10/02/2018
A Note About Unlimited Plans...and how to save money using your phone. I meant to post this on my "Tech Tips" blog, but technical difficulties will not allow that right now. Boring story precedes the answer...
Saving Money on Phone Plans
Good morning folks. When I left my Corporate job at Xerox Corp about a year ago, I was forced to buy a phone and a plan. Having a totally free phone was a very nice bennie! I won’t go into what phone to get because that’s a personal choice. I LOVE Apple products but don’t like their price! So, I decided on a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus. I rarely get the latest model of anything technical in nature because it typically takes a year or so to work out all the bugs. I bought my Samsung right after the S7s were exploding (literally)! I was able to get a fairly current model for about $100. Now, the fun part…a plan. For starters, I am not cheap, but I can’t stand paying monthly charges. Even small ones because they all add up and it’s easy to lose track of them. Another annoyance of plans is the BU****IT $20 per month, per phone “line access fee” that all the big companies charge. Why? Because they can. So, I looked into the smaller companies who use Verizon’s towers. MOST of them do, BTW. I got a plan at Net 10 Wireless. It was a pre-paid plan with auto-refill that cost me a total of $35 per month for a single phone. No line access fee. I signed up for a 3G data plan, which was PLENTY! If you’re not streaming, downloading music or videos, you DO NOT need a lot of data as long as you can wait till you get home to do it, or if you can connect to a hotspot, which are virtually everywhere. I’m in the computer business, and last month I used ONLY 30 M of data, which is 1/100 of my plan! Check out this article: https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/3-Reasons-Why-You-May-Not-Need-Unlimited-Data
This all worked real nice, but when I moved to Florida, my house wound up in a virtual dead zone. NO ONE in this community has good service. So, I figured I’d utilize WIFI Calling, a feature where you can use your phone for calls and text over your own WIFI connection. I couldn’t get it to work for anything. The feature was available on my phone, but I couldn’t turn it on. I finally realized why. The SIM chip that your carrier provides has to make that feature available for your phone, and Net 10 Wireless did not at the time of this article. Anyway, after much research, I found out that Verizon’s pre-paid plan has this feature. I now have their 500 MB pre-paid plan. As long as I can manage my data use, which is VERY EASY to do, my TOTAL monthly will be $32! Crystal-clear reception at home (where it was all but non-existent) and all the bells and whistles of Verizon. Can’t beat that!
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Even the cheapest unlimited data plan will cost you extra if you're paying for data that you don't need. Here are 3 reasons why you may not need an unlimited data plan.
