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FWIW, Best Buy sells Virgin phones and has a 30 day return policy, so you can always buy a phone from them and test it out for a month, being out the cost of a month of the plan in the end.
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May 12, 2013 06:48
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A Sleepy Budgie posted:We live in Spokane, Wa so it's a pretty big area. I've heard bad things about sprint's network (like data going out for days at a time) but then I've also heard tmobile is ranked 4th out of the major carriers. I don't use a whole lot of data so its not like I need the fastest connection all the time. Look on sensorly for your region, don't bother with carrier coverage maps (I mean maps the carriers make they all use different standards). TMO is pretty good most places normal Sprint roams on Verizon, but Virgin won't work the second you leave the city. If you leave the city ever you probably should stay away from Virgin (it's Sprint with no roaming). Stick100 fucked around with this message at 08:24 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 08:20
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If you're considering purchasing a Nexus 4 in the next couple days/week, hold off. Google I/O begins on the 15th and may have an announcement. It may simply be a Nexus 4 for carrier branding, it may be something better. It's worth waiting 5 days to find out.
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May 12, 2013 10:25
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A Sleepy Budgie posted:We live in Spokane, Wa so it's a pretty big area. I've heard bad things about sprint's network (like data going out for days at a time) but then I've also heard tmobile is ranked 4th out of the major carriers. I don't use a whole lot of data so its not like I need the fastest connection all the time. Virgin mobile is sprint minus roaming, so it is likely terrible in your area. TMobile at least includes call and text roaming on the prepaid plans. Go with TMobile.
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May 12, 2013 16:48
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The Entire Universe posted:If you're considering purchasing a Nexus 4 in the next couple days/week, hold off. Google I/O begins on the 15th and may have an announcement. It may simply be a Nexus 4 for carrier branding, it may be something better. It's worth waiting 5 days to find out. It looks like it's only for AT&T right now.
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May 12, 2013 17:02
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Thanks for all the responses. Sounds like Tmobile is a much better choice. Also, how is Straight Talk? The plan would be 15 more a month, but I would get more minutes. Is Ting also on AT&T? I got the feeling both those seemed not-so-good from the last few pages. Ting seems like such a good deal, are their any "catches"?
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May 12, 2013 18:06
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A Sleepy Budgie posted:Thanks for all the responses. Sounds like Tmobile is a much better choice. Also, how is Straight Talk? The plan would be 15 more a month, but I would get more minutes. Is Ting also on AT&T? I got the feeling both those seemed not-so-good from the last few pages. Ting seems like such a good deal, are their any "catches"? Straight talk Tmo is good if you use a lot of minutes ( more than 250). Ting is on Sprint so that won't work for you.
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May 12, 2013 18:54
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In my opinion if you're going to use T Mobile Prepaid and need unlimited text and minutes it makes the most sense to get Solavei. $40 a month for unlimited minutes unlimited text and 4 gigabytes of guaranteed high speed data with no mysterious throttling or limits. Its a referral based company but you can just sign up on their website without a referral. I see no advantage of straight talk T Mobile as compared to Solavei.
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May 12, 2013 19:19
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hotsauce posted:In my opinion if you're going to use T Mobile Prepaid and need unlimited text and minutes it makes the most sense to get Solavei. $40 a month for unlimited minutes unlimited text and 4 gigabytes of guaranteed high speed data with no mysterious throttling or limits. Its a referral based company but you can just sign up on their website without a referral. I see no advantage of straight talk T Mobile as compared to Solavei. The solavei website says 49/mo?
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May 12, 2013 23:30
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A Sleepy Budgie posted:The solavei website says 49/mo? Ay, sorry about that. You are right. I was on my phone and thought I knew what I was talking about. I'm an idiot. But then again, is another $4/month worth it to guarantee 4gigs of data without throttling? I don't know, but I'd lean towards that if 4gigs is the sweet spot for your usage, I guess.
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May 13, 2013 00:07
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Woot has the Nokia Lumia 900 running Windows Phone 7.8 on sale for $199 today. Supports at&t 3G and LTE on at&t and Tmo. It's a decent smartphone for you cheap bastards. SB35 fucked around with this message at 14:27 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 14:14
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If I have the $60 ST kit (1 month paid + $15 sim kit), and have never activated it, would I have any problems selling this to someone? I have no desire to change from T-Mobile's $30 plan.
