Expensive: $120 per month for normal usage. It's only $40 out the door (i.e. Radio Shack) with a working phone: Phone = $15, startup minutes = $25. But normal usage eats up minutes quickly:
1) Minutes start at 25 cents/min. Switching to a 10 c/m plus 1/day is easy (by phone), but not much better = 20 minutes / day = $3 day = ~ $90 month.
2) Texts are 20 cents each (both way). Five texts a day = $2. Add to phone usage = $5 per day/ $150 per month!!
3) 411 calls are ~ $2.80 IIRC.
4) Web usage is charged per KB. Reasonable, but adds up quickly, and slow.

Overall: Expensive. Metro would have been unlimited usage (more for new phone though), plus web and 411 for $56 flat per month.

i got gophone cause i didnt like paying 1 a day for verizon inpluse so i went to gophone and i was paying so much but i needed a phone first i had a 15 dollar card and i didnt even get the 5 of airtime min into my account which said ir would and then i didnt want to pay 50 dollar for unltd text so i got 1000 for 10 and i would get the 15 dollar card which didt have enough for talkin so i let it get to 10 and also on my one phone i had a confusing one when you press the ok button it would go to media net which cost me some money so i got the razr but inconcusion att has a ok coverage and a fast 3g network but is a little to much dough 4 u to spend

att is junk they sold me a phone on the phone and sent me something i didnt want then i cant activate it also there monthly plans are way too expensive and forget customer service you might as well say they dont have one

i think ATT is coverage is okay, their coverage not as good as verizon. i was a verizon customer, i left because they didnt have cool go phone like ATT. i also have problems with my phone the first time i got it. i called the customer service and they were a great help. i agree with some of you guys that they dont have great customers service like verizon. i wish verizon has sims cards like ATT. i would go back to verizon if verizon got sim cards in their phone. thats the only down side with verizon. so far i dont have any trouble with my ATT phone yet, and so far the coverage is great

NO STARS!! I will not buy one more minute of ATT prepaid wireless service. NOT ONE! Terrible customer service. I bought a go phone and called customer service to get assistance in setting up the security feature. The rep I spoke with gave me a code to put into the phone, which did not work to enable the feature. He then gave me several different codes to try, which eventually locked up the phone, then he hung up! I know he hung up because he did not call back on the call back number I provided at the beginning of the call. I called back and spoke to another rep who said that the lock up was the first rep's fault. He said the first guy provided incorrect information and led me through the procedure incorrectly, causing the phone to lock up. He apologized for my inconvience and said to rectify the situation he would give me a new SIM card free of charge and sent me to a local ATT store to get one. At the store, they put in a new SIM card but the phone was still locked up. They would NOT replace the phone; it is brand new. I have not made a single call on it! I have spent hours trying to rectify the problem; could not understand the heavy accents of the reps on phone; and was treated rudely and still have no resolution. ATT finally told me I needed to contact Nokia, the manufacturer, to unlock the phone. This is UNBELIEVABLE! If I get the phone unlocked, I will not spend one more cent on ATT wireless service and am considering discontinuing all of my services with them.

ATT in general is for little kids and run by kids as well. It's incredibly expensive compared to any other phone company. Check out Boost and Cricket for unlimited daytime minutes for just $25-$50 a month.

They are going to be out of business before long in this internet age.

ok so i bought a cheap go phone that had a samsung phone in the ppackage. I have had it for only about a couple weeks and the phone is junk. It wont turn on anymore and they wont let me register my sim into another phone. I believe this is a crock of shit. I spent 30.00 on this and i also have 25.00 on my account. So i feel they should either let me do it or give me a refund of all the money i have spent on it.

i just got the go phone service..and i like my .25c plan.. i wonder if i get the $1 plan, if i use text messages than would ATT charge me the $1 perday ? i know they charge it for voice mail, but dont really know about text messages, and i got the $10 bundles. can some one answer my question please.. thanks

i lovee att because when i had it (and still do) i got a whoke week of coverage free with the go phone plan! it was so cool! i could do what ever i wanted and i had no minutes! they make this mistake alot so if you go with att the best plan ever!! you might just get luckyy!!

Personally I'm not happy with GoPhone. While I understand that I didn't get a texting plan where it would be cheaper to text, I cannot excuse the sluggishness of text messages in general. Even if my phone's on for a good period of time I would receive messages hours after I'd get them. Also GoPhone does not offer services in areas where I need them but for most places that I've traveled to it's fine and have never experienced a dropped call. It's very easy to put money in your account by going to an AT&T kiosk, store or Radio Shack. I would recommend that any new GoPhoners set up an account online (https://www.paygonline.com/websc/index.jsp) to monitor when your minutes expire and when your phone ultimately gets cancelled. I would suggest also that you look at the plans to see which is right for you. My service was the $1 a day plan but you should only get charged that for voice calls (which includes voicemail) and 1-800 number's in my experience do not count as free either. All in all, it's not horrible but my needs require something a little better than GoPhone. But hey, what doesn't work for me might work for you.

