Phoney Business
Oct. 23rd, 2010 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterWhew. Long day.
A few days ago, I lost my Sanyo Mirro Boost Mobile cell phone. I've spent the time since looking everywhere, and haven't been able to find the darned thing. So today I went down to Best Buy to see what Boost Mobile phone options were available to me. There weren't many.
I could get another Mirro for $60. I could get some more expensive ones for $80 or $100. The annoying thing about the Mirro, I found after owning it, was that even though I could take pictures with the onboard camera, the only way to get them off of the phone was to send them in a multimedia message. I wanted one that stored pics on an MMC card that I could read into my computer, and the only Boost phone that offered that was the $100 Motorola Rambler. Figuring that if I had to pay $60, I might as well pay a little more to get something with the features I wanted, I put the Rambler on my credit card, figuring I can pay for it with the BioKinetic study I'm doing at the end of the month.
But then I decided to stop by Wal-Mart and check and see what they had to offer in the way of TracFones. And there I found something better.
With Boost Mobile, I was on a flat-rate ten-cents-a-minute-or-text plan. No worries about re-upping every month or losing my minutes, either. I just paid $10 into the pot, used it up, then paid $10 more. TracFone offered some more complicated options, but the one I immediately noticed was that first of all, the $10 candy bar, $20 flip, and $30 slider TracFones each came with the equivalent of a $25 lifetime minute-doubling card built in. And the second thing I noticed was that the $100 400-minute card that would also delay the monthly reactivation deadline for a whole year would double under that. Which meant it would bring the minute cost down to 12 cents a minute—and more importantly, text messages would only cost a third of a minute, or about 4 cents, rather than the 10 cents they cost under Boost. And I wouldn't have to worry about re-upping every 100 minutes.
Figuring if I was going to pay $100 anyway, I might as well get a year of talk time out of it. So I bought the $30 TracFone and returned the Boost.
The guy at Wal-Mart thought the $30 TracFone had an MMC card slot in it. After getting it home and opening it, it doesn't look like it does, but on the other hand for $70 in savings I'll let that slide. As an added bonus, this seems to use a SIM card whereas the Boost phone didn't, so I can hopefully transfer my address book from my old AT&T phone more easily.
The only potential fly in the ointment is that the cell phone guy at Wal-Mart said that it may not be easy to get my old cell phone number ported from Boost over to TracFone. He said pay-as-you-go companies often don't give up phone numbers easily. Well, we'll see. If I have to, I'll just tell everyone the new number; I mostly use my Google Voice number now anyway.
Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with this TracFone (though we'll see how happy I am once I've got it set up and working). It'll serve the minimal purposes I need a phone for: phone calls I have to make from where I am, and snapping photos to send to people on the fly.
Onward and upward!
A few days ago, I lost my Sanyo Mirro Boost Mobile cell phone. I've spent the time since looking everywhere, and haven't been able to find the darned thing. So today I went down to Best Buy to see what Boost Mobile phone options were available to me. There weren't many.
I could get another Mirro for $60. I could get some more expensive ones for $80 or $100. The annoying thing about the Mirro, I found after owning it, was that even though I could take pictures with the onboard camera, the only way to get them off of the phone was to send them in a multimedia message. I wanted one that stored pics on an MMC card that I could read into my computer, and the only Boost phone that offered that was the $100 Motorola Rambler. Figuring that if I had to pay $60, I might as well pay a little more to get something with the features I wanted, I put the Rambler on my credit card, figuring I can pay for it with the BioKinetic study I'm doing at the end of the month.
But then I decided to stop by Wal-Mart and check and see what they had to offer in the way of TracFones. And there I found something better.
With Boost Mobile, I was on a flat-rate ten-cents-a-minute-or-text plan. No worries about re-upping every month or losing my minutes, either. I just paid $10 into the pot, used it up, then paid $10 more. TracFone offered some more complicated options, but the one I immediately noticed was that first of all, the $10 candy bar, $20 flip, and $30 slider TracFones each came with the equivalent of a $25 lifetime minute-doubling card built in. And the second thing I noticed was that the $100 400-minute card that would also delay the monthly reactivation deadline for a whole year would double under that. Which meant it would bring the minute cost down to 12 cents a minute—and more importantly, text messages would only cost a third of a minute, or about 4 cents, rather than the 10 cents they cost under Boost. And I wouldn't have to worry about re-upping every 100 minutes.
Figuring if I was going to pay $100 anyway, I might as well get a year of talk time out of it. So I bought the $30 TracFone and returned the Boost.
The guy at Wal-Mart thought the $30 TracFone had an MMC card slot in it. After getting it home and opening it, it doesn't look like it does, but on the other hand for $70 in savings I'll let that slide. As an added bonus, this seems to use a SIM card whereas the Boost phone didn't, so I can hopefully transfer my address book from my old AT&T phone more easily.
The only potential fly in the ointment is that the cell phone guy at Wal-Mart said that it may not be easy to get my old cell phone number ported from Boost over to TracFone. He said pay-as-you-go companies often don't give up phone numbers easily. Well, we'll see. If I have to, I'll just tell everyone the new number; I mostly use my Google Voice number now anyway.
Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with this TracFone (though we'll see how happy I am once I've got it set up and working). It'll serve the minimal purposes I need a phone for: phone calls I have to make from where I am, and snapping photos to send to people on the fly.
Onward and upward!
