Mrogers... I know I have bothered you about this a thousand times.. but I went to the AT&T store to ask about the GoPhone. Two employees there (and then they called a third on the phone) told me that if we don't use the texts by the end of the month they don't roll over. I didn't think that was what you were telling me. They said maybe you were grandfathered in to another plan? The service there was terrible (and I went to two different stores) and I didn't get the idea they had any clue what they were talking about.
To the OP: We have been happy with tracfone. We pay $100 a year (plus the cost of a phone.. anywhere between $10-$50) and that gets us plenty of minutes for what we need.
BlakeNJ, read way down on the bottom....
Zoemurr, there's no contract to be grandfathered in with a pre-paid phone
Just like everywhere (read the Apple warranty thread) you first have people working at these places who don't know what they are talking about (a lot of holiday hire out there right now) and you have companies/employees wording what they say weird to make you think something different.
If you purchase texts on December 1st, you get them for 28 (I think, from here on I will just say a month) days. Upon December 28th, if you do not renew a text package, they indeed do not roll over. If you do renew a texting package, they will roll over.
What the sales person is probably explaining is, you upload $15 to the account. That expires in a month. Purchase 1000 texts for $10, that expires in a month. The end of the month, you upload another $15 to your account. That continues the active phone but does not roll the leftover texts over to the next month. That is what the sales person is probably saying. You still have to purchase a text package from the uploaded $15 in the account. That continues the active texting package and the texts you had left roll over.
I just got caught by all this as it can be confusing. I added $25 for 3 months to both mine and my wife's phones. A month later I bought a 3rd phone for my daughter and added $25 for 3 months. Last week I had $9 on my account and $9 on my wife's account. I only needed the $5/200 texts for my phone so bought the 200 text package. My wife needed $10/1000 texts in which she did not have enough money in the account. So, I uploaded another $15 and purchased $10 worth of texts. I was thinking that our account funds was still good for another month, thus I did not extend mine by uploading money since I had enough to purchase texts. Low and behold, I get home from work and my wife is asking why I didn't respond to her texts today. At work, I was busy, but checked my phone thinking it was unusual that she hadn't texted me all day. My monetary account had expired and I lost the few $ that was on there. My texts were still active, but without the phone being active with money on the account, nothing was getting through or going out.
See, I understand how you are confused because it is confusing. I understand it quite well and still messed up. I messed up one other time in the summer when I lost 900 texts on my phone and about 300 texts on my wife's phone because I missed the day the texts expire. Now I have 3 phones and while all the text packages are currently due the same day, I've got the money account screwed up enough now that each phone is due to upload money on a different month. My head is starting to spin from it, LOL.
Good thing is, they just added a $10 amount that you can upload to the account, so I'll just do that with each phone each month that needs it (daughter's phone has I think 1 month left, wife's phone now is at 2 months, and mine expired and renewed but is now off by a week from being the same day of the month) until they are all due at the same time again. I wish it was all one account, but sadly each phone is an individual account.
Ok, now for BlakeNJ
Here's the quick (or not so quick) rundown on GoPhone....
1. Buy GoPhone and activate.
2. Upload money to AT&T account via internet, card purchased in the store and redeem the card, or at the AT&T store. Keep the phone activated month to month and the money rolls over. Allow the term to expire and you lose the money in the account (what happened to me today that I laid out up above there.)
- -$10 and $15 is good for 28 days (I think, I'll say month from now on.)
-$25, $50, or $60 uploaded is good for 3 months
-$100 is good for 365 days.
3. You have phone and you are activated with money in your GoPhone account. You still have to purchase from that account a calling and text package.
- $50/month unlimited everything (no sure on data with android phone)
Calling (don't know all of them off-hand)
- 250 minutes for $25 for the month. Minutes I believe roll over if you purchase before the month expires.
- $2 on only the days you use the phone, unlimited on that day
- $0.10/minute which is what I use since I don't make calls very often
Texting - all is for 1 month. Texts roll over if repurchased before they expire
- 200 texts for $5
- 1000 texts for $10
- unlimited texts for $20
Data - Since last April, you can only have data if you are on the unlimited or the $25/month 250 minute calling package. I don't and the numbers changed so below may not be accurate.
-500mb data for $5
-1 gb data for $10
Example, my wife texts about 700/month
I upload $25 for 3 months in January. Purchase 1000 texts in January for $10 and has $15 left on account. She uses 700 in January and has 300 left at the end.
Purchase 1000 texts for $10 in February giving her 1300 texts and $5 left on the account. She uses 700 in February and has 600 left at the end.
Purchase 200 texts for $5 in March giving her 800 texts and account is now at $0.
Upload $25 for April and repeat the above again with purchasing 1000 texts.
That would allow no calling though since our calling would be $0.10/month. We have made a few calls here and there which is how I ended up with a non-factor of $5 on the accounts to purchase texts. Just don't have it in the budget until after Christmas to just dump $100 for 365 days on all 3 phones.
I figure my cost for 3 android phones (without data, wifi only) for the year will be about the cost of 3 contract phones for 1.5 months.
Hope you could follow that. It is confusing, but as long as you either have 1 phone or keep all the phones going with the same timeframe, you get the hang of it pretty quick.
