That’s the question I am asking myself at this point. I am currently with Sprint and my wife is on AT&T, and I was looking into porting my number over to AT&T and then putting the two lines on a share plan. My current monthly charge through Sprint alone is $38.49 plus tax, my wife’s monthly charge through AT&T is $30.79 plus tax. By combining the lines under a share plan, the cost would be $56.19 plus tax, a savings of $13.09 a month. Sounds great – sign me up!
Oops, there is a wrinkle in the story. Our cell numbers are in two different area codes in different states, and AT&T cannot combine the two lines with numbers based in different markets under the same share plan. If I wanted to do this through AT&T, one of us would have to get a new number. I don’t want to give up my number since I’ve been using it for about 7.5 years now, and my wife doesn’t want to give up her number because she’s used that one even longer and her family can call her cell from a landline without incurring long distance charges.
I was reading on Hustler $$$ Blog some hustling that is possible with Sprint to get freebies, so there is the possibility that I could convince them to give me free unlimited data (among other things) which would bring my bill down to $30.79 a month, meaning we would only be paying $5.39 more a month than having a share plan. The other difference is that we would each have our own separate pools of 450 minutes each (we’d only get 700 total on a share plan through AT&T) and I’d get to keep my data plan which wouldn’t be included in the share plan price. We don’t normally use that many minutes a month so that isn’t a big deal, but I do like the data plan.
So here’s the question: is keeping my old number, plus the convenience of the extra but seldomly used minutes and the data plan, worth the additional $5.39 a month (or put another way, $64.68 a year)?
Two big questions: Which two states and does your employer have a discount through AT&T (go to http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter and enter your work e-mail address to find out)? If they’re touching Texas (most common is TX and LA from what I’ve seen), then it usually can be done, but you’ll need to do a “two-step” dance to get it merged.
The far easier way is to find out if your employer has an AT&T discount and call your AT&T rep; that person can likely get stuff done that usual customer service can’t.
Good questions. Here’s the rundown:
1. Yes, the two states are Texas (713) and Louisiana (225). The 225 number is the one already on AT&T.
2. My wife is already getting a discount on her AT&T account of 23%. My company also gets a discount, but it is a measly 8%.
I believe you may be correct in that the business rep may be able to do things the regular reps can’t, however I wonder how much of a hassle it would be and whether it would be worth it.
I’m thinking at this point I’m just going to hustle Sprint for as many concessions as possible and keep that service. If I do I should be able to have substantially more service features for only a few bucks more.
Merging TX and LA is relatively easy; here’s the steps:
1) Open new account with TX address; port number.
2) On new account, disable paper bills and change address to something local to your other number.
3) Port number from LA into new account.
4) Change address back to whatever you like.
Note: This may require a trip to a LA-based store, so you might want to hold off on this until you take a vacation to the in-laws’. And now you know the secrets. (to quote a show I watch)
As for switching, I’ve used every major cell carrier (and a couple minor ones) and never been anything but happy with AT&T, yet never anything but annoyed with Sprint. (Sprint’s XOHM service is awesome; their cell service, not so much.)
[...] posted a few weeks ago about my dilemma on what to do with my cell phone. I have been a Sprint customer for a little over two years and I’m no longer under contract, [...]