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December 16, 2014 7:32 AM   Subscribe

What would be the best (lowest cost / least hassle) way to get my immediate family (wife, son, daughter, myself) up and running on iPhone 6s for Christmas this year?

Background:

We currently have 4 lines with AT&T, with hardware running from iPhone 4S to iPhone 5S. We've got a shared 10GB/month data plan.

Over the past several months, my wife and my daughter have upgraded their phones, with mixed success: My daughter upgraded to a 5S - and somehow the bill is now $50 more per month. My wife attempted to upgrade to a iPhone 6, paid $299 and then watched our bill shoot up another $60/month. We reverted the iPhone 6 'incident'. I'm not sure this is relevant except to illustrate that dealing with AT&T is looking to be a hassle. Currently, only my daughter is locked in to a 2 year plan.

Q1: So if you were me, how would you go about upgrading everyone to an iPhone 6 (while staying with AT&T)? Should I go to an actual AT&T store? Is there a better place to go? Or should I try to do it over the phone? My current 'plan' is to simply call AT&T and tell 'em "I want 4 iPhone 6s; what's the best you can do for me?" Should I carry a cyanide capsule, just in case?

Q2: I'd like to stick with AT&T, but I could be convinced to go to T-Mobile. Any advice on how to cut ties with AT&T and 'seamlessly' move over to T-Mobile would be appreciated.

Misc:

- It's okay if the phone hardware doesn't arrive until after Christmas.
- Please no discussions of why I should really be going with Android.
- Sprint and Verizon are non-starters, primarily due to poor coverage in areas where we need it.

Thanks for any and all advice.
posted by doctor tough love to Shopping (10 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think you think this is more complicated than it actually is. T-Mobile will be way cheaper in the long run, though it may involve some initial outlay for the phones. Go to the T-Mobile website. Price out the plan you want, and the phones you would like to buy. If you decide you want to switch, you might have a day of poor/interrupted service while your numbers are ported. Don't do it, like, ON CHRISTMAS. Do it on a non-holiday Monday.

You can take your per-month T-Mobile cost to AT&T if you want and see if they'll match or meet it, but I think AT&T knows there are plenty of suckers who will go with AT&T without thinking about it too much.

Also: how much of that 10GB do you actually use, and how much of it do you use streaming music? T-Mobile's plans let you stream music for free. But regardless, T-Mobile's cheapest plan right now will give you four lines at 2.5GB each, for $100 a month. Total.

If T-Mobile works in your area, staying with AT&T is kind of crazy, IMO.
posted by mskyle at 7:55 AM on December 16, 2014


I think you're going to get the best service if you walk into a brick and mortar store.

Now, I think you should transfer to t-mobile. I think this because I was once an AT&T customer, and I haaaaaaaated them. I am now a t-mobile customer and haven't been happier. T-mobile has a deal where they would pay your daughter's early termination fees.

I've hopped around a few different companies over the years, by and large it only takes a day or so for things to transfer over. No one has ever really complained of lost calls/text messages. You basically go into the store and tell them you want to transfer your number, and they do all the rest. There might be a pin number or special code/security question that you have to give them, or at&t might have to confirm it with you during the transfer.
posted by royalsong at 7:57 AM on December 16, 2014


A phone upgrade should not increase your bill by that much unless the phone is bought on installments. Compare your bills from before both upgrades to your current bill. Something has changed. Go into the store and ask what your bill will be if you all upgrade. They should be able to get you a decent estimate.

Our bill shows us an insane amount of detail for each line. there are separate charges for minutes, data and texts. If there is anything else on your bill aside from taxes and fees, ask what it is and if it can be removed.
posted by soelo at 8:51 AM on December 16, 2014


My parents have had such great experiences with Consumer Cellular that my husband and I are switching as soon as our AT&T contract is up. The prices are very reasonable and service is fantastic. Consumer Cellular phones run on AT&T network, so the call and data quality is very high. They rank at the top in Consumer Reports' survey of small cellphone providers.
posted by apennington at 9:13 AM on December 16, 2014


Best answer: AT&T has a confusing array of plans and contract options and what you have kind of depends on when you last dealt with them. In short, they went from standard post-paid plans (no shared data, no discount when your phone went off subsidy) to something called "mobile share" (one big bucket of shared data, but kind of a rip-off) and then "mobile share value" (like mobile share, but cheaper, but with NO PHONE SUBSIDY INCLUDED).