TERRIBLE Customer Service! If I could, I would give AT&T GoPhone ZERO stars! I have been a GoPhone customer for 5 years. At first I liked the service -- the deals weren't too bad for prepaid, and I've never liked the idea of a contract, so it worked for me. Now, the rate plans aren't worth much, and customer service is a joke! I just spent over an hour and a half on the phone with "customer service" because I had used AT&T's automated voice system to change my rate plan to a lower amount, yet the next time my credit card was charged, I was charged the higher amount. My call to customer service felt like I was Alice in Wonderland -- the five technicians I spoke to kept twisting my words, telling me that I never had changed rate plans, and trying to insinuate that I was calling to change rate plans that day. They were rude and mocked me when I asked them to repeat information because they were speaking too quickly and were hard to understand. I got transferred between "customer service" and "payments" departments three times, and at it seemed as if many of the "transfers" were a way to get rid of me rather than help me resolve the issue. DO NOT go with AT&T, especially if you are considering prepaid! The customer service is the worst of the worst! I am currently looking for another wireless provider. Customer service is very important to me, and I've had it with AT&T!

I have had an AT&T prepaid phone for about 4 years now and I just love it. And I have no problem adding minutes online.

I was going to order an AT&T go phone but after reading some of these reviews about this company I also checked out there minutes
@ virgin mobile a $50.00 refill card will get you a 1000 minutes I'm going VM.Period.

I do not really know how at@t prepaid services work but anywhere you go we will encounter problem. Whether it's postpad(with contract) or prepaid. it's just a matter of us knowing the terms and condition as well as clarifying plans you are into. Ask if you do not understand. At the end of the day, it's our responsibiloty too.

ATT pay as you go makes it very difficult to load $ on line using credit card. they call you back in about 1 1/2 hrs, ask for various confirmation including last 4 digits of SS; generates obnoxious questions including verify the county name of an address I lived at 20 yrs ago and the make/model of a car i owned 10 yrs ago. lucky i remembered. seems they make it hard to give him my business and money. oh, and it took over 45 min on the phone with rude people that kept passing me to the next dept.

My complaint is long but hopefully it will caution others.
While on a trip my Nokia phone provided with my sign up for the Go Phone prepaid service failed. It was still under warranty. I stopped at the next available AT&T store (Not a contract provider but an AT&T store. They verified that it was not working. they could not provide me with a replacement because all warranty work is provided remotely. My only choice to continue service was to purchase another phone. they did atleast advise me that if I got throught the repolacement prociess in 30 days I could return the phone and get my money back.

During the trip the new phone had a similar failure that correct5ed itself when I got back in the service area. Back home ten days later. I went to the local AT&T store to be sure that I was not simply out of the service area on the original phone. They verified that the phone had failed and referred my to the warranty service phone number.

I called warranty service and went to the process of getting the phone registered for replacement. IN the disclosures they advised that if I failed to return the non working phone or if (in their sole judgement)the failure was not covered by the warranty, I would be charged $60. This would be approximately twice what I had to pay for the replacement phone. At the end of the call I was requested to give a credit card that they could charge. At this point I balked. The are holding more that $250 worth of minutes on my account and I thought it was reasonable for them simply to charge off the expense if for some reason I failed to return the non-working phone or if it was damaged in some way the was other than within the warranty. The customer service representative said there was no way to do that. I would have to provide a credit card in order to process the warranty replacement. I requested to talk to a supervisor. I was tranferred and after an extremely long wait recieved a similar response and no relief or any thing that approached a solution from the next level up. I requested to talk to a manager. Again a significant wait and no offer aof a means of resolution until it was finally suggested that I could take the phone to one of their service centers, they could determine if there was any out of warranty dmage. The service ceter idea had never been mentioned. It turns outthat there is a service center about 15 miles from my house on my way to many things that I do on a regular basis. The phone call took almost an hour to provide an answer that I should have gotten in the first 5 minutes.

I signed up with Cingular before AT&T bought them out. I buy $25 worth of minutes every 3 months. I have never used all my minutes but this is coming to a close now that they have implemented the $1 cell to cell. Now my minutes will be gone in 25 days if I were to use it every day (which I don't). I mainly got a cell phone to carry in the car in case I had trouble. And I use it to make long distance calls. I don't make many LD calls. I resent being charged if I call and nobody answers. I resent being charged if I check missed calls. I liked the old way. Don't like the new way. So I just turn my phone off during the week, turn it on on Saturday to make any calls I need to make.

ATT Prepaid sucks! It's nothing but a rip off. 1.00 a day, please, you can talk longer on a pay phone. I am so sorry I ever purchased a to go phone. I don't know if any of you noticed, but att really tries to push it sales of the go phone...you know why? because it is "quick" money maker for the company. Hey guys, look up "NET10" it's a prepaid phine also. this phone is excellent. All the others can go to hell!

