<p>My bro and his family just got 5 TMobile lines for $110, including 2.5gb data per line at high speed and the rest at slow. Also unlimited talk and text. They are happy. </p>
<p>Yes, but does the $110 include all the fees, charges, taxes, and other garbage they add on? I would love to be able to compare plans, but the quoted prices never include all the extras… My 27.xx includes all charges, so I am sticking with my dumb phone.</p>
<p>I have a plan that is a “dumb phone.” It is pre-paid. I got the phone for about $30. I pay $100 and get 1000 minutes or texts or combo. It lasts for a year and rolls over if I top it off with at least another $10 card each year. It works pretty well for my nonprofit. It is with TMobile.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the fees, charges, taxes and other add on garbage for the contract is, but it is still an amazing base price. Only the prepaid phones don’t seem to add so many charges on.</p>
<p>What is this “unlimited data” people speak of? How have I never heard of that? I held out on a “smart phone” for awhile, so maybe I missed it. 24 and 21 year old still on plan, and they go through all tgeir data, whike I hardly use mine. 24 year old (offers to) pay for overages. I will look in to sharing but 21 year old wants to get “off the grid”, so to speak. </p>
<p>The amazing base price I was offered at AT & T was 95-dollars. Of course, I would have to buy an uneeded new device on payments first. The sales guy suggested an iPad. I’m guessing at TMobile I would also have to purchase a bunch of new phones. It sounds like a toss up at this point. My expensive plan is still the cheapest. Oh, and my kids last phone was free so he was pretty surprised when the free phone included an 80-bill for taxes and fees. And, didn’t quite understand how there could be 40-dollars of tax an item that was free. Poor kid, he is growing up.</p>
<p>Our plan for three phones, one unlimited data, one dumb phone, is about $150, after taxes & fees with Verizon.
It does get pretty tedious adding up the tax for city/county/state.
Living on the sunny side of the street and the tax we pay because we don’t pay extra for any of their add ons.
( I think I am kidding)?
However, in order to grandfather my unlimited data, I don’t get a new phone, or I buy it elsewhere.
D has been talking about doing away with her smart phone so that could save.
We have 700 shared minutes and only use about 1/2.
Oldest only recently switched to her own plan.</p>
<p>I spun my D off and she got her own plan with a different company when her phone died while she was at school. Verizon wouldn’t work with her in NYC since the plan is in my name. So, she’s with Sprint now. It’s in her name but I pay the bill. Once she’s gainfully employed, we’ll figure it out. She plans to stay in NYC so with student loan payments and NYC rent, I may subsidize this for a little bit. It just depends on how she’s making it financially. </p>
<p>When we got our first iPhones in 2008 data was not a big thing so it was unlimited and there was a family max on talk/texts. Now, data is how they make their $$. It is unlikely we will give up this plan because unlimited data would never be an option. Our kids being on our plan costs us $30 each. Not a big deal at all. </p>
<p>Jym and others who may still have unlimited data plans with AT&T - Beware of the AT&T salesmen! I was just very foolish, and feel like I went through a bait and switch. I had a family plan with unlimited data, that was costing me about $285/mo with all of my kids. I’m using rough numbers here from memory. We had 4s iphones. I stopped in at an AT&T store to check out whether there was a big difference with the 5s phones, and started talking to a salesman about getting the cost of my plan reduced. He looked up our numbers, and said we had a lot of rollover minutes and only exceeded 10GB of data once in two years. A new plan with 10GB of data would save me nearly $100/yr with a new family discounted plan they were offering, if I gave up unlimited data. The bill showed up three weeks later, and I am saving about $3/mo. Yeah, I knew I had to pay a one-time $35/line to change phones, but what he DID NOT tell me was that my kids had been on a special $9.99/family member line charge with the former unlimited data plan. They are now being charged at $39.99/per kid. I managed to get them to roll back one kid to the $9.99 (seriously, why would anyone give up unlimited data for $3/mo?). I was told they couldn’t roll back the kids because they had upgraded their phones to the 5S and I had paid cash for them instead of using the AT&T plan to pay for them monthly. Sound confusing? Of course none of this was explained to me in the store, and the time to cancel had elapsed (not to mention that my old phones had been wiped and kept by AT&T so I could get a credit for turning them in).</p>