What all that means is that if you recently switched to the mobile share value plan (and you probably did, since it was much cheaper) then you pay $X for the bucket of data, and then somewhere between $10 and $25* per month for each device that shares from the bucket, as long as each device is off contract. If you get a new phone through them, again it depends on when you last touched your contract, but you'll either have to buy it through the AT&T Next program (pro: get a new phone every year; con: you have to trade in your old phone to get the new one, and you always have a charge for a phone), or you'll be able to add a standard phone subsidy … but that phone will cost $40/mo instead of $10 to $25 for the life of the subsidy (probably 18 months, but Your Contract Will Vary).

* If you have a big enough data bucket there's a discount on the monthly fee for each device, and no, I can't make sense of it either.

If you are the sort of person who upgrades to a new phone every year (or you would like to be that sort of person) then AT&T Next is actually a good deal (it's comparable to similar plans from Verizon and T-Mobile). If you are the sort of person who holds onto a phone until it absolutely quits working, then you have your choice between the subsidy (and $40/mo/phone fee) or paying outright for an off-contract phone.

The big thing to know when you talk to AT&T is whether you want to sign up for AT&T Next or whether you want an old school contract. If you want neither of those things, then you will need to go to an Apple Store, take whatever trade-in value they'll give you (which is competitive with Gazelle and Amazon, but maybe 10% less than you might get in a private sale), and buy off-contract phones out of pocket.

When my iPhone 5 suddenly lost the ability to be a phone a few weeks ago, the Apple trade-in was what I ended up doing because the off-contract phone was cheaper for me than the $40/mo charge would have been over the life of the contract. Our account has an employer discount so YMMV.
posted by fedward at 9:35 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


You're going to be paying a minimum of $600 each for those iPhone Sixes, and more likely $650 or more. With T-mobile you can buy outright or spread the cost over 24 months. That would be $27 per phone per month (or $2600 outright), plus the $100/month for the 4 line family plan. So, $200/month or so all in (and yes, T-mo will pay for the AT&T ETF, and will probably also reimburse you for any phones you want to trade in -- or you can sell them on Swappa or Amazon or whatever to offset the cost of the new phones).

I don't know how AT&T works, I haven't been an AT&T customer in about 10 years, but you want to talk with them to see if, with 4 iPhone Sixes, your bill will be more or less than $200/month. My guess is that it will be more.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 10:37 AM on December 16, 2014


The port is fast, same day (and I was switching from Virgin Mobile, one of the worst carriers).

RabbitRabbit is right that you want the Tmobile 4-line family plan and the installment plans for the phones. It works out to $52 per phone per month. (And if you keep the phone for 2 years, it drops to $25!) The other carriers are basically ripping you off. Plus T-Mobile has international texting in over a hundred countries for free. If you're sure you are happy with the T-Mobile coverage, and you don't need more than 2.5GB of data (almost no one does), there's no reason to do anything else. Your bill should not be increasing by $60 a month, that should be less than the total!
posted by wnissen at 10:49 AM on December 16, 2014


Honestly, it's hard to answer this question. An AT&T Mobile Share Value plan is $15 per device if you aren't under contract, and $40 if you are on contract. You can stay off contract and pay for a new phone in installments, which is all that Next is. So I can't see what your wife or daughter did to increase the bill by $50 a month.

It does sound like T-Mobile would be a better deal, just because they have a plan that has you pay $0 per device instead of $15. So that would save you $60 a month. Beyond that, the plans would be virtually identical.
posted by smackfu at 2:41 PM on December 16, 2014


T-mo will pay for the AT&T ETF, and will probably also reimburse you for any phones you want to trade in -- or you can sell them on Swappa or Amazon or whatever to offset the cost of the new phones

T-Mo will only reimburse your ETF if you trade in your existing phone(s) with them. I assume they'll give you less in trade than Swappa or Gazelle or whoever, but being reimbursed for the ETF on top of that definitely sweetens that deal.
posted by zsazsa at 3:27 PM on December 16, 2014


Response by poster: Thank you, everyone. And especially fedward, who helped me understand just WTF has been going on. I'll have to talk to the family and we'll peek at Consumer Cellular but I suspect we'll be trekking on over to the local T-Mobile store this Saturday (can't do weekdays because my wife works at an office).
posted by doctor tough love at 3:51 PM on December 16, 2014


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