I too have experienced the $1 per day useage charge, which was not part of the agreement when I purchased my pay as you go phone. Thus I will no longer be purchasing minutes for this phone,and will be looking for a new provider. ATT appears to treat its customers like congress. Once they get their foot in the door, they will crap on your carpet.

The cool thing about AT&T Go Phone is that you get to use the AT&T 3G network (where available) on the phone of your choice (AT&T or unlocked GSM). On the other hand, if you don't plan to use data, there is no point to using Go Phone. Rates are high, and customer service is not exactly the best, although it it still better than Tracfone's.

I wrote a review earlier that gave three stars to the service, but wrongly criticizing AT&T for the omissions and lack of clear direction on phone functions in the Nokia User Manual. My error: the fault is Nokia's. However, I did buy the phone at an AT&T store; either AT&T should insist on a better manual or its sales representatives should be prepared to help a new user to understand how to access the phone and to exercise the service's features.

Other critical comments have been noted, but they do not appear to apply to the situation of an infrequent users, whose charges come from infrequent calls; I'm not aware that that $1 a day charge applies, since that alone would balloon the cost to $365! I understood that the $1 would be optional, and apply only to certain days of use/

Whatever, and keeping in mind that it comes from an infrequent cell phone user, I raise the rating to five stars.

I agree with Dave - I just got back to Seattle after a few manths and am very upset by the 1$ daily access fee. Go for it Dave. I am with you all the way. Just pure Greed from AT & T. They are just Manipulating the Public. AT & T sucks.

I HATE AT&T! IT SUCKS! I went to look to see what games they had for me to buy. I didn't buy anything but when I got off of the site, they charged me 23 cents! I didn't do anything! Sometimes I would accidentally press the media net button and would quickly get off of it and they charged me 20 cents! I didn't even talk over a minute and they charged me $1.10! That is rediculous! People if you have any brains DO NOT GET AT&T! YOU WILL REGRET IT ALOT!!!!!!!! I only had AT&T for 2 days. The WORST mistake of my life to get it!

Bad customer service, very rude, they will not help you when your number is haunted by creditors (my feeling is they are [ATT] those creditors) try to call you so that your prepaid minute must be used up quickly, and you will end up spend more money for them, very devious devilling company, should never use their service. Very sorry, but now I am done and out of their dirty business.

Beware the huge ATT Wireless Rip-Off!

My story--signed up for prepaid service from Cingulair a few years ago. It was later bought by ATT. I have never used as many minutes as there were in my plan ($39.99 per mo), so the phone built up a balance over time--it has been as high as $300, but a few weeks ago it was $250.

I called a few weeks ago to see if I could use the balance to buy a new phone. I didn't get a straight answer. But, shortly thereafter, I noticed my balance had gone to zero--ATT TOOK THE WHOLE $250 without prior notice to me--on the basis on some date that I was supposed to be aware of, as I found out later. Turns out, though, that you can't use the balance to buy equipment anyway.

The rip-off is that if I had cancelled the service, they wouldn't have refunded my unusued balance--so not only did they have interest free use of my money for years, but they steal it if you try to cancel. Best Advice--leave as little balance on this phone as possible.

I've had it with impenetrable website (it requires to login over and over again and sends you to Siberia when you want to find the "Contact Us" page.

Did you know that you get charged for a call even if you don't get through? If it just rings for 30 seconds you get charged.

ATT Wireless is crawling along in the same sewer as the credit card companies.

I wish this site had "no stars."

ATT prepaid is decent, not great. If you have a 3G capable device like a Blackberry Storm, Nokia e71, OR iPhone it doesn't make much sense to go with a prepaid plan. I have a Nokia e71 I bought new because I don't like 2-year cell phone contracts and honestly wished now I would have just went with the 2-year contract with unlimited data. There isn't much I can really do, if you have a prepaid plan forget about surfing the web at 1 cent/kb (costs you about $6-$10 just to email one photo depending on size). So if you have a simple cell phone just for emergencies and only talk on it about 10 minutes a week than prepaid is the way to go, if you have a more sophisticated phone want to do a little more than talk a few minutes per week on it, the prepaid plans are nothing but traps to get you into a more expensive monthly text/data/voice plan which combined range anywhere from $70-$100 per month. Boost mobile and Verizon seem to offer way more budget friendly options than ATT overall.

i super love AT&T. THEY ARE THE BEST!

Tip for viewing phone call details on ATT GoPhone Web site. When reviewing calls you clik the "info" link by a call and instead of displaying info it takes you back to a login screen. I have found if you highlight the entire data section and then paste it into Word, you can see the entire call information including the numbers called, time of call, where called, etc.

