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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I recently switched to the T-mobile $30 plan from my butt-rapingly expensive AT&T mobile share plan. I love the plan, and it suits my needs. I am looking at doing the other leg of the mobile share plan (my wife) and I cannot find a good prepaid plan that will work for her (her restraint threshold is a lot lower than mine).

As much as I'd like to keep the $30 plan, I think moving to the $80 value plan with 1000 shared minutes, unlimited text and unlimited data (throttled after 2gb, individually I believe, but shared wouldn't be bad either). With AAA Michigan I think I get a 10% discount, so that's $72 or $36/line. I'd be paying more than I like, but netting out better. I'm not happy about getting put into a contract with an ETF without receiving a subsidy. But $72 pretax for smartphones is good enough to lock in and deal with that. I know T-Mobile is launching new contract-free plans soon, but may want to lock in with what I know is good now rather than the devil I don't.

What would be the best method to get my prepaid number ported to a postpaid plan? The eligibility tool shows I am not eligible. Should I get my wife set up on a plan and then call customer service to convert my plan? If it's not possible, what's the cheapest porting-around to get back to T-mobile that I can do?

Appreciate any feedback!

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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Tedronai66 posted:

How much data does she use? Under 100MB is 50 for the line, with unlimited talk/text. Or bump it up to ~2gb limit for 60. 10 bucks more a month but no contract at that rate. Not to mention CallingMart and other sites can knock that down to maybe 5 more a month.

She uses about 300-800 a month, mostly Pandora. Tell me about this CallingMart place, very interesting to me. I only see <$1 savings on Tmobile prepaid cards though.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Cuttlefish Party posted:

In that case, there's also the unlimited talk/text Straight Talk plan on T-Mobile. If your wife stays under the Arbitrary Unpublished Data Limits mentioned in the OP (i.e., 1-2GB per month, and possibly 100MB/day), she would get the equivalent of T-Mobile's $60 plan for $45.

If you decide to change your plan to postpaid, why not port to Google Voice? It's $20 but you won't need to port again so long as Google Voice is around.

Unfortunately straight talk has issues with iPhones. No MMS. If here's a way around that the plan sounds great. GV has the same issue, no mms. If it weren't for that, I think porting to GV may be the best way to avoid all this.

Ill do some digging to find out if there's a good way to get it working on straight talk, I'm sure there is a way.

Thanks!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

hotsauce posted:

Just to confirm, using the Vonage app on a data connection (no wifi) only uses data, not minutes, correct?

Those 100 minutes go fast!

Correct

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

tonic posted:

Anyone have much experience with using an iPhone with the new T-Mobile 1900mhz rollout?

According to a t-mobile press release, our city supposedly has been switched over to 1900Mhz. My wife's iPhone (testing out t-mobile prepaid), on the other hand, thinks differently. In certain locations it will get great 3G service (10mbit+ download), but it most places it just sits on EDGE. Strangely, at home it is usually on EDGE, but will randomly jump to 3G, generally after making/receiving a call. Are there APN settings I need to use to force it to go on 3G? Or does T-mobile just not have their poo poo together yet?

Seems like they've got a ways to go if they're really going to attempt an iPhone launch this year.

Not sure where you are at, but I just recently took my iPhone 5 from AT&T to the $30 prepaid plan here in Ann Arbor, MI (and other Detroit suburbs). I've found that in the 30 miles surrounding Detroit I've had pretty good 3G service, albeit a bit unpredictable. Where I live (just outside the 30 miles) I'm on Edge at my house, but at my neighbors I'm on 3G. It's rolling out, just slowly I think. At least I hope they didn't stop 15 feet from my house. In Ann Arbor, I'm on Edge except in a few spots, and the drive through the country to get to my house drops all the way down to GPRS. I'm hitting a lot of different locations and didn't expect 3G everywhere when I signed up, but I am looking forward to a wider net of iPhone 3G broken out.