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May 14, 2013 17:44
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BoyBlunder posted:If I have the $60 ST kit (1 month paid + $15 sim kit), and have never activated it, would I have any problems selling this to someone? I have no desire to change from T-Mobile's $30 plan. Should be fine. Might even fetch a premium if you have the AT&T SIM edit: in fact, I see the at&t sim kits going for like $60 on ebay without the $45 monthly card SB35 fucked around with this message at 18:18 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 18:13
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SB35 posted:Woot has the Nokia Lumia 900 running Windows Phone 7.8 on sale for $199 today. Supports at&t 3G and LTE on at&t and Tmo. Oh god please don't. That's 7.5, there is a $150 Lumia at walmart, it's got some worse specs but at least it's WP8 so you might have access to SOME apps. Granted it's the 512mb WP8 so you won't have access to everything in WP8 but you should have access to far more than WP7.
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May 14, 2013 20:58
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So windows phone 8 can run all apps, except it cant, and windows 7 cant run new apps? How can such a small ecosystem already be fragmented Don Lapre fucked around with this message at 21:04 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 21:02
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Don Lapre posted:So windows phone 8 can run all apps, except it cant, and windows 7 cant run new apps? No it's very simple. Windows phone 8 can run all apps except for the windows phone 7 apps that weren't ported to Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 7 can't run new apps that were written for 8 and not ported to 7. Windows phone 8 devices with 512 MB RAM can't run some WP8 apps. Windows Phone 7 devices with 256 MB of RAM can't run some WP7 apps. It makes a lot of sense if you don't think about it.
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May 14, 2013 21:11
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Don Lapre posted:So windows phone 8 can run all apps, except it cant, and windows 7 cant run new apps? They intentionally killed WP7, it's basically dead as Windows Mobile. It was pretty obvious even before the Lumia 900 launch it was going to happen.
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May 14, 2013 21:14
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I was on StraightTalk AT&T and then switched to a regional carrier to get the Galaxy S4. I stll have the StraightTalk SIM but nothing else that originally came with it. Would someone else still be able to use it, or should I just toss it?
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May 14, 2013 23:40
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Venkmanologist posted:I was on StraightTalk AT&T and then switched to a regional carrier to get the Galaxy S4. I stll have the StraightTalk SIM but nothing else that originally came with it. Would someone else still be able to use it, or should I just toss it? I'll pay for postage and try it out 
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May 15, 2013 05:03
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Woah, boost and virgin mobile are getting the galaxy s3, the first phone on those networks that's actually pretty good! http://www.androidtapp.com/boost-mobile-virgin-mobile-gets-samsung-galaxy-s3/?utm_source=feedly
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May 21, 2013 19:00
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Because my N4 is arriving tomorrow (I decided gently caress it, they're $350 anyway and an appreciable amount comes back when I sell it) I should start looking into what carrier to go with. ST-ATT is tweaking out and probably not having ATT sims anytime soon, ATT's Aio ain't coming out to Omaha at any point on a human-perceptible timescale, T-Mobile in Omaha is apparently poop. However, there's Red Pocket. If anyone has/had them, how are they?
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May 22, 2013 02:42
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The Entire Universe posted:Because my N4 is arriving tomorrow (I decided gently caress it, they're $350 anyway and an appreciable amount comes back when I sell it) I should start looking into what carrier to go with. ST-ATT is tweaking out and probably not having ATT sims anytime soon, ATT's Aio ain't coming out to Omaha at any point on a human-perceptible timescale, T-Mobile in Omaha is apparently poop. AT&T ST sims should continue to work so just get one off ebay.
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May 22, 2013 02:52
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The Entire Universe posted:Because my N4 is arriving tomorrow (I decided gently caress it, they're $350 anyway and an appreciable amount comes back when I sell it) I should start looking into what carrier to go with. ST-ATT is tweaking out and probably not having ATT sims anytime soon, ATT's Aio ain't coming out to Omaha at any point on a human-perceptible timescale, T-Mobile in Omaha is apparently poop. I'd do what Don Lapre said. Red Pocket is good but it's only on Go Phone levels of service. ST's AT&T is using post-paid coverage (only because America Movil can afford that). Also, you roam into T-Mobile and I can 100% confirm that. I went to Nebraska City and roamed the whole way there. Also, yay I won't be the only person in Omaha with a Nexus 4 anymore. 
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May 22, 2013 02:56
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ThermoPhysical posted:I'd do what Don Lapre said. Red Pocket is good but it's only on Go Phone levels of service. ST's AT&T is using post-paid coverage (only because America Movil can afford that). Also, you roam into T-Mobile and I can 100% confirm that. I went to Nebraska City and roamed the whole way there. Does that apply to all of America Movil's MVNOs? I'm not real interested in getting gouged by ebay for a ST sim and was considering net10. I can live with the data cap.
