid
$US2 plus a few dollars shipping last time for a really fresh battery
straight out of the factory. Paying $50 for a sellphone battery is insane.

tlvp <[email protected]> wrote in
news[email protected]:

> Aha! Thanks for that tid-bit, Todd, one of the few (self-evident?) items
> that Larry omitted.
>
>

The initial startup fee is $10 on the per minute plan. That INCLUDES 100
minutes of airtime. Sorry....

On Fri, 08 Oct 2010 21:37:58 -0400, Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> "tlvp" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news[email protected]...
>> On Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:06:34 -0400, Todd Allcock
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I recently found (and subsequently tossed) the analog adapter module for
>>> my ancient Voicestream (now T-Mobile) Nokia 5190. It snapped on in-
>>> between the phone and battery and allowed the 1900 GSM-only phone to roam
>>> on 800 analog.
>> ...
>> ... to have such an adapter and just *toss* it ... I'd have taken it :-) .
>> (Sigh!)
>
> Sorry! By the time VS became T-Mo, all of the analog roaming agreements
> were long dead.

Makes the loss more bearable, thanks :-) .

> ... I suppose I could've used it for ARM (The "American Roaming
> Network" that allows you to make outgoing calls only with any unactivated
> CDMA or analog cellphone) ...

Heh ... an old at&t ws Nokia 2260 used to auto-connect to ARM for me to either
place a collect call or charge a call to a credit card ... no thanks for me, tho'.

> ... but as an ex-Cingular dealer, ...

Ah. so *that* is the background that helps explain how you come to know what you know :-) .

> ... I already had far
> too many dead analog phones laying around, many of which were smaller and
> less hassle than the adapter, which made the 5190 roughly twice its original
> size. I actually tried programming the adapter with its own phone number-
> at the time I was using Beyond Wireless as my "backup" carrier- Beyond was
> an AT&T TDMA reseller, and they'd activate analog-only devices if you lied
> and told them they were TDMA phones. I kept my very first cellphone- an
> analog Nokia clone of the old Motorola "brick" handheld, activated with
> Beyond all the way up to the day AT&T shut down analog service.

I never had any analog cellphone service -- as I said, I began only with VS,
at the first post-OmniPoint GSM carrier opportunity, using an imported TimePort
(whose CSD WAP browsing VS was not yet even supporting yet, except *unofficially*).

Cheers, -- tlvp

--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

On Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:43:21 -0400, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

> tlvp <[email protected]> wrote in
> news[email protected]:
>
>> Aha! Thanks for that tid-bit, Todd, one of the few (self-evident?) items
>> that Larry omitted.
>>
>>
>
> The initial startup fee is $10 on the per minute plan. That INCLUDES 100
> minutes of airtime. Sorry....

Oh, thanks :-) . And those 100 minutes airtime ... last a month before expiring?
only expire when you forget to renew according to your PagePlus renewal scheme?
other?

And don't apologize, please -- what's a missing tidbit or two among friends?

Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

In article <[email protected]>, Todd Allcock
<[email protected]> wrote:

> > wow, i remember that, along with all the convoluted follow-me roaming
> > *codes you had to do each time you went to a new city.
>
> As convoluted as that was, at least it was transparent to people calling
> the cellular user.

not always. sometimes you had to explicitly activate the cellphone in
the new city, or callers would get 'the cellular user you are calling
is unavailable or out of the service area.' voicemail was not very
common back then.

some times the roaming codes didn't take. i remember getting an error
and having to call 611 to get them to activate it a few times.

> Prior to "Follow Me Roaming" was the manual "Roamer Access" system. If
> someone wanted to call you while you roaming, they had to call a specific
> "Roamer Access" number- every city's and carrier's was different, so your
> caller not only had to know where you were, but which of the two carriers
> you were roaming on! After dialing the appropriate access number, the
> caller was prompted for the roamer's cell number, and connected if you
> were still there.

roaming access numbers were kinda cool actually, it made it so that you
had a local number wherever you were, eliminating the ridiculous
roaming fees.