I should note that the T-mobile EDGE is faster than the AT&T EDGE. Pandora works just fine on it.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

gariig posted:

If you call Google Voice and check your voice mail through the voice prompts then yes it will use your minutes. However, someone leaving you a voice mail does not use any of your minutes because Google picked up the call not you. This is the same as using T-Mobile voice mail.

You will have to call T-Mobile and have them shut off your voice mail. T-Mobile prepaid does not support conditional call forwarding which is what is used to say if my phone rings and I don't pick it up send it to another phone number (like your Google Voice number).

This doesn't sound like it'd be true, but calling from a landline to check my voicemail does not use minutes, correct?

BoyBlunder posted:

I set up my T-Mo # to ring on GV. If someone calls my GV #, it'll route to my phone (with my prepaid T-Mo SIM), and if I don't pick up, GV will handle the voicemail.

Seriously considering porting my $30 plan to GV (and signing up a new one) and doing this, MMS be damned.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

actionjackson posted:

I put in my unlock request, but I'm still not sure about the $30 plans. Restricting my data by 20 MB a month would be a lot easier than restricting my calls by 300 minutes a month or whatever. The $50 plan is probably more suitable, but then it's not nearly as much savings (I think AT&T is $60). Are there programs on my phone that will use data in the background without me knowing?

Is there an iPhone app that will let me make free calls over wifi?

Talkatone and Vonage are your best bets.

My wife is testing T-mobile on her iPhone 4 (minimal 3G in our area) on the $3 plan and had a pretty good question. Will any text messages she receives on her AT&T number (that sim is removed for the time being, the T-mobile is a throwaway number) arrive when she puts the sim in or will they be lost into the ether?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Athenry posted:

$200 for the iphone + $350 for the ETF is $550. A quick glance at ebay shows the low end around $575 for a new iphone 5. If waiting and small profit from flipping it are worth it for you go ahead.

$575 before fees.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ilkhan posted:

Most people saying "upgrade to an iPhone, sell it, buy a real phone" are assuming you dont need to pay an ETF.

This whole scheme worked when etfs were $200, when they revised smart phone etfs up they nullified this.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Free T-mobile prepaid sims deal, limit 2, is back:

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/88978/tmobile-free-tmobile-prepaid-phone-sim-card-activation-kit-regular-or-micro

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

tonic posted:

How do you make T-Mobile APN settings sticky in iOS6? Mine seem to disappear at random and I never realize until trying to send a picture message.

Same issue, all the time. Would love to hear a solution. I think it has a lot to do with the back dooring of the iPhone on the network. I figure it'll resolve soon enough.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

hotsauce posted:

Calling all cheapskates...this website has T-Mobile refills (I have the $30 plan) for $26.99, no tax.

Yeah, it's only $1.50 cheaper than callingmart, but I'm going to try them out.

Edit: You sent a payment of $26.99 USD to 庞 颜华 :stare:

We will see if the code actually arrives.

Holy poo poo, forgot the website:

http://www.refillmobi.com/

I bit, we'll see. A quick google shows legitimacy. Is this a standing offer or just a sale price?

edit: Just saw your update, they login as you and then apply??

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

hotsauce posted:

I guess so...but how did they log in as me?? All I gave them was my phone number. I did get a confirmation text from T-Mobile congratulating me for adding $30 to my plan, so it worked.

Certainly high on the sketch-o-meter, but I guess it is legit...

I PRESUME that they are an authorized dealer of some sort or another and that is the view that they have? Guess that's the upside of a prepaid account, you only lose what's in there....

edit: Just got confirmation it was applied. Doesn't show when I login from my PC, but from my iPhone app it shows +$30. real dodgy.

edit2: Logging in/out showed the new balance. I bookmarked these guys, we'll see what happens.

TraderStav fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Feb 6, 2013

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SB35 posted:

I thought ST phone support was pretty decent, they even offer to call you back if the hold line is too long.

Does this $2.50 off for enrolling in the auto service get you $2.50 off for every month? With taxes and such it may still be a good deal, but that cuts it down to like an actual $1 off as opposed to buying it on walmart.com with a CA address (no tax)

$60/month isn't exactly cheap... and $70 you're getting into contract territory.