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May 22, 2013 02:59
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Don Lapre posted:AT&T ST sims should continue to work so just get one off ebay. holy poo poo these are ripoff prices.
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May 22, 2013 03:11
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Athenry posted:Does that apply to all of America Movil's MVNOs? I'm not real interested in getting gouged by ebay for a ST sim and was considering net10. I can live with the data cap. It looks like Net10 and ST both use postpaid AT&T/T-Mobile. They also both roam.
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May 22, 2013 03:27
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The Entire Universe posted:holy poo poo these are ripoff prices. Yes.
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May 22, 2013 05:15
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I wanted to give you my input on prepaid plans. I live in Miami, FL and I previously had StraightTalk ATT CHIP on iPhone. This was about 8 months ago but 2 months into my contract the speed on the data got really bad. I would use the SpeedTest app and it wouldn't even download. I suspect ATT did something to the prepaid customers. Basically the speed was barely useable. Maps, emails were ok but surfing and steaming music was horrible. Then StraightTalk offered their own iPhone5 which is CDMA... this is what I have now. It is much better but on the SpeedTest app I am getting about 1~1.3 mbps on download and upload 0.8~1.0mbps. It might be because of Miami but it is not that great. I get lag streaming music and Instagram takes a little to download. I guess it is acceptable for the price I pay. Now I am wondering about T-Mobile's $30 for 5GB. I would like some feed back on the results on SpeedTest in Miami area. I also read about the hack which gets LTE which I think is awesome. I might switch again but I paid full price on phone which I am willing to take a loss if the download speed is better than what I am getting now.
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May 23, 2013 00:19
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OatmealRocks posted:I wanted to give you my input on prepaid plans. I live in Miami, FL and I previously had StraightTalk ATT CHIP on iPhone. This was about 8 months ago but 2 months into my contract the speed on the data got really bad. I would use the SpeedTest app and it wouldn't even download. I suspect ATT did something to the prepaid customers. Basically the speed was barely useable. Maps, emails were ok but surfing and steaming music was horrible. Then StraightTalk offered their own iPhone5 which is CDMA... this is what I have now. It is much better but on the SpeedTest app I am getting about 1~1.3 mbps on download and upload 0.8~1.0mbps. It might be because of Miami but it is not that great. I get lag streaming music and Instagram takes a little to download. I guess it is acceptable for the price I pay. Now I am wondering about T-Mobile's $30 for 5GB. I would like some feed back on the results on SpeedTest in Miami area. I also read about the hack which gets LTE which I think is awesome. I might switch again but I paid full price on phone which I am willing to take a loss if the download speed is better than what I am getting now. AT&T didn't do anything, Straight Talk throttled you.
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May 23, 2013 00:35
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ThermoPhysical posted:AT&T didn't do anything, Straight Talk throttled you. Actually I don't think so. There was a 20+ page thread on Howard Forums which a bunch of users all experience the same thing,. It was good for 2 months and just went bad. Funny now ATT sims are no longer used for StraightTalk. I think it was a precursor to their business relationship going south.
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May 23, 2013 02:20
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ThermoPhysical posted:It looks like Net10 and ST both use postpaid AT&T/T-Mobile. They also both roam. I went with Net10's $50 plan. Bought the whole shebang at the target on 72nd. Dude there let me use his iPad to activate it and all. So far my only complaints are lag (holy poo poo its like Hitler runs their QoS prioritizing) and that there is fuckall for coverage in Dundee. E: correction, the lag seems to clear up with signal strength. gently caress, I was able to stream Google music. Anyone who has dealt with Sprint's 3G can tell you how monumental it is to just be able to stream a loving song without making a goddamn day out of it. Downside to Net10: 1.5gb cap. Upside: That pack came with T-Mo and ATT SIMs. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 03:10 on May 23, 2013 |
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May 23, 2013 02:23
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OatmealRocks posted:Actually I don't think so. There was a 20+ page thread on Howard Forums which a bunch of users all experience the same thing,. It was good for 2 months and just went bad. Funny now ATT sims are no longer used for StraightTalk. I think it was a precursor to their business relationship going south. That might've been an issue with AT&T and not Straight Talk then. AT&T's not the best with signal all the time. That being said, it honestly sounds like you got hit by ST's random throttling for no reason. Also, ST still uses AT&T cards, they just don't sell them anymore. The business deal going south doesn't have anything to do with any random speed issue, however. It was mostly due to how ST advertises unlimited data and AT&T isn't happy with it. They also are cheating AT&T on the selling of the iPhone, there's also the problem with AT&T just up and forcing Net10 to change their policy without telling America Movil why. The Entire Universe posted:I went with Net10's $50 plan. Bought the whole shebang at the target on 72nd. Dude there let me use his iPad to activate it and all. So far my only complaints are lag (holy poo poo its like Hitler runs their QoS prioritizing) and that there is fuckall for coverage in Dundee. It's so surreal to hear local places mentioned on here. Dundee has poo poo AT&T coverage, yeah. But the coverage is a LOT better than Sprint, I've noticed. Even out on the highways to Nebraska City.The thing about the Target on 72nd is it's in a weird rear end spot. The data almost doesn't work and you might think you're being throttled but you wouldn't be. It's just...weird. As soon as you leave that area, it'd get a lot better. Even with full bars, I'd have odd data issues in that area. I have yet to do any type of streaming on ST though. Hell, I rarely streamed on Sprint. I blame Sprint for this. I have downloaded and updated apps though and they go through just fine. The worst thing that uses the most data is Chrome, but otherwise it's all good. Try the T-Mo SIM!
