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Cell phone plans grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.......


Bud

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So I went to the Verizon store today to see about their unlimited plan.

 

Turns out to not be a good deal for me, but, she mentioned I may save some money switching to a different plan.

 

It seems when they bring out a new plan that would save existing customers money, they don't bother to tell the existing customer. They just continue charging more. :dopeslap:

 

If you have a cell phone plan more than a year old, call them and ask if there is something cheaper.

 

They will not go back retroactively to when they could have saved you money. It it today forward..

 

YMMV

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Any recommendations for a cheap smart (cell) phone on a pay as you go contract for a visitor from the UK? I will be doing some riding in the States and I think I will need a US phone for navigation etc. Travelling up to Alaska so full coverage would be useful.

 

John

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Any recommendations for a cheap smart (cell) phone on a pay as you go contract for a visitor from the UK? I will be doing some riding in the States and I think I will need a US phone for navigation etc. Travelling up to Alaska so full coverage would be useful.

 

John

I have a T-Mobile SIM chip that I used to use when I visited the US. I had a prepay plan where I just put some money on the account before using it, and they charged about 20 cents/min usd. It was not cheap but worked for the limited use I needed. However it did not include data.

 

Your best bet might be to do something similar. Buy a chip rather than a phone, and get some kind of prepaid plan with it. I don't have any recommendations for which company anymore. My phone currently includes coverage of the US, Canada and Mexico. When I am in other countries (Germany and Guatemala recently), I buy a local chip and put time on it.

 

Incidentally, you need an unlocked phone to do this. I used to have a phone locked to a company. After numerous attempts to get them to unlock it, I finally just bought an unlocked phone.

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Any recommendations for a cheap smart (cell) phone on a pay as you go contract for a visitor from the UK? I will be doing some riding in the States and I think I will need a US phone for navigation etc. Travelling up to Alaska so full coverage would be useful.

 

John

 

You might want to look at TrackFone.

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Farmerboy,I'd consider a used iPhone or android phone. But, if you're traveling that far to the boonies, you'll want to download an app with a built-in mapset. There are pretty vast areas of North America with spotty to nonexistent cell phone coverage.

 

My personal experience has been that I've gotten more consistent coverage in U.S. rural areas with Verizon.

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So I went to the Verizon store today to see about their unlimited plan.

 

Turns out to not be a good deal for me, but, she mentioned I may save some money switching to a different plan.

 

It seems when they bring out a new plan that would save existing customers money, they don't bother to tell the existing customer. They just continue charging more. :dopeslap:

 

If you have a cell phone plan more than a year old, call them and ask if there is something cheaper.

 

They will not go back retroactively to when they could have saved you money. It it today forward..

 

YMMV

 

 

While we were trying to figure out if our phones would work in Mexico, we discovered (thank to an ADV inmate mentioning something that seemed contrary to what Laura found by looking through our Verizon account) that Verizon had a "New Verizon Plan" that was exactly the same price as our current plan, for exactly the same service for calls/texts/data EXCEPT that it added the feature of being able to use all our stuff (calls/data/texts) in both Mexico and Canada at no charge. It was easy to switch online and no added cost, but yeah - if we hadn't found that on our own (or maybe called in and asked), it would have cost us $2 per day per phone for those features under our current plan.

 

Laura and my mom both got new phones last week - we first went to the Verizon store her in Olympia, WA and got a great sales person. He went through the options with both new phone buyers and helped them figure out which phones were likely to do what they wanted (Laura already knew she wanted an iPhone, but not sure about size, etc and my mom was totally undecided), explained the costs of their new phone pricing (no contracts, but they will sell you the phone on a payment plan for 24 months with no interest), and found two possible discounts for our account. THEN he mentioned that since we're Oregon residents we could either apply through Verizon for a sales tax exemption or just go to Oregon to buy the phones and save about $30 per phone. Either option would keep him from logging two sales.

 

Last night I was in the same store with my dad, got a different guy, my dad had a few questions and they guy's answer to ALL of them was basically, well it depends on what you want... with no further clarification.

 

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, not only should you call or walk in and ask if your plan is a little older, maybe ask more than once if you get someone the first time who doesn't seem helpful.

 

 

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I have always used an iPhone in the UK but I believe it is not possible to fit a US sim in it. I have found this in a shop called Walmart ...

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Straight-Talk-Samsung-Galaxy-S4-4G-LTE-Prepaid-Smartphone/36202746

 

I assume I will need to buy a sim card as well.

 

 

I believe SIM cards are the same all around the world. They come in three sizes: standard, micro and nano. Different phones take different sizes. Mostly the newer phones take the smaller cards. The functional part of all three sizes is the same, there is just some extra plastic around it on the larger sizes. With care you can actually cut one of the bigger sizes down to a smaller size with a scissors or exacto knife. But it is probably not recommended.

