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July 10, 2005
US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan D
Still questing for some option aside from Cingular for prepaid GSM cellular telephone service for those occasions when I’m in the states, I looked into Verizon today. I’ve never been too awfully keen on Verizon because one of the local companies that got assimilated into that particular borg was the highly dysfunctional GTE. All my indirect experience with Verizon since then seems to indicate that whatever ailed GTE was contagious and has thoroughly infected its new host Verizon. (Some corporate cultures are just like that, just impossibly pernicious. For example, no matter how many good companies it buys and no matter how many times it changes its name, US Airways remains good old Agony (Alleghany) Airways.)
Poking through Verizon’s site I find that they do offer a pay-as-you-go plan. It compares fairly poorly to that offered by Cingular. First there’s a daily access charge of 99¢ “even on days you do not make or receive calls.” What if my ‘phone isn’t even on? Cingular’s $1 access fee associated with its 10¢/min prepaid plan may work similarly but it’s worded differently. Then there’s the expiration schedule for prepaid minutes. Since I’m likely to be out of the country for months at a time, I want to be able to get to the longest period prior to expiration with the least amount of dollars. For Cingular, this is $100 which yields 180 days to expiration. With Verizon, you’ve got to shell out $150 to get to the top of the schedule and even then the minutes will live for just 120 days. Next please.
Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.
Posted by eric at July 10, 2005 03:30 PM