Cheap emergency cell phone plan

[charlie]

John, I took TH's input and bought 2 cell phones. A
$10 card adds 40 minutes that are good for 3 months.
Each time you add time, your remaining minutes are
extended for 3 months. This averages out to be $3.33
per month per emergency phone. Best deal I ever
had. Thanks TH!

Cheers,

Charlie

 

[John Galt]

Yep, that sounds like a great deal. It makes no sense for me to continue to pay $26 per month. Others have complained about service gaps, poor sound, etc.
A cell phone is also another "thing" in your life to fuss with.
I think Thoreau had the right idea. Simplify! Hard to do
once you get used to "livin' large" and having
expensive toys. I think I've adjusted pretty well
although I'm still far away from Walden Pond.

John Galt

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Chuck - did you get on the "12/20 plan"? It may still be valid.

Call 611 and ask them to put you on it; if pressed, tell them you got an email about it but cant remember the details.

On the 12/20 plan, they give you 20 minutes free every month for a year, and this automatically rolls your minutes over. You must add a $25 card to the phone by the end of the month of being put on this plan. After that, if you're using less than 20 minutes a month (plus the minutes your $25 got you), you dont have to pay a penny for 15 months in total (12 months for the auto rollover and then the residual minutes dont expire for an additional 3 months).

Best deal after that is to buy the $100 cards on ebay for the lowest price you can get with no tax and no shipping costs (since they just email you the code from the card). Those minutes last a full year.

So far we've used the phone 3-4 times a month, and my cost will be $1.67 a month for 15 months. After the 12/20 program runs out and I go for the $100 per year, its $8.34 a month but I'll use it more.

In fact, since the phones are free and the minutes so cheap, the next time this deal rolls around I'll probably pick up a second one and put one permanently in each of our two cars glove compartments.

However, NOT a good plan if you're spending more than 10-20 minutes a month using it. The best heavier use plan goes to my old regional carrier and their prime competitor; Surewest and MetroPCS. Forget the big name guys, these two offer unlimited incoming and outgoing minutes 24x7, and unlimited long distance nationwide for $40 a month. For two years I didnt even have a landline phone, just this and a cable modem. Call anyone anywhere and talk as long as you want for no additional cost!

 

[Nords]

"Modern" phones & cable modems

These cell phone stories remind me of the days when cars had to be hand-cranked (before starter motors) and computers had to be manually configured (before a functional version of plug & play). Maybe I need to wait a few more years.

One of my tours was on the staff of a submarine fleet commander. One morning an outbound submarine accidentally dragged their anchor and severed the channel's underwater electrical utility line. (Talk about poetic justice...) The emergency diesel generator jumped into the breach but soon coughed & died on a clogged fuel filter. Things got awful quiet & dark in our windowless high-tech high-security building. It took over an hour for the mechanics to get the diesel running again. (It probably took them one minute to do their job and 59 minutes to deal with all the shore-staff "supervision".)

That's when we realized that all our high-tech computerized scrambling classified-data phones used power from a 120V transformer, not from the phone company's line.

Five minutes later our communications department sent a shopper to the local phone store for two dozen old-fashioned phones. He had to go to three stores to fill the purchase.

So what's the solution during stormy weather or rolling blackouts? th, during that two years with just a cell phone and a cable modem, did you ever go through a power failure and need to make an emergency call?

 

[John Galt]

This is for the youngsters. I had a car phone in 1977.
You talked to the "mobile operator" (a real person)
and gave her the number you wanted to call.
As I recall it worked just fine. I don't remember what it cost.

John Galt

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Wow Nords, that was a long walk...

Indeed, general power outages can be a problem for cell-only people. I had the benefit of line of sight to a local antenna and to one across the lake I lived next to, which was in another city and county. I dont remember ever lacking signal to one or the other...and we did have frequent local power outages as a function of way too many new houses and way too little capacity being planned in.

John - I had one of those old radio phones for a while too! By my recollection it was finicky but worked if I was near to a major town, and my bills used to run in the $300-500 a month range! I remember my top bill was about $550 once. There was a big box in the trunk, a big antenna on the trunk lid, and the box with the phone in it inside the car was about the size of a small briefcase!

How times have changed.