I don't call much and I never go over my 4-500 minutes on T-mobile so I'm looking for something cheap. I have a Nexus 1 with Froyo so something compatible and I would like data so I can take advantage of the fact that my Nexus works as a hot spot. Don't need much data either. I SELDOM get online and when I do, it's never video or anything.
Thanks
George
I'm Not
I'm not on a plan.
I'm on prepaid with T-Mobile
this is the cheapest plan u will ever get
1) prepaid (you can use any T-Mobile or AT&T unlocked Phone)
2) i pay 10 dollars every 3-4 months
3) all my minutes last 1 year (or till used up)
How is this possible might you ask ?
once you spend 100 dollars on minutes you are automatically added to their Gold Rewards pre paid plan, which gives you more minutes per purchase and all your minutes last a year instead of 90 days.
NOW heres the trick
NEVER answer your phone OR make a call on it
it coasts you nothing to receive a call ONLY to answer and make them
download Skype (ON your computer) at 3 dollars a month "all you can eat" out going phone calls to any phone in the US. Once someone calls you, you call them back with Skype (assuming you do not have a home phone like me)
ALSO you can get a Skype home phone number for 20 dollars a year (i do not use this)
People will QUICKLY learn that once they call u to wait 1 min and you will call them back, If you are at home, if you are out and about there is 2 ways to handle this
1) answer the phone BUT make it short and sweet
2) if they need to get a-hold of you quickly, use one of these two steps
2a) if you did not call them back in a min (or 2) and they know you are out. after calling you have them send u a text message (this will cost you 5 cents)
2b) have them call you 2 times in a row, to let you know they need to talk asap
it took me a few month to learn this trick! so at first i had to buy lower cost per min deals (IE: 50-100 dollars at a time for 13-10 cents per minute) it's hard not to answer the phone as soon as it rings. but once you get the knack down and resist the urge to answer at once and wait a min, you can get away with buy 10 dollars at a time at 33 cents per min BUT u will barely use them! the longest i have gone without buy more minutes was around 7 months. because people feel they need to talk ASAP and cant wait till u get home, i average buying minutes every 3 to 4 months
your friends and family will pick this up REAL quick
so basically you are only paying 3 dollars a month
PLUS minutes 3-4 times a year
and when u get really good at it you can get away with buying only 10 dollars at a time (costs more per minute but you will not use them much if at all)
______________________________________________
here is a breakdown on their minutes:
Refill value * Whenever Minutes® / Minutes Expire
$10 30 min / 90 days 35 min / 1 year
$25 130 min / 90 days 150 min / 1 year
$50 400 min / 90 days 460 min / 1 year
$100 1000 min / 1 year*
Cost per minute
$100 10¢/min. 1000 minutes*
$50 13¢/min. 400 minutes
$30 19¢/min. 160 minutes
$10 33¢/min. 30 minutes
Does not include price per minute for gold rewords plan (excluding the $100)
so once u spend 100 dollars you price per minute will go down slightly
______________________________________________
DATA:
1 dollar a day (24 hours) all u can download
OR
Week Pass (7 days) * 100 MB * $10
Month Pass (30 days) * 300 MB * $30
Week Pass (7 days) * 1 GB * $50
______________________________________________
things to be forewarned of!
I had a new GF use up all my minutes one time before i knew this, JUST sending me Text Messages and i never even replied to her, i read her messages and called her:
T-Mobile Prepaid text messaging rate information
As a T-Mobile Prepaid customer, you are able to send and receive text messages to and from your phone. Text and instant messages are $0.10 each to send and $0.05 to receive in the US and Canada; $0.35 to send and $0.05 to receive everywhere else.
I dont' wish to sound ungrateful but there's no way I could stick to this 'cause I'm a dumbass. NOT that I HAVE To answer when it rings, tha'ts NOT a problem, but I'll mess it up somehow, trust me on this.
