Utterly Meaningless

I’ve used Virgin Mobile prepaid for 6 years now. When I want a new phone, I buy the phone, go online and make the transfer. Within half an hour, I’m using my new phone. Very easy.

As long as I stay up to date, all of my money goes to airtime. Set to auto top-up when I hit $5 or 90 days, my minimum is $15. If I don’t burn airtime, my yearly cost is slightly over $60.

The most expensive phone I’ve seen from VM about $100. The cheapest phones work just fine – I paid $10 for the kids and made it back with airtime at sign up.

I bought my first phone at Walmart. That was before Alltel took over the system. Walmart still sells phones but the selection is rather pitiful. The one I ended up ordering from Alltel was $0.99 with no contract. Minimum airtime purchase is $10 (67 minutes) every two months. I use my phone for work, so $10 rarely lasts longer than a month. I have it set to autofill once a month.

For someone who doesn’t need hundreds of minutes a month, prepaid is the way to go. A side benefit is that the kids can’t run up a bill. Friends with regular plans have been shocked with $300 phone bills.

Tell me about it ………the eldest son who thought texting was stupid when we got our plan racked up $54. in text. We added unlimited texting to our plan for $30

Since we only have cell phones we went with unlimited minutes and 4 phones. Now we have unlimited texting too.

How much does an unlimited plan w/ 4 phones run? Alltel would run $400/month. That’s a bit more than I’d like to spend. 🙂

And Verizon Wireless is $510!

We have three phones with almost unlimited (more than we can use) on one Sprint family plan. About $100 per month. The fourth phone would be another $15 per mo. —

Of the three only Favorite Daughter has texting, email, photos and internet access though.

That sounds illegal. They can’t hold you hostage over the phone number since the phone number portability act. Transfer it to Virgin Mobile. My bill averages about $15 a month.

I’ve been using Virgin Mobile prepaid for over a year now. I’m not a really heavy phone user, so my cost averages about $10/month, and the phone I have was only $15. Everything I’ve needed to do to activate or change my account can be done online without hassling with real, live people.

I like dealing with CS at Alltel. The last time I called them, the 20-something CSR was seriously flirting with me. Did my 46-year-old heart some good. 🙂

Flirting with you? Must not have seen you in that hat!

I sound much better looking than I look. 🙂

What’s wrong with the hat? He’s just not your type Sam.

Verizon here. $70/mo for mom, plus $10 each for two kids (boys), plus $5 for texting for one of those kids. Not unlimited, but a lot of minutes for all (700?), plus a lot of texts for the college kid (250?). Good signal everywhere. We get some kind of deal through hubby’s company – I think these are common and I bet your co has one too.

If you have girls, of course, all bets are off.