[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] LionAR10:
Good article!

You reminded me that I pitched this idea to my FB friends back in Feb 2011 ... In fact it's kinda weird to me how this old article connects to the original post ..

Anyway, here it is:

I’m done with the normal practices of cell phone companies. Here’s why and here’s how I’m getting out of that system and still keeping a phone.

Everyone’s familiar with the standard two-year cell phone contract. We’ve all been locked into it at various points in time and I’m willing to bet you’re locked into some remainder of one right now. The cell phone companies here want to lock us into paying for that kind of time period to prevent something called “churn”. Churn is the act of people switching cell companies and it causes headaches for cell phone companies since, when you take away nifto-phones like the stevePhone and whatnot, their product is commodity. Commoditized products don’t have many unique sales features, that’s why they’re a commodity. Like electricity, cell phones allow you to make calls, send and receive texts, and move data. So notwithstanding just how fast you can do such things and on what gheewhizzmo device you have, there’s nothing new there. So they want you to pay. And two-year contracts keep you paying.

Problem is life doesn’t run well on two-year blocks sometimes. A couple years ago I was unemployed and my $180/mo cell phone bill was a bit of a burden. I had a Blackberry and a high speed data modem, both of which I had had for over a year. But with costs like that it was time to kill off non-essentials, and this meant the data modem ($60/mo). I carefully explained my situation to the Sprint rep, but no luck, she seemed to indicate that I’d still be under contract even if I had been run over by a semi and died as a red stain on the freeway. I had no room to negotiate, the money just wasn’t there. I ended up telling her that she’d better reduce my bill or she can see me in small claims court for both my phone and the modem. They put me on a vacation plan, which made the modem unusable, but still cost me nine bucks a month. And to add insult to injury, the months I was on it didn’t count to finishing my contract.

We all do the stupid thing and get a new phone for cheap by allowing ourselves get suckered into renewing our contract. That’s how they say they justify it .. you get a high tech phone for cheap just by committing to “only” a two-year agreement. But people have gotten a little upset at time when it’s month 18 and still they can’t do anything. Except, of course, eat the ETF. The ETF, known as the “Early Termination Fee” is the result of breaking your contract early. It used to be $50 .. then $100 .. now it’s up to $250 in some cases. The government got on cell provider’s case a couple years ago about ETFs, saying things like they had to be prorated, etc .. but the cell companies just put more legalese in there that effectively meets the government standard without providing what the law intended. Proration *starts* at month 18, extra ETF increases for certain phones, etc .. Ugh.

How do you get out of this pit of contracts, horrible and expensive plans, and lack of consumer choice when on contract? It’s simple .. well .. sorta. You’re going to have to accept some truths about phones and life.

STEP ONE – BUYING PHONES

The first thing is that you can’t go out and get that new subsidized phone. No more buying that phone for $100 .. or free. You’re going to have to suck it up and spend real money on the phone you want. That means in some cases saving for it. Planning ahead. But there’s hope .. you’ll see two prices in the cell phone store, the subsidized one (CHEAP! With renewal of your soul-sucking contract!) and the full price. The full price should scare the living bejesus out of you. For today’s smart phones, that’s going to be 600 bux or more! Chill, it’ll be OK. Browse the store and find a couple phones you want. Find one to put on your list that’s last year’s phone too. Write down the name of the phones and head home. Grab your web browser and pull up eBay. You’ll find a TON of the phone you’re looking for from a variety of vendors on eBay .. people selling their old phone ‘cause it’s more than 6 months old .. companies who just buy up used phones for resale .. and more. You will often find the phone you want for HALF THE RETAIL PRICE of the phone in the store. Find reputable sellers with good feedback and if you’re on Verizon or Sprint make sure the phone ad says “Clean ESN”. Buy your new phone. If you want the absolute latest and greatest you might have to wait a few months for people to get bored of their new toy and put it on eBay, but a little patience goes a long way.

Once you have your new (used) phone in hand, call your provider and have them change from your old phone to the new one. They will. They will not extend your contract, though ask to make sure they don’t. Some underhanded rep’s will sneak that one in even though they’re not supposed to.

