Prepaid or postpaid?

Prepaid or postpaid?

You probably have a contract plan for your cell phone of some kind. I have long been part of prepaid ventures, but I myself rarely use prepaid. I use a lot of minutes after all!

I recently had to do an analysis, since I dropped my Verizon phone in the water.

8/13/2007 VZWRLSS-IVRVN 1-800-922-0 -257.62
7/14/2007 VZW APO 800-922-020 -209.55
6/14/2007 VZW APO 800-922-020 -211.32
5/14/2007 VZW APO 800-922-020 -463.18
3/23/2007 VZWRLSS-MYACCTVN FOLSOM -210
1/26/2007 VERIZON WIRELESS BRANCHBURG -512.91
8.00 -1864.58
(233.07)

Those are all my payments to VZW since January covering the 8 months from December through July 31 plus a termination fee for the last mont (b/c those guys are jerks).

It works out to about 233 per month for one phone with about 3000 minutes a month (in the plan) and data so I could do email and browse the web on my Treo. Okay.

So for the last 1 month I have had two T-Mobile prepaid accounts. No plans. The total spend below is for the whole year including the payment in January and in May to "keep the accounts current" (basically I had an extra phone line that I would play around with on the Sidekick or other T-Mobile devices...but not really for minutes).

The total is only $253 for the whole year including this last month where I had two T-Mobile phones -- one for voice and one for a heavily-used Sidekick. Two phones, unlimited data, two devices and heavy minutes of usage. Excluding that $131 from Jan and May, my T-Mobile service was actually $100 cheaper than having Verizon! And it's prepaid. And I use it a lot.

7/24/2007 VESTA *T-MOBILE VESTPORTLAND -54.19
6/15/2007 T-MOBILE.COM PAYMENT800-937-899 -69.35
5/13/2007 T MOBILE NO 8143 T MQUEENS -21.66
1/4/2007 VESTA *T-MOBILE 888-278-339 -108.38
1.00 -253.58

Many people are clearly stuck on contracts who shouldn't be!