Apologies if this topic has been covered elsewhere. My search yielded nothing.
I'm thinking of switching from my $40/month Cingular plan to a GoPhone. Because I only talk about 40 minutes per month, 25 cents a minute will actually be a substantial savings. A couple questions, though, so I can walk into the Cingular store with confidence.
1. Can I keep my number? Despite the lack of phone traffic, this is kind of important to me.
2. Are there any other "gotchas" that will make this less economical than I think? $15 a month will get me 60 minutes, and apparently minutes will roll over as long as I refill every 29 days or so. And even if I go nuts and talk for 160 minutes, I'll still only be paying what I'm already used to payi...
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Yes you can keep your number.
I would recommend $25 for 90 days, better than 30 days on $15.
Are you under contract? You will have to pay a termination fee under your contract to move to Go Phone. If you are out of contract then you should have no other fees (some markets could charge an account change fee I suppose, but it would be small).
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Thanks for the info! My contract ended last month. 😁
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You cannot keep your number, prepaid/postpaid billing systems do not talk to each other and therefore do not allow a ban to ban switch with the same wireless number.
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Can somebody confirm one way or the other? So far I have 1 person saying I can keep my number, 1 saying I can't.
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Texas was the one with the correct information. It's called a "change of account type." If you run into a rep that cannot do it, talk to someone else at a different location. Sadly, it means they're not trained well enough to perform this very simple proceedure.
You'll keep the same number, and if under contract they'll send you a final bill for the ETF. I know you're not under contract, but that tid-bit was for the other people reading the thread.
The $25 or $100 refills are the best option, as they'll both cost you $100 a year if you never run out of minutes.
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Thanks!
Okay, my only other question (as you can see, I like to be armed with info when I walk into a Cingular store), is there any way to just get a sim card and not a new phone? I'm figuring no, and the $19.99 C139 is reasonable, but I'm just going to immediately put the sim in my V551, so I thought I'd ask.
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You wont need any of that. Just tell them you want to convert your account to a prepaid one. You'll keep the same SIM and phone.
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I agree that Tex is right on this, I know it can be done as I have assisted customers with doing it. However, we cant actually do it in my store, because for whatever reason, when we try to do it through pos.com 1, we get error upon error and the change wont go through. It's not just my store either, it's every store the agent I work for owns. Unknown whether it's an agent problem or not; our RAE is supposed to be looking into it. So yes I could do it in the store, but I would have to get on the phone and have customer service actually do it, and depending on how well staffed we are, that may not be possible.
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That's probably a flaw with POS.COM I. Not surprising, is it? 😉 It works on POS.COM II. I'm sure Opus and Telegence users can do it if PDC 2 works.
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Flaws on PDC I? Say it aint so brother, say it aint so!
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