I like it though but the data plan is where it would kill me and bring me back to more normal rates anyway. I guess I could just skip the data plan. It's not like I ever bring my puter with me and when I do, I could look for a hot spot. Too bad I live out in a **** hold. Makes things harder
Thanks
I was at Wally world today and decided (per someone's recommendation) to try their family plan with unlimited talk and text and 100mb data for 45 bucks a month. Let's see how that works out. Not sure how long 100mb will last me but considering I only look up stuff like addresses, movies and phone numbers, I should be good. I Forgot to ask if there was some warning that you ran out of data usage so to speak.
Related
I recently switched to O2 (to get a cheap XDA2) on a DATA 5 tarrif, then a couple of days later I upgraded to the Anytime100 tarrif an the Data 5 together; when I go to my unbilled usage on the )2 website it shows I have not used any of my Data allowancewhen I have used about 8 meg!
Why is this?
I'd think it's highly unlikely that you'll be getting a free service.
I think you'll find that their site doesn't always update that quickly - even though some things like texts and calls appear more swiftly.
I find that sometimes my data usage appears within 48hrs, and at other times it never appears online at all (until the final bill).
This tends to be the case with any online monitoring service and is something I've noticed having used both o2 and vodafone's online billing.
So be careful, I've run up huge bills before by relying on the usage information stated on the website.
Hi
I *do* appear to be getting free data. I am on the standard 1MB/month thing, and have now had two bills without any GPRS charges on them dispite my having gone way over 1MB. Additionally, the unbilled useage form always says that I have 1MB left (unused) when I dont.
Hope it stays this way - I will be rather peeved (actually I will refuse to pay) if they suddenly lump 3 months GPRS charges onto one bill.
Nigel
2 bills without any data charges. Thats a good statistic.
In that case I'd say that either your network has really buggered up your billing or you're on a special data tariff.
I had a similar thing about 6 months ago, so I called customer support and they told me that I'd been switched onto a Free DATA tarrif not just free SMS/MMS. So now I use about 25-30mb a month.....y not :?:
So anyway, glad to hear that you're beating the system for now - :lol: - its not like the mobile networks are not totally ripping us off with their prices over here anyway. Just hope it doesn't backfire on you.
Oh just a quick question....when you say you've used 8MB on which gateway is this :?: internet or wap :?:
Hehe I was on O2 for a year and got charged nothing for mobile web gprs, despite regularly going up to 5 or even 10MB a month.
For a few months it was the same with SMS messages. Then O2 decided to send a £110 bill making up for all the months they failed to charge for SMS messages. However the gprs continued to stay free.
I am no longer on O2 now so I wont be paying them any more! Although the service im personally getting from Orange is much better than I got with O2, theyre charging my gprs correctly... ah well :roll:
Ash
I've just got a bill from O2 for minutes they apparently 'forgot' to charge me for, covering August, September, October and November, despite having received and paid itemised bills, they've now decided to charge me for another 300 minutes.
Since we're trading stories about o2.....they sent the debt collectors after me for the sum of.....wait for it.........10quid.....when it turned out they owed me 50quid. :lol:
hi all just got my monthly bill from o2 today and the cheeky buggers have charged me over a grand for gprs . the funny thing is i dont even use the gprs on my xda2i . so first port of call was to call them and ask what do they think they r playing at . i stated to them i dont even use my gprs on my phone and never have . anyway after talking to 1 of there so called managers he said that the only thing it could be is that someone has hacked into my phone and used my gprs or my gprs is broke on my phone and somehow it has been sending and reciving data . anyway i said to them so what do i do as i am not going to pay this bill of over a grand not a chance . anyway he said i had to put it in wrighting to them stating what happend and send a copy of the bill also . and he also said to cancal my direct debit so i have . the cheek of them the guy said a thousand pound was a lot of gprs data and i said maybe it is a lot of data but it has nothing to do with me . so i have just typed up a 2 page letter to them and it will be in the post first thing in the morning . i will tell u how i get on in the near future when they get back to me . anyway direct debit cancled . o2 bunch of fools why o why did i go back to this company . i have had nothing but trouble with them . just thought i would share my thoughts with all of u
Wow. What rate have they supposedly charged you at? Is it physically possible to have used that much data?