 

However, each SIM card will only talk to the one company that you purchase it from. Also phones can be, and usually are, locked to only accept the SIM card that came from the company that sold the phone. That is why I now buy phones separately without any phone company involved. That does mean I have to pay for the price of the phone up front, not through a monthly payment plan.

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As I understand it, US phones that use CDMA are not compatible with European standards.

 

"Europe" mandated GSM (like At&T and T-Mobile have used in the US) back in the day, but it gets really muddied up when you start talking about LTE in there (as it's a sort of different thing). Many (most?) modern smart phones, iPhone 6 and up for instance, can work on GSM and CDMA and GSM is kind of going away in the US in favor of LTE. My iPhone, for instance, normally runs on LTE but will use a CDMA (Verizon) network if it can't find LTE. It would also work in Europe.

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Your phone likely needs to be "unlocked" to do this. Carriers used to not want to do that at all (locking makes the phone only acknowledge one carrier's sim/network despite the hardware being compatible with others), but now many sell their phones unlocked or will at least unlock it if you call and request it (in the US - maybe in the UK/Europe where SIM cards are much more readily available the phones are unlocked).

 

My suggestion is to call your mobile provider and tell them what you're doing and ask what you'll need to do to have it work in the US (ie if they offer a service plan with your existing hardware, or if your phone is set up to work with a SIM from another company, etc.). Let them know if you want it to work in Canada too!

 

 

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Good point about Canada. My phone is unlocked. My UK provider wants £5 per day to use my existing plan in the US so that's £150 per month!!! Groan..... Cheap US phone will be a bargain!

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Most of the major carriers here, as well as many of the resellers, offer some kind of SIM only deal. The SIM itself will run a few dollars and the plans vary a lot. Search Amazon for 'sim card' and you'll find a bunch of them (at least Amazon US) or google 'sim card deals'. Since your phone is unlocked you should be able to use one of them.

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I have three phones on StraightTalk (iPhone 6+ on Verizon, iPhone 5c on AT&T, android on Verizon) , and one iPhone 4S (AT&T) on TracFone.

 

In theory, both StraightTalk and TracFone are pretty simple to use your own device. In practice, it can be a bit of a challenge. I've never had problems activating a TracFone or StraightTalk phone on AT&T. You pop the SIM in, go to the web site, and boom, you are good to go.

 

Activating on Verizon is almost always painful. It usually takes a call to their support, and sometimes multiple calls. It doesn't help that even though all iPhones since the 4S can do LTE, GSM and CDMA, Verizon will not allow a device on their network unless they sold it originally (this may have changed, but that's the way it was in the past).

 

All in all, I love StraightTalk and TracFone.

 

@farmerboy, a US SIM will fit in your iPhone, but your iPhone may not work in the US. I *think* GSM and LTE use different frequencies in the US vs Europe. On the other hand, I *think* newer iPhones cover US and European frequencies, but I'm not sure.

 

In any case, much of the US geography has no coverage by any provider. I'd plan on a dedicated GPS for navigation, or a GPS app that lets you download your maps beforehand.

 

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We went Verizing too.

Got 2 new smartphones, changed plan, it was OLD.

When he began to enter info, tells us we qualified for a free tablet.

Ok.

So for less than the cost of a refurbished I3 we got 2 Samsung Galaxy V7 and a tablet.

Met our needs, much more pbone than we had, mine 5 Christmas passed

So happy, less money monthly and better stuff.

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I can use my phone almost anywhere in the world, data and voice. Not only that, it's undoubtedly much, much cheaper than any other plan you might find.

 

Search for Google's Project Fi. You have to have a google account, it takes about five minutes to sign up, you have limited, but very good options for instruments, you have cell service from Sprint, T-Mobile, and U. S. Cellular in the U. S., and other carriers overseas. The system automatically connects you to trusted wifi networks, and lets you seamlessly connect to open networks if you so choose. Voice and data when on wifi go through that rather than a cell tower. Keeps data costs very low.

 

Current monthly charge, per phone, is $30, including 1gb data. Each additional gig of data is $10, but you only get charged what you use. If you don't even use the first gig, you only pay for what you used.

 

I've had all the major carriers over the years, this beats all of them for cost and reliability. But there's more: the best part of the service is that when you have a question or an issue, you can go on the Project Fi website, click on "call me" and within about a minute you'll be talking to a friendly young person, almost always somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, although I did get a guy in the Philippines recently, who was super helpful, too.

 

The only times I have been without cell service were about 250 miles on I-10 in west Texas, and occasionally other boondocky areas with spotty coverage no matter which carrier you have. I used it all over Austria and northern Italy last year, wifi in the hotels, cell everywhere else, made calls to the U. S., have made calls to Europe. Those calls were all hilariously cheap.

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I have an AT&T Mexico phone plan. It offers unlimited calls and texts in the US, Mexico and Canada plus 2 GB/month of data. The surprising thing is that by paying for a year in advance my monthly cost is $10 usd.

 

In other countries, I just buy a local SIM and put some time on it.

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