All those stories about thousand dollar bills were great marketing that drove tons of low usage customers to unlimited plans.
Living Without a Cellphone
41–44 of 44 posts
Re: Living Without a Cellphone
#42This is the big reason why I switched to T-Mobile. Yes, the coverage is limited outside of urban and suburban areas. I live in a major city so it works for me. My AT&T Wireless bill had crept up to about $280 and that's with one line "grandfathered" onto their smartphone data block. (AT&T started requiring that smartphones have a data package or be blocked entirely from data if the smartphone was already on the accou…
I'm in a very similar situation that you were in: I'm on Verizon with 3 lines, 1 of them grandfathered into unlimited data. Over several years the monthly bill has crept up to $230-$250. Since it went up slowly I never thought much about it, until I reviewed last year's finances and realized what had happened. T-Mobile is looking very enticing.
Customer service is great. I recently had a billing mishap (their end, ended up $30 over) and to make it up to me, they discounted my account by $30/month for a yr. This is magical compared to the shitty customer service with Sprint and Version.
Re: Living Without a Cellphone
#43In any case, I haven't found it inconvenient hardly at all, except in the occasional situation such as a car breakdown. I do find it inconvenient when traveling however, but I usually only travel once or twice a year so I usually just load some minutes onto an old tracphone for those occasions
It is not really a money issue for me because I could probably afford to stay up to date with the latest and greatest gadget if I wanted to, but it is more of a philosophical issue for me. It seems phones today are designed to command as much of your attention as possible, and it seems that most of the phone usage that I observe is not a necessity. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but I do believe it makes it more difficult to live a balanced life. It is essentially the same reason that I don't watch or pay for television and movies.
These days, I'm not even sure it is less convenient to live the way I do... with all of the security & surveillance issues that have been cropping up, I am glad that I have inadvertently sidestepped a lot of the issues that are being revealed.
Re: Living Without a Cellphone
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cut costs way down by getting a "data-only" SIM for my iPhone and using a VOIP provider. Call quality in poor signal (e.g. 2G) areas is terrible, but in urban areas with HSPA or LTE, it works great. I talk very little. Look for the "flex-rate" plans that Rogers/Telus/etc offer. I sometimes pay as little as $5/mo if I don't use my phone, it scales with data usage.
No carrier ever accepted to sell me a data-only plan for my phone. I've been trying for a long time...