£1120 lets say at £3 p/m is 350 meg or 10 meg a day. Hmmmmm.
But lets say it's £1 a meg for big contract customers, 30 meg a day? They've gotta be kidding!
Never heard of anyone 'hacking' gprs unless they have cloned your sim in which case Jupiter ( as was the o2 billing system) would have picked up 2 handsets on the network at the same time and flagged it.
Richard
maybe u r right i am not sure . either way i dont use the gprs . on my phone and never have i use the wireless while sitting about the house ats it . still i cant wait to see what o2 have to say . coz at the end of the day i am not going to pay this bill not a chance . if ppl cant hack into My phone then the gprs must be broke or something . god i am scared to use my phone as i dont no what else they think they can bi l me for ... still life goes on eh
are you sure the charge is for gprs and not actually for dial up WAP access?
my charmer for some reason, decided to connect to the net overnight (while i was asleep) via dial up WAP even though i have a permanent and unlimited GPRS access.
i noticed this immeadiately in the morning, checked my account online and saw the £37 plus vat charges applied for WAP, called them up and had WAP disabled and the charges refunded.
the most common reason for this to happen is your email/IM or some other prog you have installed set to automatically connect to the net.
on my charmer i suspect it was actually pocket weather doing the deed.
i have applied my own back up fix "just in case" and have taken out of the dial up settings all the "9"'s and replaced them with "x"'s so it cannot dial up at all but if i should need to, i can quickly undo this fix to connect
fluffcat1 said:
Wow. What rate have they supposedly charged you at? Is it physically possible to have used that much data?
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Click to collapse
When they incorrectly charged me for two days data in March (thanks O2!!) it came to £117*.
Of course they don't do refunds, but credits, which means they still want you to pay the incorrect bill, to be credited later. Fools.
Can't wait until T-Mobile brings out the Hermes, then I'm gone from O2 forever.
(*I stream radio a lot, and use push email a lot, and download from RSS feeds a lot.)
According to my online bill i'm still not getting charged for GPRS access.
fluffcat1 said:
Wow. What rate have they supposedly charged you at? Is it physically possible to have used that much data?
£1120 lets say at £3 p/m is 350 meg or 10 meg a day. Hmmmmm.
But lets say it's £1 a meg for big contract customers, 30 meg a day? They've gotta be kidding!
Never heard of anyone 'hacking' gprs unless they have cloned your sim in which case Jupiter ( as was the o2 billing system) would have picked up 2 handsets on the network at the same time and flagged it.
Richard
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Click to collapse
I'm not actually suprised. When my corporate 9100 arrived at the beginning of using it I fortunately loaded the gprs monitor.
Our exchange support team had set the push mail up a bit heavily. In addition to email it tuned out they were pushing 700kb an hour to my phone regardless of my receiving any mail.
Until i started to read the gprs report i was running between 11-16mb a day (approx 700kb an hour background). Once I realised what it was doing I turned push off and had it running autosync every 10 mins 0700-2200 with every hour overnight (approx 40kb per hour background).
It may be corporate money, but until they sort it out 10 minute sync is good enough as at least I can control it.
Data dropped to 800k-2mb per day... much more sensible.
Its a bit like those pesky joke sms msgs, you don't know you've been charged until the end of them month.
Agree with u on 02 incompetence. They could not tell me which speed/size of SD cards are compatible with my EXec. Asked me to phone Sandisk!! Incompetence exemplified - after I held on for over an hour for technical support. Plus voicemail is not time stamped, u can't tell when they r left nor can u repeat a current msg without getting to the end of all the new messages first!!
belfast-biker said:
When they incorrectly charged me for two days data in March (thanks O2!!) it came to £117*.
Of course they don't do refunds, but credits, which means they still want you to pay the incorrect bill, to be credited later. Fools.
Can't wait until T-Mobile brings out the Hermes, then I'm gone from O2 forever.