> Back then, new subscribers were given a little booklet with a list of
> cites, carriers, and access numbers. I probably still have one kicking
> around somewhere!

i don't remember that part.

On Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:21:49 +0000, Larry wrote:

> tlvp <[email protected]> wrote in
> news[email protected]:
>
>> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:54:21 -0400, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> ... Next sellphone payment due on 10/09/10 at least $10, again, ...
>>
>> Just your friendly reminder post :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp
>
> Done!
>
> $89.65
> This balance expires on February 4, 2011
>
> It's so easy to forget....(c;]
>
> Balance brought forward....no funny business....
>
> Some poor bastard is staring at his VZW bill trying to figure out where
> he's gonna get $104.29 by Monday or they'll cut him off, again, this
> month.
>
> Thanks for reminding me.....See you in February of next year!
>
> Page Plus....gotta love it!

Do you work for the company?

It would appear you haven't hit any Roaming yet. Here in East Overshoe
they cover almost everywhere I need to go, except to the west of
Brattleboro VT. Then you hit a roaming area, at $0.29 a minute! Still less
expensive than almost all the others, but with my Verizon phone it's on
the network. I have yet to hit roaming with Verizon.

Not to say PagePlus is bad. I activated the phone Verizon gave me when
they took over Unicel and am going to take it around with me to see if I
hit any roaming areas. So far, from their map, that's the only place I
need to go where I would hit roaming. If they were to resolve that they
would probably have a customer for quite a while.

Other than that it looks like a great deal. Unlimited talk, text and 20MB
data from $45. I use about 7-9 MB a month, and Verizon was charging me $29
a month (Palm Treo 755) until I told them I was leaving. Now it's $1.99 a
meg, and the $14 is still cheaper when I use it.


There's also a small roaming area in Hinsdale NH and out near Jaffery, but
in either case if I take a different road I either get no service or no
roaming.



--
It says Last...In...Kadora
Gimme that! "La Stinkadora"

On Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:39:16 -0500, me wrote:

> Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>Well, I'm good. No sellphone bills until 2011!....hee hee.
>
>
> I like PagePlus too!
>
> Problem is they don't cover my hometown at all in 63401 zip code.... so
> have to do the double dialing thing when up there

What's the "double dialing" thing?

I think I had to do that with Sprint a long time ago, but it was a LONG
time ago!


--
It says Last...In...Kadora
Gimme that! "La Stinkadora"

In article <[email protected]>, Todd Allcock
<[email protected]> wrote:

> I meant transparent as in the caller just dialed your regular cell
> number, as opposed to having to know a special roamer access number for
> each city.

but it relied on the subscriber activating roaming for each city they
visited. if they forgot, callers could not reach the subscriber.

i did a cross country drive with an analog phone and whenever i reached
a new city, i had to update the roaming. sometimes it didn't take,
requiring a call to 611. what a ****ing pain in the ass that was.

> > voicemail was not very common back then.
>
> It was fairly common by the time I was a subscriber (1989-ish), but was
> typically an extra-cost feature, and didn't always work when roaming,
> since the rioaming carrier often intercepted the call with their error
> message rather than send it back to your home carrier.

in other words, not common

> > roaming access numbers were kinda cool actually, it made it so that you
> > had a local number wherever you were, eliminating the ridiculous
> > roaming fees.
>
> I don't recall that part of it- you still paid the roaming fees, but it
> did give the locals a break- they could dial a local number to reach you,
> but the folks back home had to pay LD.

i remember paying $1/min for roaming, plus a $3/day 'roaming access
fee' for any roaming calls. it was ridiculous.

tlvp <[email protected]> wrote in
news[email protected]:

> Oh, thanks :-) . And those 100 minutes airtime ... last a month before
> expiring? only expire when you forget to renew according to your
> PagePlus renewal scheme? other?
>
> And don't apologize, please -- what's a missing tidbit or two among
> friends?
>
>

Your pageplus balance NEVER "expires" on the per-minute prepaid plan IF
you simply buy "anything" within the 120 days since the last time you
bought anything. That anything is simply any Pageplus PIN from any
source, like Callingmart.com, pageplus itself, or a plastic card from
your local prepay phone store (never discounted...yecch!).

