[Discuss] T-Mobile pre-paid plans

[vsharris at gmail.com (Steve Harris)]

Tom Metro wrote:
>
>> Doug wrote:
>>> Our carrier is T-Mobile, using their pay-as-you-go, no data plan.
>>> ... In a year's time, we pay T-Mobile $400 for all our minutes
>>> (4x1000).
>>
>> If you don't use many voice minutes you can actually get by for as
>> little as $100 per *year* per phone with T-Mobile. (That's the minimum
>> you pay to keep the account from expiring, and it gets you a "pile"
>> (considering voice minutes are in declining need) of minutes.)
>
>    Less.  I forget the precise details, but it's something like: once
>you've given them $100, any subsequent minutes purchased will both add
>to the pile, and refresh the expiration timer on any current minutes you
>have, for one year.
>
>    I've given them around $130 for nearly two years of talking.  $20
>for a quarter's worth of assessment, $100 to extend it all out a year,
>and $10 several months ago to refresh the expiration timer.  Have about
>$40 of time left, which I expect will be gone before the year is up in
>December or so.


In order to maintain "gold" status (where minutes are valid for a
year) you need to buy only enough minutes to put your total over 1000.
 For example, if you have 700 minutes in your "pile", then you only
need to purchase 300 minutes ($30) and all 1000 minutes will be valid
for another year.  Just be sure to renew before the anniversary date!



>The T-Mobile pay-per-minute plan has no data, but interestingly you can
>switch to a pay-per-day plan at any time from the handset. On this plan
>$2 will get you 24 hours of "unlimited" (some carrier definition of
>unlimited that doesn't mean what normal people understand it to mean) 2G
>and $3 buys you 3G for a day. The next day you can switch back. So you
>can effectively get "on demand" cell data if you find yourself without
>WiFi, and need cell data only occasionally.

Have you actually done this (activated/de-activated the 1-day data
plan)?   How exactly is it done?


- Steve