$45/month on ST T-mo is a much better deal in my opinion


Does the ST Tmobile have issues with iPhone mms like the AT&T does? About to switch my wife over to the Tmobile $50 plan and if its basically the same to go to the $45 I'm all over that.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

My T-Mobile microSIMs came today, thanks to whoever mentioned them!

I haven't tried them out but I'll probably see if they work on Sunday. Need to run errands tomorrow and I'd rather not have weird T-Mob service issues. :v:

It was me, and you're quite welcome.

I got mine yesterday as well, tested out my new Nano-sim cutter and tossed it into my iPhone 5 to see if the cutter did it's job correctly. It was a great success and now I have 3 T-mobile sims with no use, only because they were free. (1 extra from the last free SIM promotion)

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Stick100 posted:

You spent $1232 to get $300 in value .24 ROI is not worth it.

But a N4 is very slippery and easy to break so get the TPU case I linked. Someone I know has kept the initial plastic on theirs (shows the locations of the volume and power buttons) and also makes it non-slippery.

It's actually -75% ROI. The ROI assumes you received back your principal.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

BoyBlunder posted:

T-Mo has launched their Straight Talk competitior, GoSmartMobile: http://www.gosmartmobile.com

Plans are as follows:

$30 - Unlim Talk/Txt
$35 - Unlim Talk/Txt/Web
$45 - Unlim Talk/Txt/High Speed Web

$35 plan includes web at 2G speeds. $45 plan starts at 3G and upon 5GB of use in a cycle is reduced to 2G for remainder of cycle.

I can't find anything on the site that says they use HSPA+. I'm interested in bumping up from the $30 100min unlimited txt/data, but I don't want to go to Straight Talk due to their 2GB limit :ohdear:

I was just about to transition my wife over to the $50 tmobile plan. Assume I need a different sim? That $45 sounds juicy. Wonder if they have the same mms problems or other noteworthy limitations.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

TraderStav posted:

I was just about to transition my wife over to the $50 tmobile plan. Assume I need a different sim? That $45 sounds juicy. Wonder if they have the same mms problems or other noteworthy limitations.

More fine print:

Picture & other types of messages not included

edit: without HSPA+, does that mean iPhones would be hamstrung?

TraderStav fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Feb 20, 2013

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Tedronai66 posted:

Without 1900 Mhz 3g period in your area, an iphone would be hamstrung.

Just to clarify, on this service, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of the it if it were available in your area (as it is on T-mobile prepaid in mine right now).

Thanks!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SB35 posted:

I was about to say you're wrong, but I see you live in Omaha so you'd know better than I would. I was, however, in Omaha a couple weekends ago in the downtown area and had talk, text and EDGE data on my ST Tmo phone. So as far as I could tell, as long as you have the data roaming enabled you'll get something, not great, but it's something.


Truth. On Tmo, Iowa is like a barren wasteland of corn and zero bars.

To that point, I'm on Tmobile prepaid and have Data roaming turned off. If I turn it on, will it just not access roaming data or will there be any fee if it does?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Stick100 posted:

Yes that will work. You could wait until the ST website had ATT sims back but there isn't a point. Order that, drop it in go to the ST website to register and you should be good.

ST on ATT has "unlimited" data but they watch it pretty carefully and will get angry with you if you use more than a couple GB per month or even a decent bit in a day.

How does ST on AT&T handle LTE? I have AT&T LTE in my area, or would I just be using 4g?

Also, has there been any sufficient 'hacks' or workarounds to get MMS working on ST? Seems like a huge gap to have in an offering in 2013.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

johnny sack posted:

Wait, ST doesn't have MMS? In other words I won't be able to send or receive pictures via text with ST?


Goddammit I just placed my order.