Here's the bottom line..... Read thoroughly and understand the Terms of Service on the ATT Web site for both "Pay As You Go" and "Pick Your Plan" versions of the GoPhone before doing this. A customer's ignorance of the terms does not mean the company's customer service is necessarily bad - there may be nothing they can do for you. (I personally think that Pay As You Go has ridiculous terms and I would never do it - Note that I have Pick Your Plan). If you decide to get one of these phones I would find a knowledgeable salesperson at a standalone ATT Store to set things up and function as your customer service person in case you have any problems.

The service area is fine I have good signal and have never had a dropped call so in that respect this phone is great. I use the 1$ mobile to mobile and the price seems to go farther than most prepaid plans. My neg feedback is due to customer service, try emailing or using the chat, I have and I am redirected to resign into my account they should stipulate chat for att customers holding a contract. I bought this phone and purchased the 15 dollar card thinking it was the 25$, the phone advertises a 10$ bonus if you purchase 25$ within 7 days of purchase well they would not return the card I bought at the store so I added that and an additional 15$ to my account thinking I would get the 10$ bonus. I finally got a hold of customer service using the 1800 number and getting redirected yet again, (I had to dial 0 to get the operator) when I finally reached the right person she just replied by saying you have to purchase a 25$ card that two 15$ cards even though they were purchased the same day will not work. I would have hung up and dropped this since it is only a 10$ bonus but I feel cheated and that alone can tarnish a companies name I do not even want to use this phone and if anyone asks me I would more than likely refer them to another provider.

Does anyone have a problem with "Pick your Plan" (my experience with ATT Go Phone) or is everyone's problem almost always with the "Pay As You Go" form of the ATT Go Phone. This is the one recurring theme that I seem to see here. Could be an important difference.

Annie - you should read Tracfone reviews. I think you will change your mind shortly after :)

I ordered a go phone and was charged twice on the online ordering of at&t. I was notified the next day that there was a problem with my order, and to contact a number, I did so and got the run around for over 4 hours and when i thought it was resolved it wasn't, they charged me 4 times for one phone of 16.00, and the order was for 10.65, I waited on line for an hour to speak to a manager, and never got through, I finally hung up. the next day i get a call from a supervisor, she to was dismayed at the problems I was encountering, she assured me she would take care of it and get me my phone and refund all moneies I was over charged, and give me free service, well guess what, the matter isn't resolved and i haven't got my phone. I think the company has become another monopoply again and the government needs to step in and shut them down, they have gotten too big for their own good.

My contract with AT&T is over and I'm going on a month to month basis. I came here to decide it I want to get a pay as you go plan, or whatever it's called. After seeing these reviews, I'm NOT going to. I think I'll check Verizon or some other company. In fact, I think I'll get a Tracfone! Thank all of you who sent in your ratings. :)

I would actually give it 0 stars The customer service reps disconnected from me 4 times when I was trying to get help setting up voice mail. Why this was complicated I am not sure. I could not understand tthem when they spoke to me and the quality of the reception was awful i.e. I could hardly hear them when they spoke to me.

Wow, AT&T kept slipping in new charges - they changed the phone service without notice, and the customer service is rude.

If I could give 0 stars I would.

The problem is that this is not AT&T this is some service that is subcontracted out - to a service which is designed to screw people who cannot afford a full contract.

Beware - avoid these folks.

I went to AT& T because I used to have one when I worked at Radio Shack. I wanted a PrePaid because I did not want anything special. But, what kept happening was I wound up on websites that asked me to fill out my cell phone in order to take a IQ test. That was the test. LOL. Then I was charged 6.99 by one site and 19.99 by another and it wiped out my entire fund that I had for calling.
Somehow I had people texting me and everytime I was charged. I am really upset by all of the BS. All I want is a simple phone, that has a alarm in it, and not something that I will accidently get on the internet and be charged. I am now looking for another company and another phone unless I can go back to my old Motorola phone with the new company.

This is so sick nasty y'all!!!

Archie bunker once referred to at&t as "american thugs and thieves"! NO truer words have ever been spoken!

I think you will find answers to most of your questions and criticisms here:

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/articles-resources/wireless-terms.jsp

Note that there are two types of GOPhone Plans - Pick Your Plan and Pay As You Go.

Pick Your Plan requires a credit card for automatic payment once/month and in my opinion is a pretty good deal as long as you don't excessively talk on your phone during the weekdays.

Pay As You Go is a pretty bad deal in my opinion and I would never do it. If you can't qualify for a credit card (or at least a Visa debit card on a checking account) then you would be much better off with a different wireless carrier.

The cost if far above other companys and even if you do the prepaid monthly the cost are not worth the minutes you get.
I love att coverage but the plans make it a bad choice.

AWFUL Don't do it. They are very sleazy! They charge you 1$ EVERDAY in addition to your calls.NO STARS!

