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More Phone Thoughts
Nov. 6th, 2003 06:03 pmThere was a "vendor fair" at MCI today—which is to say, a bunch of neighborhood businesses that were offering discounts or other benefits to MCI employees. (One was the local Wells Fargo home mortgage branch, and I ended up getting a rather neat little insulated coffee mug with a wrap-around picture of a stagecoach on it.) One of them was a local Alltel cellular company, and I took a look at what they had to offer.
The sales guy was persuasive as far as he went: he would sell me a plan with 100 more minutes than I had now (not counting the 150 bonus minutes, which I'll lose anyway when I go to GSM) for a couple bucks more than I pay AT&T. He would even waive the $35 activation fee and give me a $50 credit for signing up, to ease the pain of the kill fee to get out of my AT&T contract—along with the free phone.
The problem is, as I found when I looked closer at the brochure, the same problem that caused me to go with AT&T in the first place when I was shopping around for cellular service. The little features that I take for granted with AT&T—caller ID, call waiting, 3-way calling, voicemail—are extra add-ons with the cheapest Alltel plan. Which is to say, to get the same features as I get on my low-tier AT&T plan, I'd have to pay enough to get me to the next tier, where they're mostly included anyway. And I didn't like the phone they had to offer anywhere near as much as the Nokia 3595 I'll get for upgrading to GSM. Seems like AT&T is a lot better deal on the lower end of service.
I just wish AT&T's GSM upgrade system would come back on-line so I could upgrade. I've been calling two or three times a day for the last couple of days to check, and it's not ever been up yet. I guess I just have to be patient. But then again, I'm still not any worse off with my current phone than I was before I knew the GSM option existed.
The sales guy was persuasive as far as he went: he would sell me a plan with 100 more minutes than I had now (not counting the 150 bonus minutes, which I'll lose anyway when I go to GSM) for a couple bucks more than I pay AT&T. He would even waive the $35 activation fee and give me a $50 credit for signing up, to ease the pain of the kill fee to get out of my AT&T contract—along with the free phone.
The problem is, as I found when I looked closer at the brochure, the same problem that caused me to go with AT&T in the first place when I was shopping around for cellular service. The little features that I take for granted with AT&T—caller ID, call waiting, 3-way calling, voicemail—are extra add-ons with the cheapest Alltel plan. Which is to say, to get the same features as I get on my low-tier AT&T plan, I'd have to pay enough to get me to the next tier, where they're mostly included anyway. And I didn't like the phone they had to offer anywhere near as much as the Nokia 3595 I'll get for upgrading to GSM. Seems like AT&T is a lot better deal on the lower end of service.
I just wish AT&T's GSM upgrade system would come back on-line so I could upgrade. I've been calling two or three times a day for the last couple of days to check, and it's not ever been up yet. I guess I just have to be patient. But then again, I'm still not any worse off with my current phone than I was before I knew the GSM option existed.