<p>S was on family plan with Cingular, but needed new number when went to college. Rather than pay an early termination fee, they gave him new # and his own plan. They also replaced his lost phone for free. I think where he is, Verizon has better reception, but way too costly to get out of old plan.</p>
<p>We’re just finishing up a two year family plan with Verizon and will likely re-up.
Two parents and one son at college in NJ; good reception and fine customer service.
We’re paying 39.99 for first line and 20.00 for other two for just 400 minutes but free long distance, nights, WEs and free to other verizon customers so minutes have NOT been an issue with us. We pay the bill and our son knows when to use it without racking up charges; we never go over.
But…
I see that Verizon is running a promo here now for 500 minutes for 59.00 and only 10.00 for each additional line. So we may have to re-up and add a phone for the soon to be 16 yr old chatty sister for only the additional 10/month.<br>
Keeping HER from incurring big charges might be a BIG problem though!
We also have Verizon for local home phone on one bill for convenience.</p>
<p>Be careful about what KIND of phone your kid gets. D’s college has terrible reception —too many evergreen trees and no cell towers on campus. She just switched from all-digital phone to one with analog roaming and it’s better.</p>
<p>For example, there is a stretch of I-91 in northern Massachusetts that for some reason is a roaming area for Verizon</p>
<p>If your plan does not charge you for roaming, and you got charged call Verizon and they willcreit you. Same thing happened to daughter, got charged for toaming got the bill it was $135, got the credit immeadiately</p>
<p>I see that Verizon is running a promo here now for 500 minutes for 59.00 and only 10.00 for each additional line</p>
<p>If your plan is about to expire, wait it out, Daughter’s plan expired earlier this month so I renewed an got the 500 minutes for the same $39.00 I was paying under the old plan plus a 23% discount through my job</p>
<p>One of the reasons we kept verizion was because she was going to attend dartmouth or williams (both in the middle of no where, sorry but true). Many people had problems with their carriers dropping calls, I have sprint and dropped a few calls when I visited, but everyone there said verizion gave no problems. </p>
<p>With wireless providors merging, hopefully that will no longer be a problem.</p>
<p>I have an ATT phone (company pays) and I find the reception good in most areas of the country. I have experienced the famous ATT dropped call syndrome, but it has improved.
My kids (D at Rice and S at boarding school in NJ) have a shared TMobile plan. It’s $70 for 800 shared minutes, free nights and weekends and free TMobile to TMobile (not that they would ever call each other!). I also have a TMobile Blackberry (company pays) which is also a phone. So I can talk to S or D with no minutes charged against them. D is very careful with her minute usuage- S not as good. We don’t have a problem when he is at school,since he really isn’t supposed to have the phone there anyway. He also has 600 text messages for an extra $5 or so. We have found TMobile reception good most places. In our house is not one of them.</p>
<p>Sybbie-
Thanks for the tip about waiting it out to renew. Good idea.
I also get 20% off the first (primary) line at Verizon through some kind of deal with my employer. No discount on the other additional lines though.</p>
<p>We have cingular wireless family plan. We pay (after taxes are added in), $110 a month for 4 phones, 850 minutes, unlimited cingular to cingular phone, free after 9, weekends free, no roaming or long distance charges. Even with FOUR of us using our phones we end up rolling over about 500 minutes a month. We have enough banked now to talk until we’re blue in the face. Haven’t had any problems with service or billing. Clamshell phones were free with 2 year plan. I may have to add some text messaging because DD gets a few. We’re happy!</p>
<p>The cell phone company can run the college’s zip code to make sure they have coverage in that area. You can’t always tell from their maps. We ditched Cingular due to repeated billing problems & are reasonably happy with Alltel.</p>
<p>We have Verizon and have had them for at least 8 years. My daughter has horrible reception at her college, in fact cell phones only work outside. I think it’s a combination of the steel frame in the buildings and the rural area. But, no cell companies are good there, it’s not just Verizon. I just give her a couple of long distance phone cards and she uses them.</p>
<p>Consumer reports newest issue is about cell phones and cell phone companies. It would be worth looking at. They once again gave Verizon the best ratings but said that one should look at their particular area for the best reception and deals. Verizon does not have an international phone and that’s a big thing if you or your student plans on going out of the country for an extended period.</p>
<p>I just subscribed to Consumer Reports. I hope they send me that issue. I’m glad some of you have had positive experiences with the customer service folks at Cingular. But I will say that I was happy to hear that our family isn’t the only one who has had problems with them. I’d just like a helpful voice on the phone…and for them to DO what they say they are going to do. When the time comes for renewal (August) we are going to look at the best rates, the best plans for all four of us. Whomever gives us the best deal…that’s where we’ll go. It’s nice you can now take your number with you!! Where we live the reception from Cingular and Verizon is about the same. We get NO reception at our house unless we are standing either in one of the upstairs bathrooms next to the window, or outside near our mailbox (on the road). Cell use in our house is actually a non-issue.</p>