I'd like to clear up the 100 minutes. There really is no "MINUTES"
anywhere in Pageplus. Everything you see with the company is MONEY-
based. There are no "minute balances" on your account. Your balance is
$49.39. Now, how fast that money is consumed depends on where that money
comes from. If your balance comes from an $80 PIN or card purchased from
any source, the per-minute cost of that part of your money is charged at
4c/minute when you make a call. If your balance comes from a $10 card
(say 5 of them purchased and entered at various times), every time you
make a call, your balance will drop TEN cents for every minute of use....
The cards in between these extremes have different per-minute rates. The
computer will use the time in the order it was purchased. When an $80
card's deposit is used up and the next card in line is a $10 card, you'll
see the RATE CHARGED has changed per minute, with no explanation. It's
always BEST to recharge Pageplus with the $80 card to get the lowest
rate. If you can buy that $80 card for $50 from Johnny's Bar and Lounge,
the rate at which the $80 that was added to the system is used up is
STILL 4c/min on the system. But, you only paid $50 in cash for $80 in
credit to that system, so your actual cost is 50/80 X 4c/min = .625 X
4c/min = 2.5c/minute in actual expense to you. See how it works?

There are no "minutes" balances like many other carriers, even Verizon.
You buy $50 per month and get 450 minutes on a standard Verizon plan (I
don't know what their current rates are, just guessing, but it doesn't
matter.) $50/450 = 11.11c/minute ONLY IF YOU USE ALL 450 MINUTES IN A
MONTH. If you use 168 minutes that month, not the whole 450 minutes and
give back 282 minutes because VZW doesn't roll over month-to-month, your
phone calls cost $50/168 = 29.76c/minute FOR THE SAME SERVICE PP would
sell you for $3.7c/min on a discounted $80 PIN! It's incredible anyone
actually would sign a CONTRACT for 2 years to get screwed this way. The
less you use VZW, the MORE expensive it gets! If you don't USE any
minutes on PagePlus, your monthly expense is only 50 cents for Verizon's
phone service....same coverage, same towers, same technology...even the
same voicemail system as Pageplus uses Verizon's VM system, too!

I'd NEVER go back to becoming a cellphone slave even if they gave me a
new 12Ghz, 24" gold laptop plus a new Droid X to sign that contract.
That's insane!

Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote in news:wtSro.14534$nB7.10063
@newsfe22.iad:

> All PP refills (which the initial fill counts as) are good for 120 days.
>

Not quite true. All your balances roll over into the next 120 day period
if you simply buy anything before your 120 days is up....including this
initial balance.

The minimum charge you have to pay is $10 every 120 days = 8.3c/day. Of
course, that's YOUR balance, not a charge, which is only 50c/month.

Hachiroku <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> Do you work for the company?
>
> It would appear you haven't hit any Roaming yet. Here in East Overshoe
> they cover almost everywhere I need to go, except to the west of
> Brattleboro VT. Then you hit a roaming area, at $0.29 a minute! Still
> less expensive than almost all the others, but with my Verizon phone
> it's on the network. I have yet to hit roaming with Verizon.
>
> Not to say PagePlus is bad. I activated the phone Verizon gave me when
> they took over Unicel and am going to take it around with me to see if
> I hit any roaming areas. So far, from their map, that's the only place
> I need to go where I would hit roaming. If they were to resolve that
> they would probably have a customer for quite a while.
>
> Other than that it looks like a great deal. Unlimited talk, text and
> 20MB data from $45. I use about 7-9 MB a month, and Verizon was
> charging me $29 a month (Palm Treo 755) until I told them I was
> leaving. Now it's $1.99 a meg, and the $14 is still cheaper when I use
> it.
>
>
> There's also a small roaming area in Hinsdale NH and out near Jaffery,
> but in either case if I take a different road I either get no service
> or no roaming.
>
>
>