Hooray! New phone, no new contract!

Now .. if it’s worth anything, SELL YOUR OLD PHONE ON EBAY. Blam. Even more savings. By doing this you should be very close, if not under the subsidized (contract) price!

This whole phone buying thing is the most important part. It allows you to get nice phones without having to extend that contract-with-Satan with your provider. Eventually your contract will run out and hooray, now you can do anything you want.

STEP TWO – DESTROY YOUR CONTRACT

Once you’ve gotten yourself out of contract hell, you can chose to chill month-to-month with your provider. Be sure than any plan changes or whatever you need to do DO NOT extend or set up a new contract. But you have another choice … you can go prepaid.

Every cell phone company has a prepaid side, though they’re not always named the same. Sprint has Boost Mobile. Verizon has Virgin. AT&T has GoPhone. T-Mobile actually has two prepaid setups, both under the T-Mobile name. (FlexPay and Prepaid). In the case of T-Mobile, the *same plan on prepaid is cheaper than the contract price* by 20 bux! Then there’s the Mobile Virtual Network Operators, which rent time off the 4 big providers under their own name; like Net10 and Simple Mobile. Some of these guys, like Boost and Virgin require you to buy only their phones (again, go on eBay), but providers like AT&T and TMobile allow you to bring any GSM phone to their network. Again, the government was not happy about phone-lockin, and told providers they need to allow portability of phones .. but that never really got more than lip service. Nice thing is that in the case of AT&T and T-Mobile, your phones can be unlocked and brought to the other company. Cool! Need to unlock your phone? Again, go to eBay. For a few bucks you can be sold a code to make your phone leave its home town on AT&Greed and go over to T-Mobile or vice-versa.

Pricing on these prepaid plans used to be more expensive than the post-paid contract versions .. but that’s not the case anymore. Some companies, like AT&T haven’t figured it out yet, but everyone else has. You can get Unlimited Voice, Text, and Data usually for 50-80 bux a month from Prepaid. Boost is 50, Simple Mobile is 60, T-Mobile is 80. That’s cheap! Really cheap compared to my plan for my Sprint HTC EVO, which is 70 bucks for 450 minutes and unlimited text and data .. PLUS a mystery $10 “you have a cool phone fee”. Screw you, Sprint. And the nice thing about all these prepaid plans is that you can cancel any time. That’s right. No contract.

STEP THREE – YOU FRIENDS KNOW YOU BY NAME

Jumping providers and playing games with who’s-cheapest-this-month with prepaid usually is going to mean changing phone numbers. OH NO I’VE HAD THE SAME NUMBER FOR FIFTY SIX THOUSAND YEARS AND EVEN JESUS KNOWS IT. Get over yourself. Today’s modern phones don’t dial numbers. They dial names. People put your number into a phonebook and they never see it again. Many of you know I frequently change phone numbers, sometimes as often after every 6 months. Have I lost contact with any of you? No. I send out an update to people who need my number to make sure they know to change their phonebooks. It’s a normal part of modern life. You are not a number, not even your phone number. You are a person with a name. And everyone knows you by your name.

If you want to make it a little easier (and have the right phone, Android or other supported platforms) you can use Google Voice. GV allows you to forward one number to any quantity of ever-changing numbers .. including text messaging. It’s a free service. The people I know that use Google Voice don’t even know their cell numbers .. they just set it up in GV and give out that number. Easy. Now they can jump around with different phone and different providers without anyone ever knowing any different. I used Google Voice while I was in the UK and was texting back and forth to the US and no one knew the difference, even though my cell phone had a UK number.

So there. I’m done with contracts and ETFs and cell phone BS. As long as you’re willing to do a little extra work, you too can live contract free on the cell networks and reap the benefits of consumer choice and maximizing your communications dollar. Now some of you telcom wizards will say that there’s more complex issues here, like roaming and 3G frequency tables and other awesome sounding techno words. This is just a primer to your new life as a telco nomad, some things are left as an exercise to the reader.

Also, kill your landline. No one wants to call you on it anyway.