I am in the ‘This is Way Too Complicated’ camp. We have a family plan - five phones (all iPhones 4, 5, 6) that are paid for up front. We have unlimited everything (text, talk, data) plus our home service land line. It all comes on one bill for about $260 per month. D and SIL give us $ for their share. H and I are still paying for S, a recent college grad. I hope this is a good deal, but if it’s not… oh well.
@notrichenough : “…port the secondary lines first and wait until they are all working properly before porting the primary number.”
You are talking about a process that goes through within the same transaction, correct, just detailing the order in which the line items from one account are moved over to the other?
By “wait until they are all working properly before porting…” means wait and see in a manner of minutes, correct?
@MomofWildChild - I’ve received those data messages from ATT. When I check I usually find that one particular child of mine isn’t using WiFi when she should be.
at about $50 a phone line with 4 IPhones not yet paid for I feel like ATT is not unreasonable. If I understand the fine print correctly the monthly charges will go down once the phones are paid for. We all use IPhones.
One place I feel we save is by buying our warranty through Squaretrade versus the cell phone carrier. If you buy your phone through Costco and buy the Squaretrade from them you get a lower deductible. Two of my kids have used Squaretrade for a laptop and several phone repairs and we have been happy with the service.
Not sure if going to the store multiple times for the same problem constitutes “good service”.
It’s not really the store’s fault that a phone right out of the box is defective. She went through 3 separate phones in a month, and Verizon didn’t give her any hassle about it.
Maybe my standards are too low, but I thought it was a pretty good customer experience. They could have easily given her a hard time about it. I feel like an outfit like Total Wireless, which only has a real-life presence in some Walmart’s, would not have been so accommodating to a college kid.
Where do you see the fine print? My phone is 3 years old. My bill has not changed. If there’s the fine print, the bill should have gone down after 2 years.
Ditto here. We are paying for NO phones. Both DD and DH purchased their phones from another source. Mine has been paid for for two years.
No reduction in our bill. I thought actually that this had changed,…and there was no longer a reduction…but maybe I’m making that up!
@Iglooo You might want to check with your carrier to see if you can get on one of the newer plans if they’d save you money. I don’t think the major carriers had BYO phone plans 3 years ago, or at least they were not common then.
Recently had a phone go out of contract with Verizon. Phoned to ask why I was still being charged the $40 line charge. They said you need to call to get the $25 discount for month to month. They credited my acct. For 2 months.
This is the More Everything Plan. Approx $200 4 lines share 10G $80 discounted to $62 with 22% employer discount.
Line 1 charge $15 month to month
Line 2 charge$15 month to month
Line 3 charge$15 (SP device payment discount) plus 24.99 phone payment
Line 4 charge was $40 under contract ( now with discount $15)
more everything no longer available so IF I want to bring in new phone for line 4 ,the line charge would be $40 again!
They want everyone to switch to Verizon plan where all line charge are $20.
My husband just handed me the employee benefit/corporate discount info from work:17% AT&T discount on there, looks like the same discount off of Verizon’s monthly access charges, as well as 25% off the accessories.
Using either of these would require porting over everything I have with the two kids, though.
@Happy2Help : I have looked into the whole refurbished unlocked phone purchase in the past and find that as equally confusing and likely fraught with all sorts of hazards, dangers and potential scams. Have you done that before?
On the old contract plans, the cost of the phone was built into the monthly charge, amortized over 2 years or so. So after 24 months, your phone is essentially paid off, but the payment doesn’t go down because that’s not how the contracts work. Yes you are essentially still paying for the phone even though it’s paid for! If you don’t upgrade your phone you are essentially throwing money away. This irritated the heck out of me, because I used the same non-smart phone for 6 years, but didn’t want to get a smart phone at the time or pay for an upgrade. I probably should have gotten an upgrade and sold it.
You need to investigate what other plans are available and switch to a lower-cost one.
I discovered that earlier this year Verizon had a special, where if you switched to the Verizon plan at the 12Gb of data level, they gave you a 2GB per device per month bonus for life. This would have given me 20GB per month for the price I am paying now for 15GB. Have to keep my eye out for that one to come around again.
@notrichenough If you have any phones that complete the 2-year contract period after March 2016 on the More Everything plan, the per line will no longer drop from $40/month to $15/month. It’s unrelated to when you signed up for the plan. It has to do with how you paid for the devices.
@Mabel That must have been before March 2016 that your Verizon More Everything device went past the 2 year contract because Verizon is no longer dropping the per line from $40 to $15 when you request it.
I don’t think ATT drops the per line charge either when your phone is paid for.
@Madison85 - IIRC the “More Everything” plan never had a two year contract, you could opt out at any time with no penalty because they weren’t subsidising the phones. You could pay for your phone over 20 or 24 months with the payment added to your bill, I think this was called Verizon Edge or something like that, and you paid full price. The basic smartphone charge was $40/month, and there were promotions available when we signed up to lower that amount depending on how big of a data plan you got - I think for 6GB and over you got a $25/line discount, bringing it to $15/month. If your phone wasn’t paid off when you dropped the plan you had to pay it off immediately.
I didn’t know Verizon was extending the discounts to people coming off of a contract. I’m not surprised they aren’t any more, as the “More Everything” plan is no longer available and they want everyone to move to the new “Verizon” plans.
It was two+ years ago when we went through this process (I had a big spreadsheet comparing contract vs. more everything, full price phone vs. subsidised, etc), so maybe I am misremembering.
ETA: Ok, google tells me I am wrong about “More Everything” not having two year contracts. We didn’t go that route so I forgot about it, I guess. 
I have no idea what we pay. Verizon. 2 on the grandfathered unlimited data, 2 with 10gb each. H uses an old iPhone 4s and is sure he’ll have to upgrade once SW upgrades stop working. The unlimited data is hard to give up. The girls get close to their 10gb many months. I’ll have to reset my data counter and see what I use.
The hotspot doesn’t work if you have unlimited data.
“The girls get close to their 10gb many months.”
Ouch!
@Waiting2exhale I have not yet tried to buy refurbished and unlocked phones but I recall reading somewhere that I should make sure there is a manufacturer’s warranty and when I use my AMEX with extended warranty built in (or purchase protection for 90 days on damage or loss), any damage or loss to the phone should be covered. I’ll probably call AMEX prior to any purchase to be sure.
@zeebamom, I use an app called PDANet+ on my Verizon Samsung S5 and I have unlimited data. It works perfectly and I don’t pay extra for the hotspot. The most GB I used in a month was something like 17 GB (most during 2.5 weeks) when I used the hotspot at my vacation home. http://www.junefabrics.com/
@collage1 TW caters to us cheapskates that don’t see the sense in spending $600 for a phone and having a fancy $80/month plan. It’s a whole other market segment. TW does seem to work perfectly wherever VZ does. As an example, I work in a building that cell signals can’t penetrate so we have VZ repeaters inside. My TW phone has a great signal in here!
If I should happen to break my phone, a new one is as close as the nearest WalMart. If that one doesn’t work for some reason, I can just return it and get another. No, they don’t have a fancy store you can go to for help. But that’s the trade off for this type of plan. It’s not for everyone, for sure.
They are just coming out with phones that do 4g, so the 3g only is no longer accurate.
Monthly payments and insurance for a phone are just not for me!
