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Living Without a Cellphone

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41–44 of 44 posts

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#41
It's amazing how people think the only options are unlimited or nothing. A prepaid ptel 5c/min 2c/text plan is great for essential communication. Combine with a forwarding service like Google voice where you can turn on/off text and call forwarding and the costs are extremely low. But the fear of overages and unwillingness to manage the details drive a lot of people to choose no service.

All those stories about thousand dollar bills were great marketing that drove tons of low usage customers to unlimited plans.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#42
post #20

This 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.

Do it. T-Mobile is great. And they will pay your ETFs.

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

#43
I've not had a cell phone for over 10 years, except for a period of time when my job wanted me on call, so they paid for a blackberry... even then however I very rarely used it except a way to check my email without having to get out my laptop.

In 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

#44
post #38

Earlier 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...

The trick is to ask for a tablet SIM or mobile internet SIM for a laptop. Don't say it's for your phone.
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