Daley Ponderings

I really like the pre paid phone plans myself. T-Mobile used to have a deal where you got free incoming text messages and email... not anymore. :(

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We just got a letter from Cingular saying that they are going to start charging an extra $5/month in order to keep the TDMA phones, and will discontinue TDMA entirely in February 2008.

Since they won't let us keep our current plan with a new phone, it is far cheaper to just pay the $5/month until they kill it, and then we will have to go shopping - I haven't been that impressed with Cingular - it is too bad they bought out AT&T's wireless service.

Mike: We also have used the prepaid plans, but the prices went up a while ago, and I was able to get this cheap plan, so it was better to do this plan instead.

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True to their word, Cingular tacked on a $5 charge this month for using a TDMA phone.

They won't let me keep my current plan either, so we will probably end up switching to another company, but we will probably wait until they terminate the account, since I can't get anything cheaper, even with the $5/month extra charge.

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They haven't threatened our prepaid phones yet, although they did send us a special deal offering to replace our phone with a fancy new one. ("And you can even keep your old phone number.") We didn't bite because the prepaid deal we would have to swtich to is not as good, and the new phone features I don't care about anyway and would just clutter up the phone (Internet, text messaging, and such). But I assume it's the first step in trying to get everyone to change over.

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Okay, I'm not happy with Cingular right now, and I'll write about it eventually but I've spent the last half hour or so on the phone after a hot bike ride and I have to get away from the computer and into the pool...

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Peter is supposed to tell me about a virgin mobile $6/month prepaid deal.

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Yeah, if I hadn't JUST locked myself in to Cingular because they didn't tell me BEFORE I spent my $100 that MY plan is probably going away in early 2007 rather than February 2008. I can keep those minutes for a year if I accept their switchover offer, but my existing (large number) minutes will only last 30 days. The third person I talked to (after spending $100 supposedly for a year's service with the old phone) told me that. The first two (before purchase) said there would be no problem. The third person was really nice, but I'm afraid she's probably the one who is right. Maybe I'll kick and scream and try to get a refund on the non-refundable purchase...or maybe I'll cave in and take the plan I don't like with the phone I don't like because it's the path of least resistance.... Or maybe after dinner I won't be so grumpy. (The shower helped; couldn't swim because of the lightning.)

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We have now decided that I will carry our current cell phone with me all the time for Lime Daley.
So, I purchased a phone through Virgin Mobile yesterday. The plan is $5/month plus taxes, for a half hour of talk time, and since it is a prepaid plan, the minutes roll-over.
It is almost worth considering dropping our Cingular phone too, though on Cingular, I think incoming emails are free, and on Virgin Mobile they are $.05/message - actually, I am not sure if the VM phone does email, or if it only does text messaging.

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We got our new Virgin Mobile phone yesterday. It is a Nokia Shorty and it looks like it is a pretty neat phone.
I had already picked the phone out on the website, but called Virgin Mobile to ask if they knew if Sprint was planning on cancelling their support for this phone any time soon, and then we would be in the same situation as we were before with Cingular. She hadn't heard anything of the sort, and I also called Sprint, and they said the same thing. Apparently, Sprint doesn't share cell phone transmitters like most of the other companies, so they use a CDMA/PCS protocol, and that is all they support, so they aren't going to cancel it. The bad part of that is the coverage looks like it is way less than Cingular, or most other coverage maps that I have seen. It looks like it is fine in cities and along highways, but they don't really do anything outside of that, and appear to have something against Wyoming and Maine, as it appears that don't have any coverage in either state. I am not sure if it will work in my parents' town, might be right on the edge.

The lady tried to get me to buy a different phone (this one was free), but I told her I really didn't care about all the features, just wanted to talk. She did sort of understand that, though she would rather have me pay her money. In any case, the phone has a bunch of nifty features:

• 3 oz
• built-in LED flashlight
• timer and stop watch - Heather mentioned that every once in a while she wished she had a stopwatch
• Solid charger connector - (our Motorola C353 phone is almost impossible to charge, since the pins are so wimpy)
• text messaging and email - 5 cents per message, but since 1 minute of talk time costs 18 cents, it is cheaper for Heather to send a text message when she arrives at work to pick me up, rather than calling. Watch out - pretty soon Heather will be one of those kids who have overgrown thumb muscles from all the typing with their thumbs... The Virgin Mobile guy said it didn't do email, but I sent one last night, so I guess it does.
• Fun ringers are built-in - though it doesn't have any "plain" rings, only "MoreKrunkness", "TechnoLoop", etc.
• Black and white screen, which means you can see it without the backlight on, and also gives it a longer battery life - 8 days of non-use and 4 hours of calls
• Don't forget the games, Jonathan and I played the snake game, where you eat the critters and your tail grows longer until you end up crashing into your tail. Jonathan also tried to play a driving game, though you use all of the numeric buttons to drive, accelerate, brake, steer, shoot other cars, etc. so it is a rather complicated game, and Jonathan soon gave up, and tried entering some numbers into the address book. He didn't manage to dial anything fortunately...

Virgin Mobile is trying to be "hip" or something, when you call them, it answers the phone, "Hey, whazz' up? This is Simone with Virgin Mobile, and I will be taking care of you today." The voice recognition is actually really good, compared to lots of companies. I think it only misheard me once, when it wanted me to say "get new service", rather than just "new service", but it correctly heard everything else I said which was pleasant. I did laugh when the Virgin Mobile representative told me that their web site would have all the answers to my questions, and I could always "call *VM and talk to Simone" if I needed anything. It is like it is a person or something. I presume that Simone is the CEO's daughter, or an actress or something. Not a very exciting relationship, in any case.

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Oh it has some sort of GPS or signal triangulator to let 911 dispatchers know where the phone is. I don't think you can use it for anything yourself, though I will have to check that out. It turns on automatically when you call 911, and stays on for 5 minutes after you hang up.

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Okay, I'm not so unhappy with Cingular now. In fact, they were quite nice at the local store, and converting things over went much more smoothly than I had anticipated, once I got all the facts, e.g. I do get to keep my old minutes instead of having to use them up in 30 days. The plan is still not as nice as our old plan in some ways (higher per-minute charge) but better in others (no roaming fees). And the phone I was able to get isn't as bad as advertised, either: It's a Motorola C139, about as plain vanilla as you can get -- though the screen is still color -- but has some nice features (like vibrate) that my old phone didn't. And I have to say I am looking forward to GREATLY increased time between battery charges.

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Virgin Mobile just sent me an email that I can get $20 if I get other people to sign up with them, so if you are in the market to get a cell phone, let me know, and I can give you directions to get the discount.