Nobody answers when try to phone ATT store, and when I try the online phone, I cannot understand the person who is trying to help me. I want to upgrade my phone, but cannot get anyone to help me!only give in NO STARS

I wish I could give them an absolute zero rating. ATT is the WORSE in the country. Ridiculous fees, overcharging, and hideous service. Switch to Tracphone, it's cheaper, easier to figure out and has better service.

I opened a Pay-as You go account with ATT yesterday,I pay 3 dollars for the day I use it, unlimited talk,I think that pretty good!
Now the bad...ATT customer service is SHIT!
I fought with 3 different people for about an hour over a 3 dollar charge,I didn't think was fair.
Here the story,I was wanting to set up my voicemail and on the ATT site it says to hold the 1 button down and it will go to prompts to set it up..well I did that as instructed and ATT charged me 3 dollars for the day and this was at 7pm!
I called them and told them I was just setting up the account per ATT instructions and NOT accesses my voice mail because it was not even working at that point!
Well..they said they were sorry and couldn't do anything..BULLSHIT,I spoke to 3 supervisors and told them I have ALL night to argue this..they told me I should have used my landline phone to set the voice mail up so I would not get the 3 dollar dailey charge..but here's the catch, I told them..ATT DOES NOT TELL YOU ON THEIR SITE YOU CAN DO IT THAT WAY!
After a long battle they refunded my 3 dollars to my account after the 2 preveous so called supervisors said it could not be done!
BE AWARE!

Correction of above..... should read $0.133/min and NOT $0.15/min.

300/39.99=0.133

I remebered this rate incorrectly

I have Go-phone Pick Your Plan 300 min since 4/09. Signed up at ATT store and sales person set up an unlocked Motorola K1 KRAZR I already had with a new sim card/phone number. Plan cost $39.99 ($44.04 after all surcharges) charged to my credit card at the beginning of each cell phone service month. I can call/be called by/speak with anyone with ATT wireless, anytime for free (up to 500 minutes total). Sat/Sun are free to anyone (up to 500 min total). Daytime calls during the week to non-ATT people are billed at $0.15/min in 1 minute increments starting when the dialed number begins to ring (but no charge if no answer - but getting someone's voice mail counts as an answer). Long distance is free except for $0.15/min for daytime calls to non-ATT people during the week. I specifically disabled sending/receiving text messages. I rolled over $32.00 after the first month, as I primarily speak to people with ATT during the day and I save the rest for nights/weekends. After I have accumulated nearly $250 (the limit) in roll-over, I plan to take the $3.99/month International Calling Plan and let my wife use up the accumulated rollover calling her parents in Ukraine. Only thing I don't like about this account is that checking your own voice mail is $0.15/min if you do it from your cell phone. Checking your voice mail from a land line does not cost anything. Go figure. Note that I have not been charged $1/day. I was charged a E911 fee during the middle of the month ($0.50 in Indiana is deducted from my balance) as stated in the go-phone program description. I have had no surprises so far (other than the voicemail from my phone charge) and have had no need to contact ATT customer service.

NO STARS i hate AT&T phones my mom put momey on my phone and i had $36.11 on it and now even if i'm not using it, it says that i'm doing someting that cost 20 cents like last night i left my phone sitting on the dresser and when i pick it up in the morning it says i used 20 cents yet i have no new text or anything and i have free texting

I will never use AT&T again. I lost $ 70 because I was 2 days late on adding another $ 100 to my phone.

If you are thinking about trying out any of the ATT Wirless GoPhones, save yourself your time and money and do not do it! It literally is a scam. Here are the facts:
I decided to try ATT's GoPhone mostly to see if their coverage is any good in my area, since the wireless coverage in my neighborhood is poor. I went to ATT's website and placed an order for their cheapest cell phone ($10) and prepaid card ($25).That was on 05/19/2009. The website clearly stated that it would take up to 2 business days for the phone and 3 to 5 business days for the prepaid card to arrive. The phone did arrive the next day, no problem. The prepaid card did not, and it has been almost a month. I have called ATT many many times trying to get my money back with absolutely no luck. Their reps have:
-- promised to cancel the charge, but talked me into waiting another 2 to 3 business days for them to ship another prepaid card, which never did show up either.
-- refused to cancel the charge, even if the previous CSR did offer to do so.
-- transferred me total of 6 times, for a whopping 2 1/2 hours and finally hung up on me.

Hope this helps someone.

Cingular was all well and good untill AT&T took over im so tired of not having service that and every fone i buy from them messes up i just bought a palm centro cost me $358 and my buttons dont work its a nice fone but for that much money there is no reason why it shouldnt work....
its just frustrating...

Terrible customer service, always saying their regular plans are much better (cheaper) than pay as you go phones. Not helpful in finding better deals.

it works AWESOME if you WORK IT :) understanding the rules and applying them to your situation makes this pre paid plen the best. Text packages stretch your dollar and encouraging friends to join att helps even more. I use my phone when I want and average 25 dollars a month. It doesn't get better then that. ATT RULZ.... and this comes from a 35 year old married mother of 2.

