Cell Phone Plan

I looked at the phones that Surewest has, and they don't have a very large selection.

I think they only have about 3 or 4 camera phones, and I really don't like any of them.

Cingular on the other hand has a lot of phones, 4 or 5 times as many, and most of them have the camera phone option.

I am still trying to get my cell phone plan straightened out, I remember when all the phones were owned by the bell phone company and if you wanted a phone you just called them and they came out and gave you a phone. 
Life was a lot simpler then…

For the last 6 years or so I have been using Surewest as my cell phone company, and I have forgotten about counting minutes. But recently I have been talking to a couple friends who have gone over their minutes on their cell phone plans and with Sprint you have to pay 45 cents per minute which starts adding up pretty fast.

I just called Surewest and my plan is up on June 29th, so I will be eligible to get a free cell phone at that time, or I can switch to a different cell phone company then.  I also got in on their promotional discount which is $4 off per month on the bill, so I am only paying $32 per month for unlimited calls in my local area.

I just added the state of California for an additional $10 so I guess I am up to $42 a month now, and that included voice mail. The $32 includes voice mail, but not caller id, which is really odd.  No one can believe that I have a cell phone without called id, but I just didn’t want to pay the extra $4 a month for it.

Now I have made several calls to my parents about their cell phone plan, because they have a family plan with 500 minutes, but they have gone over their maximum number of minutes a few times and had to pay the penalty.

And looking on the internet Surewest has a family plan also, but with Sprint you can use your phone anywhere in the U.S. which my dad likes, with Surewest you can only use your cell phone in your local area, otherwise you have to sign up for a travel plan with travel minutes, which is more.

The one nice thing about Surewest is in the local area they do have much better reception and they never drop calls. Their service has been like this for years, and when I was talking 4000 to 5000 minutes a month I had a lot of time on the phone to test it out and make sure it was working, and driving all over while I was talking, people usually thought I was calling from my home phone.

I just pulled out all my cell phone bills from last year and found out that most all of them are 100 minutes to 200 minutes, and I had 2 that went over 300.

324 and 308 to be exact.

So the main factors in my decision are:

- June 29th, is the end of my plan
- 325 is the max minutes I used last year in a month

March 7, 2007