lansbury

Thanks good suggestion. I've got to go into the local store to get a new SIM card so nothing lost in asking. If the store isn't helpful I'll call retention when my contract expires Oct 7th.

Jan Alaska

I tried StraightTalk pay as you go and they are crap. Coverage is very limited, for $45 a month I got 'unlimited service' which turned out to mean I dont get any coverage 20 miles away from home and data is capped.
In my experience pay as you go phones over here are as much of a rip off as contracts.
I've now given up the cell phone habit and have been tether free for nearly 2 months.

hungryhorace

Straight Talk are well known for being shifty ****ers, that you've had this experience is no surprise. The coverage is fine though, as you're using AT&T's network.

scrubbedexpat099

Or as it used to be known Cingular Sucks.

ChocolateBabz

The dude and I both bought iphone 4s's from virginmobileusa. We had to buy the phones, his was $650 at the time, mine was $450 a bit later and i think they might be reduced again. We get unlimited text and data and 300 mins talk for $30 a month each (inc an extra $5 off for paying by direct deposit or whatever tey call direct debit). Saved hundreds over a contract plan.

hungryhorace

..yet you're stuck on Sprint, which is the country's most useless network. 3G speeds are no more than 2mbit, and LTE sucks by all accounts. I could not EVER think of a reason why I would choose Sprint over AT&T prepaid.

scrubbedexpat099

AT&T have crap coverage in Colorado, mind you Sprint is probably no better.

Jan Alaska

Our choice in NoMi is AT&T and Verizon (very patchy coverage) when we moved I priced coverage from them both. $150 / month plus taxes ($178) for 2 phones with 500mb shared data, text and talk. Both companies insisted we needed new phones even though I have a one year old smart phone that has no problem accepting a O2 sim card when I am in the UK, for some reason their sim cars are special so "probably won't work in your phone"
In the end I tried Straightalk, the Samsung phone was crappy and cheap and had huge coverage problems as it was trying to use verizon towers.
I have totally given up on having a cell over here, I have just completed a second 3,700 mile trip from Alaska to Michigan and used my O2 card, I used the phone to cal ahead to hotels and text hubby and still the total cost over 7 days was only £4.

lansbury

That is the way I have been thinking.

Stay with ATT and pay $90 a month part of which I assume covers the cost of new phones every two years which I wouldn't be taking. Over 2 years $2160

Stay with ATT and upgrade my phone for $299 and pay $90 a month for 2 years - $2459

Buy unlocked GSM phone from Apple for $749 and pay T-Mobile $60 a month. Over 2 years that works out - $2189 and no contract.

At this point I started wondering if ATT would reduce the tariff if you didn't upgrade and found some information online that they might. Suggestions on this thread show similar savings with ATT PAYG, and others. Anyway UPS will be delivering an unlocked iPhone this morning, a week earlier than expected, so I'll get a new sim from ATT for the remaining 3 weeks of my contract and ask them about charges when it expires.

kodokan

We do exactly this, buy the phone we want, and just pay for the best straightforward non-contract package after that; I ran the same numbers and you save hundreds. I've been running my 'brought it with me from Europe' unlocked iPhone 4 on T Mobile for a couple of years, which has the added advantage that when I go back to the UK, I just drop a UK sim in it and it costs me around 5 quid for calls, text and data for a couple of weeks.

We've just ordered 2 of the new iPhones unlocked from Apple, which we'll put on the T Mobile family plan: $50 for 1st device, $30 for 2nd, $10 thereafter. Number One Son will get my old iPhone 4, and $10 for all his calls, texts and data is a steal (Daughter will have hubby's old iPod Touch cascaded down the family tech stream, so everybody's a winner).

I think the T Mobile marketing strategy of clearly detaching the phone from the line rate is a game changer and I want to see where the market goes over the next year or two, so I like the freedom of buying outright and not being locked into agreements. It reassures me that if we had a sudden income disaster, I could just go to prepaid call charges for a few dollars a month, and save that expense.

We've been saving up for these iPhones for most of this year - I had a special line in my budget software for 'new iThings' and the notional pot now stands at $1700, so they're satisfyingly fully funded (I am old-fashioned and conservative about not borrowing for consumer goods). I'll do the same again: pay myself, say, $75 a month for the next 18-24 months, so the money's there ready to buy new ones in the future. We don't have a landline - it seems silly nowadays, who wants to talk to a house? - so the overall expense is acceptable.

ChocolateBabz

Maybe I'm lucky where we are, coverage seems pretty good and we only lost data in some of the more remote parts of our 4000 mile summer road trip. I can't complain. Hubby has an AT&T 4s through his work and it's only a squidge faster, not enough to screw an extra $60 x 2 a month out of me. Neither of us are huge phone users, the dude texts a lot more than me and to be honest I just like having the phone when i am out and about in case I break down. I really didn't need such a fancy phone but the boys kept rubbing their's in my face so i threw a wobbler until I got one