I have had Att GoPhone for 4 yrs.Just noticed the $1.00 fee this week I'm mad as hell and will change stat.Legal action is neccessary

I LOVE MY GO PHONE! This is the best especially with the prices of the cards, but the best part is I found this site that has cheap minutes for at&t go phones. It's called Pinzoo..the representatives are so nice and they help you out with adding minutes and everything. they sell it at a cheaper price, wholesale price or something. It makes the Gophone easier to use. Try it out and go with Pinzoo for minutes, youll save some money finally!

Being prepaid, I'm not sure if you are under any contract. You don't like it anymore - change provider. I suggest T-Mobile.

I've been using pre-paid wireless since it was Cingular -- that has been for the past 6 years. I just learned that AT&T charges the 1.00 a day fee when you use your phone. The thing is, I still have my service agreement with Cingular which AT&T was bound to when they purchased Cingular. There is no mention of a 1.00 service charge fee in my contract. So, AT&T has made a unilateral modification of my contract without first getting my consent -- a fundamental breach of contract law. I will be raising this issue tomorrow with a store rep but I am sure I will get no response. So, I intend to look into starting a class action law suit against AT&T. I am a practicing attorney but this is not my area so I'm going to consult with a bigger firm that handles these types of cases in Seattle. I don’t know if he/she will be interested, but AT&T must be stopped. When I took contract law in law school, we learned that when a unilateral modification is made by one party I believe that constitutes an anticipatory breach of the contract allowing the offended party to get damages for that breach if successful at trial. Enough is enough -- AT&T is motivated by nothing more than greed and avarice. More to follow.

uhm i was wondering is it true u buy 1 phone and get three free

I've had this PAYG phone since September of '08 because I'm only 19 with no credit, so I could not get a contract.

I have to say that I am surprised with a lot of these people's problems. I have the A737 with this plan and I can't say I've had a better phone. This thing has been through hell and back and is still going.

But I have the 300 minutes a month and unlimited texting, and I still get the rollover minutes, which is one of ATT's big features. I am very satisfied with my choice of this plan because if anything were to come up and I wasn't able to pay, the company won't keep charging me, and even though I won't be able to use my phone, I also won't rack up a bill, which I like.

Overall I feel this is a good plan for those who don't feel like paying a bunch of money a month.

I live in Golden,CO, and bought a prepaid AT&T Nokia, but there is a big problem.
Once, I went to Neblasca, there was no signal at all. I was isolated completely. That time I thought it it might be a problem of my cell phone itself. Right now, I am in Rangely, CO., in the same state this time, The same problem happened, there is no signal at all!! I do think it is problem of AT&T Prepaid service.
Who met the similar problem before?

no stars

BEST THING EVER COPY & PASTE IF U THINK SAME!!!

Love it!! gets service anywhere!! no need to hold your phone up high. way bettrer than tracfone or any other provider.

BEST THING EVER COPY & PASTE IF U THINK SAME!!!

BEST THING EVER COPY & PASTE IF U THINK SAME!!!

BEST THING EVER COPY & PASTE IF U THINK SAME!!!

BEST THING EVER COPY & PASTE IF U THINK SAME!!!

BEST THING EVER COPY & PASTE IF U THINK SAME!!!

GREAT. If you like prepaid phones, gophone is what u go with.

LOVE IT!! Get it now. best phone youll ever have

GREAT SERVICE!! NEVER A PROBLEM!! LOVE IT!!! CUSTOMER SERVICE ACUTALLY SPEAKS ENGLISH!!! bEST PHONE EVER!!! COPY AND PASTE IF YOU THINK THE SAME

Its okay da only thing i hate is that they take a dollar everyday then 10cent when u make a call 20cent on message dat 2 damn much . That mean we gotta keep putting mins.on our phone but its straight but i wuld preferred contract.

BEST THING EVER!!!!GREAT SERVICE. GET IT!!!!!!!

Go to T-Mobile - they dont charge per phone ringing in your pocket. They charge for actual connection.

ATT has very poor customer service when it comes to refilling your prepaid phone. I visited ATT at 1351 McFarland Blvd, in Tuscaloosa, AL to add minutes to my phone. The bill pay machine took only the exact amount and I needed change. I asked everybody in the store including the customers for change of a $20.00 bill. Each cashier stated they did not have change. I could not believe it; out of 6 cashiers no one had change. When I decided to wait on a cashier to make this transaction I stated if she had change I was going off. The greeter at the door threatened to call the police so I left the store. Thank you ATT for making up my mind to seek new phone service.

