Monday, February 25, 2008

Mobile Phone Nightmare

I've been trying to upgrade my turn of the century cell phone to something that has internet capability. Wow! This is incredibly confusing. I checked phone coverage of the major mobile phone companies, and it seems like Altel and Verision have the best national coverage.

I've been looking at phones, and I'm completely confused. Do I want a windows compatiable phone, a blackberry, or a palm? I have no idea. I also want to make sure that I can cancel internet coverage at any time. Internet on my phone is not something I would ever need off the trail.

I also need to find out which phone company most of the people I call have. I like Altel's circle thing because I can pick phone numbers I call most, and those numbers don't count against my minutes. I also need to find out how I know how many minutes I've used in a month because with the high price per minute overage cost, you simply can not go over. If you do go over, you may pay $0.40 to $0.45 per minute.

This all seems like it's designed to trick you into making a mistake. Then, the phone company can charge you a very high fee for very little service.

3 comments:

Vogel Kids said...

We have AT&T. You can check minutes used online. Someone can check the minutes you used a couple of times a month & call you or page your phone with the minutes used so you don't go over. I check our minutes about once a week. Joe says to check into a satellite phone.

Tadpole said...

I love my phone, and I've never had a problem with my AT&T service. I even got excellent reception with when I was in Alaska. My brother and uncle both have the newer version of my phone (called the Tilt) and it is capable of GPS along with all the other windows and internet functions. And it has solitaire :)

Unknown said...

check with your phone company and make sure you...
1. know when the end of your billing period comes.
2. How to check how much usage you have (minutes used) - with verizon it's *MIN or something like that.
3. Find out if you can switch your plan to a higher minute plan if it looks like you're going over, then switch it back to your old plan when the billing cycle is over.
This saved me $100 last month (big usage month).