Fuck a Verizon Wireless!

[The D]

Wow, this board's been quiet.

Anyway, I just got a newer color cell phone yesterday for free to replace my B&W brick. This phone can do internet, download games and shit, IM, and all sorts of crap. That's not the bad part.

The bad part is my service. I was originally on Verizon's FreeUP, which is an average price of $15 a month. However, Verizon decided to come up with two new prepay plans. The first one is called EasyPay and charges the criminal price of $50-70 a month. The second plan, INpulse, is, according to their website, $.99 a day ($30 a month) access with free calling to other Verizon phones or after 9pm, but .10 a minute if you call any other time. So, in other words, you have to pay $30 a month PLUS a bunch more just to use the damn phone. I guess the access fee is to be able to use the "most reliable network" which I know is a bunch of soggy horseshit because I'm always getting fuzzy connections.

Currently I think my cell phone is still on the old FreeUP plan, but who knows when they'll phase that out. Which means I'll have to switch plans to something that doesn't suck like Verizon.

I'm thinking of going with Virgin. But whatever I switch to, I'll have to buy a new phone. The phone I have can't switch service providers. Which is why this shit sucks.

[Extra Zero]

All pre-paid plans that offer decent service are going to cost alot.  

[IDE]

Get a regular plan like eveyrone who doesn't live in the hood.

[Extra Zero]

He's probably got no credit...

[B E C K]

What about those pay-as-you-go phones?  Anyone know the verdict on those?

[Bitch]

I use Virgin Mobile's Day-2-Day plan. It's $.35 a day and $.10 a minute, and $.05 to send text messages. You can buy cards from $20-$100, and you have to top-up once every three months for your account to stay active. There isn't a very wide range of phones to choose from, but the ones they have are pretty affordable. I got mine - a Kyocera K9, nothing fancy but it's durable and I can get ringtones - for $25, and it came with $20 in minutes. It's perfect if you don't talk on the phone much, and if you buy a $20 card every couple weeks you can rack up a pretty good balance.  

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

TracFone is big in my area.  I don't think you pay anything for that aside from the minute cards.

[Bernie AKA]

Same here, Bitch.  My brother is traveling a lot on his job now, so he & his partner got a Cingular family plan for the free phone-to-phone long distance. Eddie's always had a company phone, so fuck paying $50 a month for a plan.   I've had no complaints and get minutes from the website.  However, since the numbers are keyed to the phones, I don't know if you can keep the same number if you lose or damage the phone.  There's probably something about this in the manual I haven't read.  B)  

[Bitch]

You can. My dad tried it with my sister's phone and she couldn't use her's for a couple days until she got the service back to her own phone rather than some non-existant other phone that suddenly had her service.

[D]

What about those pay-as-you-go phones?  Anyone know the verdict on those?

pay-as-you-go = prepaid

I don't have a credit score because I've never taken a loan out or owned a credit card.

Also, contracts suck.

[B E C K]

You should get a cc to bring up your score.

[Rama]

You can get a debit card which is backed by a Major Credit Card company and use it just like a CC. You get all the benfits of the credit card without the intriest. Course there is that draw back of not being able to spend money you don't have.....but you shouldn't do that anyways. As long as you have a checking account you can usually get one.

As for cell phones...I hate them. People keep giving me their old ones like they were pushing some kind of drug. I just put them in a shoebox and call it good. I just don't like the idea that people can call and annoy the shit out me where ever I  go, and not only that...but by actually talking on said phone I'm annoying,and/or trying to kill with my car everyone around me.  

[B E C K]

You can get a debit card which is backed by a Major Credit Card company and use it just like a CC.

Yeah but does that raise your score?  It's not actual credit, so I don't think it factors in when everything is compiled.

I hate phones too as I'm sure most people know by now, but I do [doHTML]<S>need</S>[/doHTML] want one for various little conveniences.

[Rama]

I can get by with my home phone...if you can't find me there I'm proably busy.

And I don't know....I know my Credit Score is pretty good and I've never had a CC, but I don't know if the debit card factored into that.  

[Guest]

we dont even have a home phone anymore

 

[B E C K]

People who use my home phone bother me.  It better be damn important to call me on the landline.  With the cell, if you get through then you're not bothering me because if I found it bothersome I would've shut the phone off.  The only problem sometimes is that my ringer is low and sometimes I forget to take it off Silent after classes.

we dont even have a home phone anymore

Why not?

And I don't know....I know my Credit Score is pretty good and I've never had a CC, but I don't know if the debit card factored into that.

Have any debt of any kind?  That goes into it, too.

[Rama]

Not really...except the 41 bucks Earthlink says I owe them, but I already paid that and those bastards are trying to rip me off. Other then that no.  

[Extra Zero]

I don't have a homephone anymore either.  The main reason behind this is that I'm rarely at home and when I did have a landline, no one would call it...they would call my cellphone directly.

[Max Con]

I refuse to ever get a cellphone. The only time I'll ever reconsider this is if it's a work phone of sorts.



Even Zero keeps trying to persuade me. "If you had a phone ..."


Man, screw you.

[Extra Zero]

Until then, I'll wait for the day that 'mommy and daddy' buy you a really expensive phone and you brag about "how much better it is" than mine...

[IDE]

yeah what zero said.  No one called my last homephone so I dropped it.

[Bitch]

I only have one because my bro gave us one of his old cellphones when his son was born so he could contact us when he needed to. Then my dad decided my sis and I each needed one and bought us the cheap ones online. He has a nice one from work, so I think he thought everyone needed to be able to contact each other no matter what or something. I only really use mine when my friends want to do something or when I need to text someone to let me in our apartment building.

[The D]

Now I'm confused.

I saw the pay cards for IMpulse and they look the same as my old account. Same amounts too, $15 for 30 days, $30 for 60 days...Well, I'll have to have them explain all this to me when I go to the Verizon store to get my account switched to the new phone. And I'm still considering switching companies in the future, both Tmobile and Virgin are cheaper.  

[B E C K]

I keep reading "homephone" as "homophone".  I have a landline because I still use it for a number of other things, none of them actually related to people calling us on the phone.

[The D]

I have a landline because I still use dialup. I think that's a pretty valid reason.

According to the Verizon slave, he said that I'm still on my old FreeUP plan and I actually have to manually switch to the new plan. And I was exactly right about the new pay-as-you-go plan. It's a 99 cent access charge no matter if I use my phone or not, so even if I bought the $15 card, it wouldn't last even a month. He even said I should stick with my old plan because it's cheaper!

So, in comparison:
Virgin:  at least $20 every 60 days, bones start at $29
Tmobile:  $10 every 30 days, phones $50
Cingular: same as Verizon, $15 every 30 days and $1 access fee
 

[Rama]

I have a seperate line for  the computer..so I never use my landline for anything other then talkiing to people.

[Bitch]

I steal my Internet from whichever person in my building has an unencrypted wireless connection.

[IDE]

I wonder if the people who are having their wireless bandwidth stolen have slower INTERNET that effects the speed of their game play and what not...but then if they're not smart enough to encrypt their shit I guess they deserve to be bandwidth raped.

[Extra Zero]

Eh, either way they're obviously too dumb to notice...considering that they're still paying for it.

[Chopper Face 69]

I walked through my building with my DS one day and just walking up 7 flights of stairs there were like 4 or 5 unsecured networks.  Pretty much one available at every point during that walk up the stairwell.  Nothing from my actual apartment though.