[Chefelf]

Regarding' Laura's article today...

Cell Phones are the worst. Land lines aren't much better. We pay over $50 a month for Verizon and I probably spend less than 20 minutes a month on the phone. I'd spend less if I could but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet.

I hated having a cell phone so much. To me I felt that I should have been paid for my trouble of having to deal with the thing. The lousy reception, the terrible customer service. Getting a bill was just an extra slap in the face.

There has got to be a better way dammit!

DAMMIT!

[srmoore]

Hopefully you and Laura haven't had the troubles i've had with VW lately...
I've gotten two bills in the past 3 months that were incorrect. The first one was for $980. I got that corrected, but this month I've gotten one for $524.. with most of that coming from 'Delayed charges'. WTF? I think they just pushed the errors from the first bill down to this one.. the jerks. I need to give them a call.

[Chyld]

This is why I take the pay as you go option. However, for some reason, the company I'm on removes any unused minutes/texts a month after you top up. Not something I need to hear...

[Laura]

I'm serious about trying to join up with someone for a family plan or something once my contract is up. It would be a good deal for someone who talks a lot, I think: I already pay $25 a month, and the $50 a month two-person plan contains a lot more minutes and so forth that the other person could use while I felt better about life because my lack of cell phone usage wasn't resulting in tons of wasted minutes. Plus, I would be able to talk to that person for free!

I'm curious about pay as you go and prepaid cell phones, too. I don't know how they work.

Of course, I'm stuck till September, but I definitely want to change my cell phone service after that.

[J m HofMarN]

Cell phones really should be more like walkie talkies and less like trying to get a bill passed in congress.

[rock_dash]

Hey, you should give Tracphone a shot. That's what we use, and it's pretty simple. You basically buy and register the phone, and then you buy minutes as needed on a card from a store like Wal-Mart or Target. Where I live, a 200 minute card runs around $50. I dunno how that compares to other phone plans, but it seems to work for us, and we never get overage charges or anything. Hell, we don't even have to deal with the phone company, which makes me happy. The only downside is that they must save money on the phones themselves, because they don't have a lot of fancy bells and whistles like other phones.

[SimeSublime]

Most of my friends just purchase credit on their phones. I'm the rare exception, in that my dad works for the phone company. Hence, my mobile is under his name to get staff discount, and I then pay him back. It usually only costs about AU$10 per month.