Cost and Activation of T-Mobile To Go

I am have been doing research on "pay-as-you-go" cell phone plans, and was very interested in the T-Mobile version; mainly because it didn't seem to have any 'hidden fees' and extra activation costs. But, this is only a seem and I was wondering if anyone knew this for a fact or not? Also, I have other questions; which I am listing below. I know that they are a lot; but I have been burned one too many times on 'hidden' items to trust any cell phone company too long.

1. What does it cost to activate a T-Mobile To Go phone?
2. Are there any monthly fees that are substracted from your minutes?
3. When people leave a voicemail, are minutes substracted? (I had a cell phone company a great while back that actually did this to me)
4. If I decide to keep T-Mobile as my provider and sign a contract, will I be able to keep my number?
5. Is there any way that I can transfer my current mobile number and use that?
6. Are any other taxes taken from your minutes or are they just state taxes?
7. Is there any negative or really positive thing I should be aware of when looking at T-Mobile?

That's it for now. There are a few more questions, but when I get ready to make a final decision I will go to the individual stores and ask them myself; that way I can gauge customer service (a HUGE plus) and accessibility.

I'm a big fan of TM to go. I think it's a great deal for the person who wants/needs a cell phone but doesn't make a lot of calls (like me!). I can't speak for the sidekick deal, since that one you do have a daily usage fee.

1. Costs to activate. Nothing if you buy one of their packages. Just the price of the phone, which includes activiation plus $15 of airtime (50 minues?). When I joined last year, I wanted the Samsung x475, which was not part of the package. I was buying 2 phones, and ended up paying $80 upgrade price, plus $50 activation per phone. It's much simplier if you go with the package.

2. No monthly fees. The best deal is to buy the 1000 minutes for $100. You have 365 before they expire, and you can carry them when you add more.

3. Yes, minutes are subtracted for voicemail, both when someone leaves a message and when you call to retrieve the message. I've had plenty calls that had only 1 minute subtracted.

4. You should.

5. Yes, I transferred numbers from Att/cingular. The store said it would take 1 week. I called customer service a week later and found out the store never initiated the process. Once the phone rep got things going, it was done within 24 hours. It would have been done sooner but they got confused because I was switching over 2 lines to 2 new phones. Once they called me to confirm which phone gets which number, it was done in 2 hours.

6. I think I paid California sales tax on the phone, but not the $100 card. There are no monthly tax debits.

7. The positive is no roaming charges. The negative is the phone only works on T-mobile network. If you travel to an area without t-mobile, the phone won't work.

Overall:
Phone customer service is great. The store wasn't so good. They didn't complete the phone transfer, and it took 2-3 hours in the store to buy the darn things.

Some features of the phone are disabled for To Go. I can't figure out how to send myself a jpeg from my home computer to use for a wallpaper. Also, I wasn't able to change to setting to get the full 30 seconds before voicemail. While it doesn't make much sense, the customer service rep thinks that this was just part of the features that were disabled.

You can also do text messaging. 1 minute to send one, nothing to receive.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for that information. This will help me a lot in making the decision of which company to go with. T-Mobile is looking more and more favorable every passing moment.

Again, thank you!!!

If I was going to buy this I wouldn't have to pay an activation fee right.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=3766509&cat=42619 1&type=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3977%3A133261%3A426191

I bought 2 of those "Prepaid $30/150 minute" sim cards on ebay for $5.99 +ship got them, stuck them in my 2 phones, called T-mo prepaid care, gave them the IMEI's, changed the numbers to local(they were out of Cali), changed the name on the accts(the name on the return address was the name on the acct), put passwords on the accts (could have had just one acct, but preferred separate) and was done in less than 15 minutes.

Just to let you know, I also bought the 2 T-mo Nokia 6010's on Ebay for a total of $30.00 including ship.
phones $30.00
sims $16.90

Grand total $46.90 for 2 6010's and 300 minutes of service

T-Mobile gives you 90 days upon activation vs AT&T's 30 days though.

Cost and Activation of T-Mobile To Go

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