<p>Grrrr. I feel like am absolute idiot. Two years from now I’m going to try a different phone company, even though I’ve been with AT&T forever. And I finally told my kids that Mom won’t pay their cell phone bill anymore when the next renewal comes up and I leave AT&T. Otherwise, I’ll probably be paying for a family plan phone contract when I’m in a nursing home… </p>
<p>The short answer for us will be when DW says we can.</p>
<p>I am guessing that will be sometime after they finish college and/or get married and/or are gainfully employed.</p>
<p>That’s awful, neonzeus! They’ve tried to get us to switch plans. The answer is always NO</p>
<p>Our two S’s took over their phone services as soon as they graduated from college. Both are gainfully employed and live in different cities from us. They are 24 and 27 years old. Neither are married. S1 owns his own house and makes way more money than us now (DH recently retired). DH and I have dumb phones. Our sons always want the newest thing out there. They are adults. They pay for their phones.</p>
<p>My 50-year-old brother and 35-year-old sister (both single) are on my parents’ cell phone plan. They pay their share. </p>
<p>The phone companies are doing their best to get people off of unlimited data plans. This time around it was “if you want to keep unlimited data you have to pay full price for a phone”, soon I predict it will be “we no longer offer that plan you must pick a different plan with a data limit.”</p>
<p>They are already throttling the bandwidth of really heavy users.</p>
<p>It was cheaper for us to switch off of unlimited data at verizon, and the unlimited minutes on the new plan actually has some value for us, as we were on a 2000 minute plan before. YMMV of course.</p>
<p>If they make us pay full price, I’ll buy it elsewhere.</p>
<p>
We think we would like to go back to dumb phones eventually. Hopefully they will still sell dumb phones at that time. It seems it gets harder and harder to find a quality dumb phone.</p>
<p>We are tired of shelling out $178 (including taxes) a month while we barely use it. We keep this shared data plan mainly for our child. We will be very happy when he could eventually get off our plan - maybe 5 years from now?!. (But it seems I almost exclusively use the phone (for browsing only) rather than my laptop at home now. Just too lazy to sit in front of the computer.)</p>
<p>We have unlimited data with Sprint that does not limit the highest speed data that they can find for you (sadly lit is usually 3G in HI), and is the primary data source for our kids when they are on the go. It is $225/month for 4 phones but it’s OK with us and we can afford to pay it so we continue to do so. We like the kiddos to have access to unlimited data and we use it when we travel as well, especially for googlemaps.</p>
<p>I have one in high school and one in college. I plan to move them off my plan commensurate with the first phone upgrade they want once they are employed full time. We’ll see how that goes.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the good info! DD think she can avoid too much data usage by taking advantage of wifi. And she uses few talk minutes. However she does text a lot, so she would need unlimited text plan. I’m still not believing the $65 ATT plan won’t add up to more. But maybe now they make their money forcing the monthly payement phone purchase method (which Verizon is pushing). </p>
<p>Ha, ha. I’m laughing though it’s not funny, really. I have an old plan that gives unlimited family plan data, that is grandfathered into the current contracts, so my whole family is on it. Comes to about $50 a person, with 10 on the plan Brothers pay me since it’s the best deal for them. My kids? Well, for now I pay. In time, I guess I’ll broach the subject about them paying me as my brothers do. Right now, one can, but I’m still transitioning him out of the car insurance and other things we pick up for him. The cell phone bill will come in time. </p>
<p>It does sadden me a bit, as I was independent and helping my parents out at the stages of their lives–my kids, that is, and it has not happened here. I still pay for tickets for them to come home, and for other things. Right now I feel grateful that they can make their very basic bills, and just pray that that situation continues. I know a lot of parents who don’t even have that with kids getting up there in age.</p>