No, I'm not even a Pageplus dealer. I'm retired, and want to stay that
way. Pageplus just lets me have a cheap phone service so I don't have to
go back to work and be a slave again.

Pageplus has a 1200 minutes talk, 1200 text messages, 50MB data plan for
$29.95, discounted 7% at Callingmart.com would cost you $27.85 at the
current discount PIN rate. Nothing rolls over on those plans, they are
30 days in length. It's back to paying month to month. I think the
roaming rate is cheaper on these monthly plans, but can't remember and am
too lazy to look it up on the PP webpage for you.... I only buy phone
service from PP and use so little a monthly plan makes no sense until you
use up about 700-800 minutes per month.

If I had roaming areas, I'd simply activate the voicemail I now have shut
down and turn off the phone or ignore it in roaming areas and let them
talk to the voicemail until I got back in range....They can wait.

Hachiroku <[email protected]> wrote in news:i8otko$skg$2
@tioat.net:

> What's the "double dialing" thing?
>
> I think I had to do that with Sprint a long time ago, but it was a LONG
> time ago!
>
>
>

If you go into a roaming situation, PP forces you to double dial so you
absolutely KNOW you are paying the roaming rate. It keeps their support
from having to argue with irate users too stupid to know what the solid
triangle that's always hard to see on a phone means. I think there is a
voice message on the first dial warning you it's gonna cost you plenty,
then you have to dial something again as instructed.




While we're talking about voice instructions, every time you make a call,
between when you press SEND and when it starts ringing, Pageplus tells
you in a female voice what your current balance is before this call.
THEN, if you let the OTHER party hang up and keep listening after they
do, PP tells you what your balance is AFTER this call so you can compare,
and subtract if you haven't been in American public schools in the last
20 years where subtraction is a college course, to get your call cost.
AFTER she reads you the ending call balance, if you continue to listen,
she tells you when your next DUE DATE is when your plan expires, which is
a very nice reminder of when you must recharge your account to continue
your service.

If you screw up and forget to recharge....and have been a good
customer....the nice ladies in Ohio, not Bangledesh, CAN and DO allow you
to call in a little late after your phone goes dead, APOLOGIZE for being
a dunce and they will RESTORE your old balance when you buy more
time....and all is forgiven. They don't have to do that, but will if
you're CIVIL and NICE....(c;]

......and don't do it too often, I suspect.

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected]
says...
>
> Steve Sobol <[email protected]> wrote in news:MPG.27190943ae7f3cd7989a58
> @news.justthe.net:
>
> > Now, I'm not saying you contribute nothing. I'm saying that when you
> > post about stuff that you are not familiar with, it's generally
> > speculation, and completely inaccurate. That's obnoxious, and when you
> > post completely inaccurate stuff, I'm *going to call you on it.*
> >
>
> Unlike Steve Sobol, who knows everything, I post my personal opinions,
> experiences and observations.


Which wouldn't be a problem if you labeled them as opinions. But you
don't.



--
Steve Sobol, Apple Valley, California, USA
[email protected]

Steve Sobol <[email protected]> wrote in news:MPG.2719b95493134568989a59
@news.justthe.net:

> Which wouldn't be a problem if you labeled them as opinions. But you
> don't.
>
>

Even the dimmest bulbs in the box should ASSUME anything anyone here says
is their personal OPINION and knowledge, subject to them being human and
including the human ability to be grossly mistaken.

.....well, except YOU, of course.