Many thanks to you all for your input. I’m happy to announce that the search is over, and Cindy and I have both gotten T-Mobile prepaid plans.
I had thought that I would have to buy a new phone to replace my Cingular Nokia 6102, which is fairly new. I called a few cellular phone places to see if anyone could unlock my 6102, so I could use it on another network. I got a lot of maybes. Luckily, one of the places I called , a small kiosk located in the corner of a gas station (sounds so shady, doesn’t it?) offered to do a straight trade: my Nokia 6102 for a Samsung t309, which was already locked to T-Mobile’s network. I would have to buy the starter kit (the SIM card and 60 minutes) from him for $35.
On a side note here, I should mention that the T-Mobile starter kits I’ve seen come with $15 of minutes (60 minutes) and expire in 60 days. Typically, a $10 refill expires in 30 days, so I think this was a pretty good bundled incentive.
Anyway, I traded my phone straight across for another one. I asked him if he would unlock the phone for free, and he said yes. Now, I can use either T-Mobile’s or Net10′s SIM cards. Apparently, Tracphone SIMS won’t work because the billing method is different than T-Mobile’s or Net10′s. Also, I was told that I couldn’t use Virgin Mobile SIMs because they are designed to work only with Virgin Mobile branded phones. I don’t know if this is true but I’m not going to buy a Virgin Mobile SIM to find out.
Total for me was $39.00.
Today, we headed to Target for Cindy’s phone (it was a little too old and clunky to trade). Target sells the Samsung x495 flip-phone for $79.99 ($99.99 through T-Mobile). When we got there, they only had two left…for a clearance price of $68.88 (includes 60 free minutes) here in OKC.
We let the phone charge, made a 7-minute phone call to T-Mobile’s costumer service, and Cindy’s phone was ready to use. Surprisingly easy.
I also called Todd, who lives in Orlando, with the new service to see what the reception was like and it was impressively crisp, so I’m very happy with it….so far.
If anything bad happens with it, I’ll let you all know.
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