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May 23, 2013 04:59
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ThermoPhysical posted:That might've been an issue with AT&T and not Straight Talk then. AT&T's not the best with signal all the time. That being said, it honestly sounds like you got hit by ST's random throttling for no reason. Using the T-Mo Sim right now. (On WiFi, waiting for the port to finish )
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May 23, 2013 11:58
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I got a Nexus 4 and a T Mobile Wal Mart SIM, but I decided to have it transfer my number. The thing is though, I don't know / think I get -any- service at my house so i'm not sure if the activation worked or not. Is it supposed to say "No Service, Emergency Calls Only" and the like while it waits for my number to transfer? Their phone support was useless.
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May 23, 2013 21:47
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Abu Dave posted:I got a Nexus 4 and a T Mobile Wal Mart SIM, but I decided to have it transfer my number. The thing is though, I don't know / think I get -any- service at my house so i'm not sure if the activation worked or not. Is it supposed to say "No Service, Emergency Calls Only" and the like while it waits for my number to transfer? Their phone support was useless. I remember finding the right number to call was a pain when I was porting. I posted this once I succeeded for future reference. Uthor posted:And just because I'm probably going to forget this number and not find it again when I need it: to port a number, you need to call 877-778-2106 and say "representative" three or four times (ignore the computer telling you it doesn't know WTF) to talk to a live operator.
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May 23, 2013 23:39
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Thanks .
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May 23, 2013 23:48
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So I got the $30 T-Mobile plan because I THOUGHT GrooVe was good. It wasn't until after I get the plan that I see goons posting how poo poo it actually is. Also coincidentally I'm getting far far more calls for stuff recently. If I go to a higher minute I can't go back to the super cheap $30 plan when the calls finally subside, can I?
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May 24, 2013 14:45
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The Merkinman posted:So I got the $30 T-Mobile plan because I THOUGHT GrooVe was good. It wasn't until after I get the plan that I see goons posting how poo poo it actually is. Also coincidentally I'm getting far far more calls for stuff recently. If I go to a higher minute I can't go back to the super cheap $30 plan when the calls finally subside, can I? Seems like you can only ever sign up for the $30 plan once when you activate a sim. If you switch off they tell you you can't switch back. As it happens you can get another sim for free to $5 and port over. Why do you think it's poo poo? The 100 minute limit?
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May 24, 2013 15:18
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The Merkinman posted:So I got the $30 T-Mobile plan because I THOUGHT GrooVe was good. It wasn't until after I get the plan that I see goons posting how poo poo it actually is. Also coincidentally I'm getting far far more calls for stuff recently. If I go to a higher minute I can't go back to the super cheap $30 plan when the calls finally subside, can I? It's not perfect, but try the Vonage app. You can set any caller ID you want (after confirming it). I've found it works better than Groove IP. You can't receive calls on it without paying for Vonage but placing outbound calls over VOIP free via WiFi or 4g. I just call people right back after they call. It's not incredibly convenient but works fairly well. I talked with my wife yesterday while in the Newark airport via 4g VOIP for an hour and it was perfect. I have the $30 Tmobile plan.
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May 24, 2013 15:21
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The Merkinman posted:So I got the $30 T-Mobile plan because I THOUGHT GrooVe was good. It wasn't until after I get the plan that I see goons posting how poo poo it actually is. Also coincidentally I'm getting far far more calls for stuff recently. If I go to a higher minute I can't go back to the super cheap $30 plan when the calls finally subside, can I? You can always pay per minute on the $30 plan (10c per) if this is just a temporary bump in your call volume. I'm going to have to try out the Vonage thing, that could be a handy thing to have.
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May 24, 2013 16:10
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