I should have been more specific, issues with IPHONES and MMS.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4299384?start=0&tstart=0

More googling is showing it isn't that big of a deal though. Especially with jailbreak options out now.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Been doing some googling on the Straight Talk soft data caps, what's the reality with it? If you hit 2gb or 100mb/day do you get a message or do they just cut you off? Do you get throttled (which I'm totally fine with) or do they shut you down and you lose your number? The last bit there is my only real concern. I averaged around 2-3 gigs/month when I was on AT&T, so with some mindfulness I could probably stay below it, but really want to make sure I'm not getting in bed with a bunch of unreasonable jerks.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I'm on tmobile prepaid right now and the coverage is not so great for iPhones but I'm optimistic as the areas around me are getting 3G. I know AT&T is great around me so that's what has me reconsidering my carrier. ST Tmo wouldn't be doing me any favors. If ST is just throttling (to edge?) than I think that is way more than fair for the cost. Does anyone have any sources or forums talking about this as everything I google brings up horrible threads from last spring when ST were terminating folks.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Open the prepaid first though, so when google finishes porting you can point that puppy right to it straight away.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
On AT&T when a line is discontinued, even the primary, another line just becomes the primary and the account is intact.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
So a little emergency occurred tonight and broke my wifes patience with T-mobiles poor service in our area and wants to switch our prepaids to AT&T towers. Is there any (good) way of getting Straight Talk or Net10 sims at the moment? I'm not as plugged into the matter as many of you, any word on what's going on with the lack of supply?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the post above yours, I don't know if TracFone will be so quick to get AT&T cards considering how AT&T is treating TracFone customers with harsh data caps with no explanation as to why to TracFone.

However, it looks like you can check your local Walmart store for Straight Talk AT&T SIMs, they may still have some.

Thanks, I saw that but was speaking more to where the availability of the sims. It seems that ST is more preferable, despite their dreaded softcap as it seems like you only get throttled down to 200kpbs or so which seems quite usable to me as I'm not streaming much video. I'll just have to stay off Youtube and MAYBE Pandora if throttled. The lack of availability is the concern and since there is a sense of urgency around switching off of the T-mobile towers. I think I may jump over to the Net10 and wait for ST to come available. We can stay under the 1.5GB if we need to until then. My wife rarely used more than a gig on AT&T when we were there, I on the other hand will require some discipline. :)

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
My wife just came back with this box. The front leads me to believe that there are two sims here. Would both sims work on AT&T or are they carrier specific? I have a sim cutter so I'm not worried about fit. The back says that I need an activation card, I can't just add money when I activate?



TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

MC Hawking posted:

Okay I suspect that this has been addressed but I'm on the $30 tmobile plan and can't receive mms messages. I can send them out but I don't believe the recipient actually gets them. Normally it'd just forward via google voice to my email but I'm actually using my real number for some people.

Any clues to how I can fix this? Apn settings or something?

iPhone?

If so:

Data
APN: epc.tmobile.com


MMS
APN: internet2.voicestream.com
Usernme:
Password:
MMSC: http://mms.msg.eng.t-mobile.com/mms/wapenc
MMS Proxy:
MMS Max Message Size: 1048576
MMS UA prof URL: http://apple.com/mms/uaprof.rdf

Internet Tethering
APN: pcweb.tmobile.com


The settings will occasionally 'get lost', but just re-enter them and you'll be set.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

MC Hawking posted:

Android, actually. You wouldn't happen to know the listing for that?

No, sorry. But I can't imagine it's much different. Google up T-mobile prepaid android settings and I'm sure you'll do just fine.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Lblitzer posted:

Quick question, I'm using a Note 2 on Verizon but looking to jump to T-Mobile. Not sure how coverage is here but I'd like to try it out as sim cards are a buck on their site. Is it possible to use their SIM card to test out and then swap back to my Verizon one when I want to use my main number?

Get two. Put one on the $3/day unlimited everything plan, use the second to transfer over if you're happy.

