JD says...

YB is at work today so I've been keeping busy around the house...you know, the normal stuff a guy does on a Saturday when his wife is at work. Did some budget stuff, doing some laundry, some dishes, all after having hit three buckets of golf balls at the driving range. I also managed to find a program that would let me view the video a friend took of our wedding last year. It was sad to find the video so dark. So now that you know the dishes are going, the washer is going and a DVD of Ratatouille is playing I'll get to the point.

A year and a half or two years ago I moved YB and I onto a family cell plan with Alltel. We had both been with Verizon. YB was paying way too much and I couldn't get reception when I was at work. Alltel gave us a better plan for less money and I could get reception at work. Not only that, but I looked into which towers would be kept on and which would be shut off after the Verizon/Alltel merger completed and found that Verizon would keep the tower responsible for the good reception and the world would be a happy place. Well, lo' and behold, that tower got shut off and now our contract with Verizon is up again and, in a way, we're back where we started two years ago. I no longer get good reception where I work and so am basically paying for a service I can't use for a chunk of the day.

To me, this is unexceptable. $100 for two lines, one of which can't be used during the day, is a lot of money to throw away. So in response to this conundrum I decided to shop around for other plans and networks, perhaps prepaid or an iPhone which can use the WiFi network in my building to place VOIP calls needed during the day. The problem is there are no plans close to what YB and I currently have that are anywhere near as cheap as what we are paying and prepaid is a joke. We text more than we talk and never come close to using our monthly minutes. Prepaid access fees and per minute rates make it more like calling long distance from your home phone in the 1980's. After taxes and fees the closest comparable plan on Verizon (which is still the cheapest as far as I can tell) would be close to $130. I wish it was possible to port your cell number to an iPod or iPad with 3G capability because then you could make and receive calls with the Skype-like options out there without having to let everyone know your number is different. Plus you could save a bundle of money because the 3G data access would only occur when you're not in WiFi network which, for most of us, isn't that often anymore.

I hate getting scammed with texting plans, taxes and fees. It's like the cell phone companies don't realize just how much they're gouging their customers.