So a few years ago I got my wife a cell phone. If by a few, we mean 6. But anyway. Our house happens to sit right in the middle of town, and also happens to sit right in the middle of a dead zone for her provider, AT&T. So her phone, which was the only phone in our house if I’m not home with my cell, was pretty much a paperweght unless she wanted to go out in the front yard to make a call.
I think we refer to that as a sub-optimal solution.
So I called AT&T and they sent over a new phone, with the hopes that the new phone with the new processing would work better. No such luck. So I started working on cancelling the service. Of course, when I got the new phone, I signed up for another 2 year service contract.
With a $175 early termination fee. Ouch.
Now I don’t really mind the early termination fees, that’s how phone companies can afford to give away free cell phones. But that’s a hefty chunk of change to get out of a contract with a phone that’s essentially useless. So I held onto the phone for a while.
But when I started doing the math on the truck repairs (btw, now that those repairs are over $2,000, I’m going to have to sell the truck for a lot more to get my money back. bummer) I turned my mad math skillz to my phone contract, and started shopping for service plans.
SunCom, which is who I have service with, and was recently purchased by T-Mobile, works great in my house. So that’s who I wanted to go with. Well, SunCom was running a special for $29.99 for 1,000 minutes, with unlimited nights and unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes between SunCom customers. So all her calls to me are free, and she’s got another 1,000 minutes to talk to other folks. I added a block of 400 text messages for $5, and that brought the total plan to $35. Figure taxes and other crap, and it’ll run me around $40/month.
My existing plan with AT&T was costing me $70/month, so with the $30/month savings, it will take me 6 months to amortize the early cancellation fee and begin to actually see some savings. Since I had 13 months left on the contract, that means that over the next year I’ll actually save a little over $200 in cell phone service, and my wife will have a phone that works in the house again.
