Cricket unveils unlimited pay as you go
Are you looking for an even bigger way to save money on your wireless bill, but can’t stay off the phone? Cricket wireless might have a solution for you. They of the flat-rate unlimited calling plans have added something new to their repertoire: PAYgo. We learn, via Phone Scoop that these plans will still cover unlimited calling, but will be on a pay-by-day basis. So instead of paying a flat monthly rate, you’ll be paying a flat daily rate. Which, depending on how you use your phone, can be a real coup. We’ll drop the details after the jump.
The plans will cost $1, $2, or $3 per day. The cheapest comes with unlimited local calling and voicemail, and comes with caller ID and three-way calling. Step up a dollar per day and you add unlimited text and picture messaging. The most expensive plan provides U.S. long distance, international text messaging, mobile Web, and directory assistance. I find it a bit odd that long distance is on the $3/day plan and not on the $2. It would seem that, given the state of area codes nowadays, that long distance is the more essential feature. Then again, maybe that’s the point.
You can also add a la carte features to the cheaper plans. For instance, mobile Web is $1 per day, and long distance is 10 cents per minute. This makes it seem ideal for those who want to use their phone for emergency purposes. I haven’t seen anything about a minimum monthly usage, though. That could be the case. Cricket hasn’t placed the plan on their website yet, so we’ll have to wait for further details.
Clearly, if you plan on using your phone every day, you’ll want to sign up for one of Cricket’s monthly plans. The $1/day plan works out about even with the monthly plan, but from there it’s uneconomic.
The PAYgo plans will only be available initially in the Cincinnati/Dayton, Savannah/Hilton Head, and Houston areas, and is only compatible with the Cricket EZ, UTStarcom CDM7126, and Samsung MyShot handsets. It should open up if it proves successful.
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We just bought (and activated) 3 Cricket PayGo phones this weekend for our family. We had previously had US Cellular regular service for 4 yrs, but could no longer afford their contract pricing for multiple lines. (Not to mention that EVERYthing costs extra with USC!)
Anyway – we’ve only had them for two days, but I can tell you a few things –
1. Activation was easy.
2. Getting the phones to WORK is another story.
3. Do NOT get their regular prepaid monthly plans, which you can purchase if you have had PayGo for 30 days. There are a lot of unhappy, double-billed folks out there with that.
4. There is virtually no customer service for the PayGo phones. Once you have activated it, good luck to ya.
Problems we have had in the short two days we’ve had the phones –
- getting the phones to ring. Yep, the calls can be made OUT, but getting calls IN is a real PITA. Two of the three phones consistently rolled directly to voice mail, then signaled there was a voice mail message, no matter what settings were used. The manual is not much help on this one – you are on your own.
- Did you want to GET your messages from voice mail? Good luck! One of the phones we could get the messages off of it, and the second phone, we STILL cannot. We only get a message telling us the balance on our acct, and did we want to spend the $1.00 to access our voice mail! We chose the YES option, and it goes back to the main screen.
-lots of dropped calls already. My kids calling me from a few miles away already dropped several calls today. No bad weather, just iffy service apparently.
-did you want to MAKE a call? You’ll have better luck outside. Inside seems to disturb the cellular forces of PayGo.
- I checked for service in our area. The Cricket website says we are right in the middle of a solid dark green area, meaning excellent coverage. Guess it depends on the definition of excellent.
Also, we could not get a local phone number – we had to go with either a large city in the neighboring state (we are near the Mississippi River, near the St Louis area but in Illinois), or go inland further, but nothing local. Rah yay. They don’t tell you that part until you go to activate the phone and get a phone number.
All in all, I am actually sorry that we bought three phones already. Note that I did look up all kinds of info on the web before we bought, but we are EXTREMELY limited in our area on phone service providers. The contracts seem to be iron-clad by a few main providers. We can’t get Verizon or AllTel here, which were towards the top of my list.
We got the UTStarcom 7126’s. You most likely will not be able to use your current phone, because Cricket requires phones that are “tri-band” enabled to use the services. Not sure of what that means, but I think it means a phone manufactured for Cricket! ; ) So, even though we all have nice Motorola phones, we could not use them and had to get new phones.
So, Cricket PayGo might have potential, but it has a LONG way to go before I could recommend them.
Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Do it or don’t it work in Mephis and surrounding areas. Please let me know my email is above make sure umake it clear who you are because I’ll delete it. Thank ou and have a nice day.
Posted on January 21st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Was concidering getting a paygo phone from cricket, but i have heard nothing but bad reviews. Guess I will stick to my t-mobile prepay, no probs here!
Posted on February 9th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I agree. Bought one for our 81 year old mother for Christmas, and it was a disaster. I had to take it to the only Cricket store, and they got on the phone with a tech for 30 minutes, supposedly cured the problem (every call she made she was told that the number she dialed was not a working number. I also had to put another $5 on the phone (which we discovered expired 3 days later). she made 2 calls then it did it again. I called and was assured the money was restored and good for 30 days. ha ha. gone 2 days later. I took the darn thing back to Walmart, but it was 2 months and $5.00 and alot of frustation later. I had trouble returning it, as it came up that it has previously been disabled, apparently while they were trying to get it to work at Cricket.
what a joke. it was for her safety while out at doctor appointments, and she never used it. I am going with Verizon this time.
Posted on February 17th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I DISAGREE I FIRST HAD THE REGULAR CRICKET BUT IT WAS TO EXPENSIVE FOR ME. SO I SWITCH TO THE PREPAID CRICKET AND I ALREADY HAD THE PHONE. AND I LIVE IN NOGALES AZ AND I HAD NO PROBLEMS WITH THE PHONE OR THE SERVICE. I ALWAYS PUT 30DLLS EVERY 15DAYS AND IT LAST ME A LOT. I HAVE THE 1DLL A DAY PLAN AND IT’S EXCELLENT. IF YOU GET THE PLAN’S FROM CRICKET THE REGULAR THEIR TO EXPENSIVE JUST STICK TO THE PAYGO, AND A DOLLAR A DAY UNLIMITED WOW!!I LOVE CRICKET PAYGO NO COMPLAINTS AT ALL
Posted on September 2nd, 2009 at 7:34 am
Cricket is a low budget cell carrier. Full cost phones. Limited service. But it’s cheap and the voice quality is a lot better than when they first started service. You’re probably better off buying a used Cricket phone on Craigslist or Ebay and activating with them than buying one of their new full price phones. For some reason people don’t seem to understand all of Cricket is PREPAY. CRICKET is NOT POST PAY never has been. You pay-in-advance. I guess their marketing of “giving” you the first month free makes people forget that they are paying for the next month in advance. If you have old CDMA phone you can get them “flashed” to the Cricket service/network for about 20-35 dollars saving you the cost of another phone.
Posted on October 3rd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I don’t understand because my phone works better than all my phones in the Philly area which runs the AWS system.and paygo does a have customer service.you call the normal cricket 800 number and when you put your number in it will route you to paygo customer service.I go to the hood to buy my paygo refill cards and they don’t charge me tax.so $30 a month for unlimited is the best you can get.also free text incoming is included.the saying is you get what you pay for and with cricket you get a lot more for $30 a month.all the people that complain are usually people that make it sound worse than it is but nine times out of ten they stay with cricket
Posted on October 10th, 2009 at 2:00 am