cell phone plans (urgh!)

[alfio]

looking into cell phone plans and i wanted to see what thinkpadders are doing on that front

i've got a month to month deal with t-mobile and am very tempted to renew for a 2 year contract under their $49.99 family (x2=$98+) plan but i'm concerned about the at&t merger (not a huge fan of at&t and i'd hate to end up there by default) and also concerned about the thousands of t-mobile customers fleeing elsewhere (not sure where they are going)... none of the other carriers have any plans that have reasonable rates for talk+text+data... ideas???

[ajkula66]

Well, the merger is on hold as of now, and probably won't go as smoothly as AT&T would want to.

Whatever plan you choose with T-Mobile right now will be grandfathered - at least for some time - if and when the merger takes place, so I wouldn't be too worried about it.

In the end, there will be just two overisized and obese Baby Bells handling the wireless customers in this country - Verizon and AT&T.

My employer provides the cell phone I'm using, but we have my wife's phone and a data USB stick with T-Mobile under a 2-year contract that expires late next year, so I'm somewhat in the same boat...although, unlike you, I have no issues with getting my service from AT&T in the future as long as they honour the deal I have now.

In all fairness, AT&T owns five or more cell sites for every one that T-Mobile does, so there is really no comparison in coverage nationwide. Take it from someone who's involved in this industry on daily basis, and does not work for either AT&T or T-Mobile...

My $0.02 only...

Happy hunting.

[jdk]

Worst decision I've made with phones. I went from pay as you go with TMobile to a contract plan, since I get military discount on it. If I were you, I would go with mysimplemobile.com, which uses the T-Mobile network, but with cheaper prices. I could tell you my horror story from January, but it would take too long. The gist of it is that the pay as you go vs contract act as two separate entities within T-Mobile, and have no communication with one another; I ended up with four lines and two phones that I never saw but ended up having to pay for, with drug dealers calling my new lines all the time. It's fixed now, but the whole process took two months to resolve, including one customer service call where I was forwarded to seven different departments. If ATT takes T-Mobile and puts every one of those criminals out of a job, I'd be happy.

[ajkula66]

jdk wrote:

I ended up with four lines and two phones that I never saw but ended up having to pay for, with drug dealers calling my new lines all the time.

Talk about a missed business opportunity...you could've made some serious $$$$$$$ as a middleman...

[BillMorrow]

Talk about a missed business opportunity...you could've made some serious $$$$$$$ as a middleman...

<LOL>