cellphone filter
May 10, 2005 6:39 PM   Subscribe

Twofold question: 1) any way for me to get out of my two year contract with at&t? 2) sidekick II a good idea? more in the extended...

1) i have a two year contract, with the one year mark in june, and i want out. only problem, is that they want $175 for early cancellation. any special language i can spit to wiggle out of this? a friend suggested posting on craigslist and then assigning/delegating the contract to someone else. suggestions?

2) this doesn't need to be a treo 650 v sidekick II thread, since i don't need something with as much versatility as a treo. not for lack of tehcnical aptitude on my part, it's just not what i need. that said, the sidekick II has been out for eight months and i'm weary of buying something so late in the product cycle. anyone heard anything about a sidekick III or sidekick II.5 upcoming?

thanks!
posted by whatitis to Shopping (11 answers total)
 
Well, you can move your contract to Cingular and get a Blackberry 7100 or 7290. Other than that, AT&T Wireless is holding on to their contracts pretty tight since that's about all the value in the company.
posted by nicwolff at 6:53 PM on May 10, 2005


1) No. AT&T is evil. They practically made my father cry when we tried to cancel our one family plan with 4 phones, only to find that they were going to charge us not 175, but 175 for each phone number under one plan. There are no tricks to sneak out of the plan either. I did a fair bit of research on this back then.

2) I hate the Sidekick so I have nothing constructive to add on this.
posted by drpynchon at 7:55 PM on May 10, 2005


Why do you want out? Becuse it's very unlikely you can get out of it, but you can weasel all sorts of goodies out of them if they think you want to buy out. I got an extra 500 anytime minutes/month by reminding them that I could jump to another carrier and get a better plan where I'd make-up that $175 in a year.
posted by nathan_teske at 8:14 PM on May 10, 2005


The Sidekick blows. For two months the web browser would time out every time you tried to load a page. It just recently started working again (mostly, anyway), but T-Mobile's network is horribly slow.

If you want an internet phone, get a Treo from sprint. Their unlimited data is only $15/month (less than T-mobiles), and their network is fast enough to stream music. If you don't have sprint in your area, pay the extra $5/month which lets you roam on Verison for free...

But whatever you do, don't get the sidekick :)
posted by rajbot at 8:22 PM on May 10, 2005


You can get the Treo from Cingular as well; in fact, they will consider your transfer from AT&T to be a "new contract" and give you the new-customer discount. So you don't have to buy out your AT&T contract, and you don't have to pay full price for the Treo. Very likely your best move.
posted by nicwolff at 10:49 PM on May 10, 2005


I'd like to say this for the record. T-mobile sucks. EVERY time you make ANY change to your plan - another year is added to your contract.

I had to change plans because the plan I picked had too few minutes! (Ha - another year!)
When I tried asking them how much my total cost would be per month for the new plan (with tax -extra fees - etc.) NOONE could tell me.

Has anyone tried Working assets cell service?
posted by mildred-pitt at 11:23 PM on May 10, 2005


One of my best friends has a Sidekick II and he likes it a lot. If you ask me, the key feature is not the web browsing but the AIM function. If you use AIM a lot, it's very useful. The web browser is just good for checking sports scores and what not...
posted by swank6 at 11:32 PM on May 10, 2005


I love my sidekick I. It's got some of the best UI I've ever seen/experienced. Very intuitive. Having Google on the road rocks. Of course you're going to get the odd outage, but that's a function of the service provider more than the phone itself. Teminal Monkey is handy if you need ssh connectivity.

Sorry to go off topic, but I just had to defend the sk from all the bashing! :)
posted by jikel_morten at 7:44 AM on May 11, 2005


AT&T will even charge you the $175 early termination fee when you end the contract AFTER it's expired. Then you get to spend four months harassing their customer service department to give the money back. AT&T is eeevil.
posted by Coffeemate at 7:58 AM on May 11, 2005


I just had this problem after dropping my phone in the toilet during a night of drunken revelry...and your only option is to switch to Cingular (as someone else said) and they will give you the 'new customer' discount on phones/plans and no cancellation fee for AT&T. Not a bad choice, all things considered.
posted by rooftop secrets at 11:25 AM on May 11, 2005


No thoughts on AT&T, but I am a dedicated Sidekick I and II user and I like it quite a bit.

The SK3 is a ways off - not expected until next year sometime, and the new features it may have are not set in stone yet. I wouldn't let this hold you back from diving in.

The web browser service has gotten a lot more reliable lately, but there are plans for the back end proxy and front end client to be completely scrapped and re-deployed soon. I.e., soon you will get an over-the-air update with a new browser, and suddenly the web experience on the SK will be a helluva lot better.

The only drawback I see with the SK is that you are married to T-Mobile, and their network has the worst converage. That said, I live my entire life in the very-metro-Boston area, and I have 0 problems on that front.
posted by autojack at 1:11 PM on May 11, 2005


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