That's if you're going on the $30 100 minute plan, since it requires a new activation. Otherwise just get one and port later if you like it, changing your pla to whatever.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I just ported my iPhone 5 and my wife's iPhone 4S to net10. It was quite confusing as it doesn't go down like any other prepaid provider but they went through in about an hour. I went to unlockit.co.nz to generate an apn to get data working. iMessage wouldn't work for an hour and then randomly started. I cannot get mms to work and am thinking jailbreaking is my only option at this point. Not sure why the apn settings are inaccessible. Have any pros here figured out the best way to regain iPhone functionality on net 10 and want to save me some time? Their forums are garbage as they take every issue offline and no help is posted.

Thanks!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Lblitzer posted:

It's still showing T-Mobile for me and I'm not seeing AT&T's name anywhere on the site.

I bought one for $1 last week on eBay. Activated fine today.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

TraderStav posted:

I just ported my iPhone 5 and my wife's iPhone 4S to net10. It was quite confusing as it doesn't go down like any other prepaid provider but they went through in about an hour. I went to unlockit.co.nz to generate an apn to get data working. iMessage wouldn't work for an hour and then randomly started. I cannot get mms to work and am thinking jailbreaking is my only option at this point. Not sure why the apn settings are inaccessible. Have any pros here figured out the best way to regain iPhone functionality on net 10 and want to save me some time? Their forums are garbage as they take every issue offline and no help is posted.

Thanks!

I figured it all out and here is what I came up with for posterity and helping others in the future. I ended up jailbreaking and installing TetherMe for $5. I think there may be a free version but my research showed this worked gangbusters. After jailbreaking I changed the APN settings to:

Cellular Data : tfdata
Mms: tfdata
Mmsc: http://mms-tf.net
Mms proxy: mms3.tracfone.com:80
Mms max msg size:1048576
Mms us prof: http://www.apple.com/mms/uaprof.rdf

This worked perfectly and was sending picture messages to non-iMessage folks. I grabbed Youmail from the app store forwarded my voicemail to it and I have Visual Voicemail (via the app, not native) again. This is the best set up now I believe as I have all the functionality of a post-paid AT&T set up.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

Its not Straight Talk, it's AT&T doing it.

The problem is that, apparently, the Net10 hard cap of 1.5gb/mo or 50mb/day is also on Straight Talk but not officially announced.

AT&T have placed this restriction on Net10 without telling TracFone why. I checked around XDA and HowardForums and this is happening to a lot of ST AT&T users.

T-Mobile isn't as greedy with data so switching to them can fix the issue but they're not as expansive as AT&T.

Net10 (same parent company as ST) just approached it differently. Instead of some random cap in which they throttle you, they set it up so you will just not have any data. If you can keep your data under that, it's probably the smart play as you know what you're going to get. If you don't mind the EDGE speed that ST throttles you to, that may be the smarter play as there is continued data usage after you hit the soft cap.

How slow is the ST throttling? I've heard people complaining, but I presume they're streaming video like crazy. I was using Pandora on T-mobile EDGE no problem so I can imagine for my use case the ST throttling wouldn't impact me much.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Hop on Net10 and switch to ST if/when they get their poo poo together? That is if you do not need more than 1.5GB of data. For the price I think it's pretty fair for what you're getting. I don't stream a lot of video on the go, though.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
From what I've read, this sounds like exactly the sort of use that would cause ST to throttle. They're best used for casual smartphone use and not streaming. ~1.5-2gb a month of total usage, no more than 50megs day should keep you off their radar.

edit: Or go with Net10 that has a very specific 1.5GB monthly cap. Stay under that, and you're golden. Go over, and you're out of data for the month.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I just had my first monthly re-up with Net10 on the two line unlimited family plan and was irritated to see that I paid $8 in taxes. Are there cards available to bring the refill amount without having to pay the tax? I know there are $90 cards, which would be about $3/mo savings right off the top without any taxes and I have seen sites in the past where there are sold at slight discounts. What's the best solution goon-army?

Thanks!

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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SB35 posted:

I buy my SraightTalk refills from Walmart.com and use a California shipping address because they don't charge tax in CA. Shipping address doesn't matter because the code is emailed to me.

I may do that, thanks! Looks like Callingmart does the same thing for $89 also.

  • Locked thread