Worst service ever i have had my Phone for less then a month and already I have dumped over $250 in so called airtime I would have been better of sticking with Sprint for 85/month but besides the money the service has been great oh yea and that free bonus for every 100 dollars spent is total crap I have only received it once

First prepaid phone I got for my daughter.Didn't know better and payed this ridiculous $1 dollar a day fee even if you used it for just one minute (which should only be a 10 cents charge.) Also charged me a $25.00 upfront fee. At Walgreen's, I see this deal which includes 300 minutes and a free phone in a package. But most importantly no dollar a day when you use the phone which eats up all your money.We get great service in our area. Simple phone and simple plan.Go Net 10

I used to have AT&T prepaid wireless. Overall, decent service, but is that true they now charge for uncompleted calls? If so, that is outrageous. I have Verizon now, they don't charge for calls that don't get answered. Also, they don't charge for voice mail when the phone is off. If AT&T charges for unanswered calls & people leaving voicemail then they are the most expensive service. I find Verizon has better coverage and call quality. And 58 second calls are billed as one minute.

Although the plan is perfect for what I need in a lot of ways, there are a couple of problems with the Go Phone and its customer service that make it a major hassle. The biggest issue is that the phone seems to get reset by AT&T somewhat regularly, deleting all text messages and recent calls as well as resetting your settings to the default setup, such as changing it from vibrate to a ring tone and other minor stuff like the background picture and volume. At first I suspected it was just the phone itself, but my father who has the exact same plan that I do had the same things happen to his phone. Sometimes this won’t happen for weeks, sometimes repeatedly during one day. When I called AT&T, the support rep seem baffled by the problem and stated that it wasn’t them despite the fact that it happened on multiple phones and the phone itself appears to busy doing something right before it occurs, as if it was in the middle of updating or something. As for the support rep, she kept insisting that it was me who was somehow changing the settings and halfway through the conversation said -is there anything else I can help you with today?- even though she hadn’t even taken a real effort to understand what the issue was.

Worst customer service on earth!!!

I had no trouble using with the phone and signal. I got an Go phone for my family that came to visit in 2008. I wanted to reactivate the phone again in 09. I called the customer service center, told the lady what happened. She told me that I need to add money to the account in order to reactivate. So i did. But I still couldn't make or receive calls.
After doing research online, i realized that once the account has no activity for 90 days, the account is invalid, period. So I called to get a refund. I was transferred and passed on by 6 different people to various departments. I was literately on the phone for over 5 hours in total. Nobody could resolve my issue. They all have their own explanation.

Fortunately, I was put on hold and accidentally got transferred to the regular wireless customer service (not Gophone's). This customer service guy is much more diligent. He stayed on the line and got my issue resolved. It turned out that the phone number was recycled and is now under a new account. My money went a stranger's account!

Conclusion - AT&T put the WORST customer service people in GOPHONE department. Even the "supervisors" are morons. Do not use GOPHONE if you expect to call their customer service.

at&t is good but it could better...
i've been having a Go phone for about three months... i like that they have opptions when buying futures... i just wish they mobile to mobile even if you didn't have money on your phone. i'm a teen and i go to school if i ever needed to call my parents in case of an emergency i can't(they both have at&t) i can't call them till after 9 at night!!! and OMG i hate that we have to pay to listen to our voicemail i think that's bullshit!!!! i think it should be free!!!! i like the unlimted texting.... they should send a text when 30 days is up... i would save a lot of confussion!!!! their costumer service is full of crap!!! they shouldn't charge to get help!!!! other than this they have pretty good service and for people like me that have to depend on my parents to put money in my phone prices are okay=)

AT&T is a dishonest company. Cingular was so much better. The new service cuts me off. Now I get phone spam which costs me a dollar even if I do not answer it or the phone is off. Tell me that is not on purpose. I will be changing to a different service soon. It is a sign of the times. America is finished.

the only thing that i hate about at&t is that their $1 a day that you use your phone...

that'z suckz...

i hate it...

cuz every dollar countz...

You would think that a company would want to make it easy for one of its customers to easily upgrade, but ATT Wireless seems to believe otherwise.

Two years ago, once my phone contract ended, I switched to pay-as-you-go (PAYG) from monthly. For me, it was great b/c my bill went to $100 per/year (it had been $580; I'm not a heavy cell phone user). Today, I tried to upgrade to a newer PAYG phone but here's the problem: I just wanted to buy a new phone and switch my current number and account info over to the new phone. But the ATT store tells me that I have to purchase my new phone on-line; the on-line ATT folks tell me that I have to purchase that particular phone in the store. Not only that, but if you purchase the phone on line you can only get a new telephone number (can't keep your old one) and new SIM card and new account information. I'm scratching my head because it seems that they don't want to make it easy for you to upgrade.

Now, maybe this is due to some kind of second-class treatment for PAYG users. I have read studies that say that MOST consumers would save money by going to PAYG. There are still lots of people like me who want a mobile phone but we don't use it every day; heck, when I was on contract, I probably used my phone an average of 5-10 minutes per month. So, for all those years I was a great customer b/c I paid and didn't consumer ATT's resources. Now that I'm PAYG, it seems that basic services and conveniences aren't available.