<p>Calmom - “Have you ever wondered what 3000 x 3 cents is?”</p>
<p>OMG, Calmom!! That’s funny (in an expensive sort of way).</p>
<p>What is the consensus about area codes for a new cell phone for a college kid. My S will be a college freshman this fall, out of state. He’s never had a cell phone (always said it was a leash and refused to carry one). We’re probably going to get him one… should we get a number with our local area code? Or one with his new area code? We currently have ATT family plan for three of us and could add him to ours… just not sure which is most economical. I imagine he’d be calling friends at school a lot more than us back home…</p>
<p>get him a phone with your home area code. Everyone I know has their home area codes for their cell phones. That way, it is a free local call for family and friends back home calling from landlines, and since almost all cell phones have free long distance now, there is no cost for people from school calling him.</p>
<p>DS wanted a local number to his university. Since we have an “all New England” plan it really didn’t matter to us, so that is what he has. That way it was not a toll call for his professors who called him. The other kids don’t really care!</p>
<p>momof2inca - it’s a mistake to worry about area codes, because all the cell phone plans offer plans for free nationwide calling. I did get my son a cell phone with the area code for his college on the east coast; then when he was out of college & working, back on the west coast, he switched companies but wanted to keep the same number so his friends could find him. So now he’s in California with a NY area code – so I have to call him using my cell phone (rather than land line) if I want to avoid long distance charges – and it is rather silly that all his work contacts and new friends are given the out of state area code. So basically - area code doesn’t matter, and to the extent that it does – it will probably be more convenient in the long run to keep the home code rather than using the one associated with the college.</p>
<p>I do have to say that I admire your son for being smart enough to figure the “leash” aspect of the cell phone. My son went off to college without one - when I sent him one for his birthday, it was honestly for ME - so I’d have a way to reach him! (He had a phone in his dorm room but was never there to pick it up). I’m glad my 16 yo daughter has no such qualms… it definitely is the way I keep track of her. (What the kids don’t know is that the monthly call log is a revealing glimpse into their social lives)</p>
<p>One thing I actually did right was to consider the contract issue a year
before my daughter went off to college. I made sure that our contract term had expired before I might need to change her service provider. We had the Verizon Family Share plan and it worked quite well for us, up until she actually got on campus several states away. </p>
<p>When she went to college, I told her to live with Verizon for the first semester and by then she’d know which carrier actually had the best coverage on her campus. Even though Verizon’s maps clearly showed “coverage”, the quality was so bad that most of her
calls dropped and she could only use her phone standing outside her dorm
on the front stairs. </p>
<p>She switched to Cingular and has had perfect service. It’s all about WHERE
they go to school and you can’t just go by the maps. Most of these
service providers have been involved in multiple mergers and purchases of
each other’s cell towers–and they are NOT all created equal. (I used to work for a cellular company)
The quality can truly only be gauged once the student is on site.<br>
My son is going to college next fall–location still unknown. We’ll keep his
current service until he actually is on campus.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information about GSM. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t available from all phone companies. When I got a new phone last fall from AT&T, I was urged to get a GSM phone (it sounded like they were phasing out Digital) and the difference in reception is just amazing. I could never talk from home on my old phone, but with this GSM phone the reception is perfect. I don’t think I’ve had a dropped call or bad reception anywhere.</p>
<p>patient- I have had the opposite happen since switching to GSM. The coverage is not nearly as good. My husband also has AT&T but still has digital and his service is so much better then mine. I have been really disapointed in GSM. Though my friend called up to complain and they told her that if she switched to a Cingular phone she would have better coverage that the AT&T GSM phones were not using all the cingular towers yet. I will wait and see how it goes for her before I go buy a new phone. The guy at Cingular told us that even though they are now the same company that they will charge you $18 to switch to Cingular. It’s all crazy.</p>
<p>what would be the best plan for a student that is going to college across the country assuming he wont need more than, say, 500 minutes.</p>