Family plans. They seem to be the best value on every carrier, no matter what network you use or if you go prepaid or post-paid. The more people you bring with you, the lower your bill gets. The question now becomes, why is this archaic practice still happening? For example, Cricket Wireless offers a $90 discount on your prepaid bill when you sign up 5 lines on your account. This means for their $40 plan, which includes 500MB of high speed data, unlimited talk, text and 2G data there after, your monthly bill for 5 lines would be an anemic $110 plus any applicable taxes. This works out to just $22 per line. To upgrade those to a normal 2.5GB throttle point, you are looking at an additional $50, or $160.
AT&T has a similar offering with their Mobile Share family plan. This offers users a 5 line account for only $175. The $175 price point works out to be just $35 per line. This includes unlimited talk, text and 10GB of shared data. Of course, the deal with this plan is you have to bring your own device or participate in the AT&T Next program. The Next program is the device financing offering that AT&T is now offering to its users. This will add about $125-150 a month to your bill bringing the cost to a nearly contract rate of $300-325 before taxes and almost $400 in some areas after taxes. The savings are obviously in the device costs with AT&T’s plans.
T-Mobile runs out the $50 Simple Choice unlimited plan for the single user. Then they offer the second line for $30, the third, fourth and fifth lines are all $10 each. So the advertisement can read, “Get 5 lines for $110!” Just how is T-Mobile able to lower that cost of that $50 plan to just $22 per line? There is only one way to explain it, and that is aggressive sales people. On my recent visit to a T-Mobile store, I saw them blindly lead a lady who came in with a phone that wouldn’t power on in to a brand new device, “For nothing down.” Then enroll this unsuspecting lady into the Jump! program and send an extremely happy woman out the door. Multiply this by 5 lines, and the bill just went from $110 a month to $285 before taxes, or about $15-20 a month less than AT&T charges on contract with that discounted handset.
The long and the short of the story is that the carriers aren’t bundling the services like they used to, but a savvy shopper will saving $100’s every month by purchasing a lower cost device like the Moto G or the Nokia Lumia 635. These sub $150 handsets perform well enough for the majority of users out there, have great screens, good cameras and will save most people about $500 a year right off the top of their cell bills. When you look at the 2 year cost of financing a premium handset, your savings just multiplies.
For individual line savings, visit www.4gfastdata.com and check out the single line MVNO offerings from carriers like Simple Mobile, Spot Mobile and Red Pocket Mobile.
Comments
Post a Comment