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Click to collapse
O2 strike again. Didn't pay last months bill (my fault) of £120, and this months bill with those arrears, is £407. ON a basic rental of £35 and not going over miutes or texts.
£120 arrears (fair enough)
£35 rental
£80 data (jesus, and this is with push email turned off)
And the rest? They now want me to pay out the remainder of my contract, presumably because of my non payment last month? I don't know. They didn't say. But they do say in the email:
"The balance on your account shows that you do not owe us any money." and;
"You will see that your first bill contains two line rental charges, one for your first month and the second for the next month (in advance). "
Which is... bizarre. Total fools.
Anyhow, could not wait any longer with that level of sheer stupidity, so I've just gone and sorted myself out with the monthly £7.50/50minutes contract with T-Mobile, to wihch I'll add the £7.50 webnwalk unlimited data bundle.
Bliss.
tmobile web'n'walk is an invention of genius
£7.50 a month, as much data as you can possibly get out of it provided it's not p2p or streaming video
makes push email unnecessary when you can set your email to check every couple of minutes
agentp said:
tmobile web'n'walk is an invention of genius
£7.50 a month, as much data as you can possibly get out of it provided it's not p2p or streaming video
makes push email unnecessary when you can set your email to check every couple of minutes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought that too, but push email gives you OTA syncing of your calendar, contacts and tasks too...
Well I've finally been able to pay off my last contract and am now on sim only! this allows me 500 mb per month (Nice perk) for £10 /m including 250 mins and texts. On orange. It's about time.
BUT! hold on there. I love the idea of being able to use data now but I need some sort data counter so I don't breach that 500 meg limit. Is there any software that can warn me or do this in the background. I remember a gprs data tool back in the day with my M500. Anyone got any links?
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/pocketpc-software/wirelessmonitor/
Guys, does anyone offer minutes that never expire or at least last a year or so? I don't call much and besides, I want this as a backup phone/option.
Thanks
George
AT&T here in the states have plans that include rollover anytime mins that carry over up 12 months.
I have like 10,000 rollover minutes with AT&T
Most UK Pay as you go options don't have a time limit on the credit applied. So that should sort of work.
Thanks but ATT here is too expensive for me. They also charge extra 30 or so just for you to use your phone as a hot spot so it comes to around 100 which is why I switched from them to t mobile.
The idea is NOT to buy a monthly plan with rollover mins. I never use that many mins. Just something paid up front with x amount of mins for the phone, texting and x amount of gigs of data transfer and that does not expire for instance for a year if you don't use it.
That or some really cheap monthly fee with similar features.
Thanks
Maybe I am behind the grading curve on this, but I just found out about it today.
Groove IP allows you to make VOIP calls using your google voice number on both wifi and 3g/4g.
It integrates almost seamlessly with the phone. I just had to replace the stock dialer short cut in go launcher with this one.
so far i freaking love it. You can hardly tell the difference between using it and a regular voice connection.
It cost 4.99 on the market, but I think its worth it.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.gvoip&hl=en
I purchased it a few months ago and love it. I just uninstalled it purely because I have no use for it anymore (went on my own plan and only used 24 of 450 minutes last month lol)
yutzybrian said:
I purchased it a few months ago and love it. I just uninstalled it purely because I have no use for it anymore (went on my own plan and only used 24 of 450 minutes last month lol)
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lol that makes sense. I have a family plan, and it seems every time I try to go down to the lowest monthly plan (700 for fam plans) we ALWAYS go over on min, but then I get the NEXT PLAN UP, which is their 1600 min plan with the 10 numbers you get to choose to call for free. I dont even know 10 people, so I add teh numbers I call all the time, and now i only use about 100 min of my 1600 min plan, but I pay like 2x the price.
I think im going to try to go back down to the 700 min plan now, My wife and I are grandfathered in on the 29.99 truly unlimited data plan so this makes more sense, provided it actually works as well as it should.
AND, I can use it on my tablet whenever I decide to get one