AT&T GoPhone Review10 cents per minute, $2 per day or $50 per month plansThe AT&T GoPhone prepaid cell phone service (once known as Cingular) offers good coverage, competitive plans, and a great selection of phones. You can get a 3G phone for under $20, a QWERTY keyboard phone for under $25, a touchscreen for under $80 and an Android phone for under $130. Before you choose a phone however, you've got to make sure the coverage and plans are right for you.
CoverageThere are two kinds of GoPhone plans, Pay As You Go, and Pick Your Plan, and each plan has their own coverage map. Both coverages are pretty good, but the Pick your Plan coverage seems to be slightly better.You can check your coverage on their site. Just put in your zip code in the coverage viewer yourself to see how you'll fare. Now that you've checked your coverage you can take a look at their plans. Pay As You Go PlanAlso known as the Simple PlanPay as you Go calls cost 10 cents per minute. Text messages cost 5 cents to receive and send. International text messages cost 20 cents to send and 5 cents to receive.Refill cards are available in denominations of:
Under this plan $100 gets you 1000 minutes for the entire year. This is a pretty good deal. You get a low rate, and if you don't use the phone that much, it reduces your cost to as little as $8.33 per month. Unlimited Texting Package $19.99If you don't use a lot of voice minutes but do send and receive a lot of text messages, you could start seeing your balance rapidly deplete.One way to solve this problem is to add an unlimited texting package for $19.99 per month. While this does increase your monthly cost, it could still be cheaper than signing up for the unlimited voice and text plan. There is another alternative, however. Daily Plan$2 per day PlanThis plan charges you just $2 per day only on the days you use the phone. On those days you have unlimited voice calls and text messages. If you don't use your cell phone everyday but love to talk it up when you do, this could work for you. For example, if you only use your cell phone on weekdays (for work?) then this plan would only cost about $40 per month (20 working days a month)Data costs 1 cent every 5 kilobytes. This part is actually quite expensive because it works out to $2 per MB. If you going to be checking your email a lot, it may make sense to go sign up for a data package. Still, if you end up using the phone in some way or another every day, you can also choose the unlimited monthly plan. Monthly Gophone Plans$50 Unlimited PlanYou get unlimited voice calls, text messages, and web browsing and data for $50 per month. By dropping the price to $50 and including the data, AT&T gives you a reason to choose the unlimited plan over the $2 plan. Now if you use the phone every day in some way, you save about $10 per month over the $2 a day plan.Unlimited IM and Text to Mexico and Canada and moreOne neat advantage of the unlimited plan is that you get unlimited text and instant messaging to Mexico and Canada and 100 other countries! This is pretty amazing.So you have a great set of plans to choose from. And relax, even if you choose one and decide another is more appropriate, it's really easy to change your plan. $25 Monthly PlanUnlimited Text and IM plus 250 MinutesIf you use your phone every day, but do a lot more texting than talking, then the $25 monthly plan may be right for you. You get 250 voice minutes plus unlimited text,picture, and instant messaging. You do still have to add a data package if you use a Smartphone Gophone.Easy To Change Rate PlansHere's how to change your rate plan on AT&T.First, log in to My Account, then navigate to the Rate Plan section where you'll find the option to change your plan. From there, follow these steps: 1. Select new plan. 2. Add your favorite features. 3. Submit. And you're done. So all that's left is to finally pick a phone. Phones
Free Shipping and ActivationYou get free 2-day priority shipping when you order directly from AT&T, and activation is free as well. (You do have to pay sales tax in most areas.)There are phones from all the major manufacturers including Samsung, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Pantech, Sony Ericsson, HTC and Sharp. Samsung PhonesThere is a large selection of prepaid Samsung Phones available available from AT&T. The prices range from $9.99 to about $229.99. If you're looking for a really basic phone you could start with the Samsung A107.LG PhonesThere are quite a few LG GoPhones available from AT&T. The LG Neon has a slide-out qwerty keyboard, a touchscreen, a 2 megapixel camera, a music player and Bluetooth. Introduced as the first touchscreen Gophone, it did generate a few complaints.These complaint led to the introduction of the LG Prime, and it was a hit. This may have been a factor in AT&T dramatically expanding its GoPhone selection. Pantech PhonesAT&T typically carries a couple of Pantech Gophones. For example, the Pantech Link is an open face phone with a vertical QWERTY keyboard. A 1.3 megapixel camera and music player adds further value. It's been replaced by the next version, the Link II. Other Pantech phones available include the similar P7040p and the Pantech Impact which features a 2MP autofocus camera.Motorola PhonesThe rugged Tundra is the only Motorola GoPhone currently available, with the EM330 having been discontinued a while back.Nokia PhonesHere are a couple of inexpensive Nokia prepaid phones sometimes available from AT&T such as the Nokia 2330 and the Nokia 2720.The Nokia 2720 is also available from Consumer Cellular as a no-contract phone on their monthly plans. There are a couple of other phones, but these are a good sample. Standard GoPhone FeaturesBasic Voice Mail, Caller ID, Call Forwarding, Three-Way Calling, Call Waiting, Nationwide Long Distance, and International Calling. (The international rates are not bad.)
Customer ServiceFrom personal experience with AT&T customer service, while the staff are helpful, the wait can be long at a retail location.You can avoid the wait and get Prepaid Phones at AT&T Are you a GoPhone User?Tell us about your GoPhone experience.Your GoPhone ReviewShare your experience with GoPhone! What Other Visitors Have SaidClick below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...
att gophone and two dollar plan
Leaving GoPhone
Gophone started getting too expensive...
Thinking of Switching Gophone plans
Hated Gophone.
Gophone good to stay in touch
Use GoPhone SIM card with iPhone
What info is available in my Gophone Account History?
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What's my Gophone Account Number?
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ATT Gophone Email
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Hidden GoPhone charges (while browsing for ringtones)
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Love GoPhone but pretty TICKED they dropped rates & left accounts at old rates
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