One other point: cell phone plans and rules are, I guess, too complicated for a company's employees to accurately understand and convey. Sometimes, it seems that you can get a different answer for each person you ask a question ... but I digress.

Here is my chat log from my ATT conversation:

Thank you for your patience! An AT&T sales representative will be with you shortly.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with Holly, an AT&T sales representative.

Holly: Welcome to AT&T online Sales support. How may I assist you with placing your order today?

alan: I already have an ATT phone, pay-as-you-go, with a $100 balance. I'm trying to purchase the Pantech c530 ... can I switch my current $100 over to the new Pantech? And can you do it or do I have to go into an ATT store?

Holly: Unfortunately it can't be done online but if you visit an AT&T retail store to purchase the phone they can do that for you there!

alan: But I just visited a store today and they told me that I had to buy this particular phone on-line.

Holly: The phones online do require you to choose a new plan and come with a new SIM card and new phone number. The online checkout does not transfer an active AT&T number to a new AT&T phone. It's possible the person that you were speaking with was not aware of the procedure online. I apologize for that inconvenience.

alan: Okay, just to make sure I understand: if I want to get a new phone and still be pay-as-you-go, I have to get a new plan and new number and new SIM card? There is no way to keep my current number if I upgrade my phone and still maintain an PAYG plan? But if I went to a monthly plan, I could upgrade and keep my same number?

Holly: When you order online, you would need to choose a new phone and new plan. The checkout won't process an order of just a phone and it won't transfer an active AT&T number to a new AT&T plan unless you are upgrading a phone on a contract plan.

alan: Okay, but my phone is probably 4-5 years old ... so buying one of ATT's current line of phones is not considered an upgrade? I understand that processing an order won't transfer my current number -- but you seem to be saying that there is NO way of transferring my current number to a new phone.

Holly: You can transfer your current number to a new phone if you purchase the phone at an AT&T retail store, it just can't be done online.

Holly: The checkout will give you an error message.

alan: Okay, Holly, but at the ATT store I was TOLD that I had to purchase this particular phone on-line? You say go to the store, the store says go on-line. What is a customer supposed to do??

Holly: The store may not understand the online procedure. I apologize for that.

Holly: They do not use the online system for ordering so they may not be aware that the checkout doesn't allow for just the purchase of the phone.

alan: Again, what is a customer supposed to do?? I'm certainly not going to buy another ATT phone (new number etc) when it's imperative that I transfer my current number.

Holly: You can purchase the phone at an AT&T retail store if you like.

alan: I went to an ATT retail store today, as I mentioned before. I was not at a Best Buy or some third-party store. I was at an ATT store.

Holly: Yes, you may want to visit a different store. I am very sorry that happened but the checkout won't process an order of just a phone and it will give you an error message if you try to transfer the number. I apologize for the trouble.

alan: Okay, well, it seems to me that it'll probably make more sense to just port my number over to Verizon or T-Mobile. Thanks.

Holly: Did the store not have the phone you wanted in stock? We have had stores misdirect people online before in that case. You may want to call other stores in your area to see if they do have the phone. I would be happy to get you a list of those stores if you like.

alan: I can easily find other stores ... and, yes, they had the phone in stock ... but I feel that I've already spent more time that was necessary over something that shouldn't have been that complicated ... the next closest store to me was sold out of the phone ... so, right now, I'm not feeling like going out of my way and going to another store with the same misunderstanding (since, as you seem to suggest, certain of ATT's stores share this confusion).

Holly: Well I do apologize, you can purchase the phone at the retail stores, I would suggest calling in advance and speaking to the manager if you do decide to visit.

i dont like them a all their phones are junk their sevice is no good when you buy a new phone it dont work and they ack like they dont even care

I started my prepaid contract with cingular and had no problems, but once AT&T took over, things went south fast. I wont go into details except to say that AT&T will RIP YOU OFF for every dime they can, and be aware theres a time limit on your prepaid acct, your balance could suddenly be $0 and no amount of complaining will reverse it. In my opinion, this amounts to stealing, which is why Im taking my business elsewhere after 3 years with the same #

I wanted to purchase time to put on a prepay phone online for my duaghter and was not able to. NO one from customer service answer the phone.

They take that extra 10 cents at times. I have caught them. The cost is more than that of a monthly account with alltel or something else. The prepaid plan is too expensive. Half the time I go without minutes because it goes too fast.

I am only giving 3 stars because while I do get good reception in my area, I am unhappy that the cost of text messages has increased from 5 cents to 20 cents. I seriously doubt that it is costing the company more to send our "texts". I have also been charged when others called me and I didn't answer. I do love the free mobile to mobile but hate the fact that Cingular doesn't want people giving their old phones away after upgrading. Also, two of my sisters had some type of issue where they had to buy a new SIM card for their phone and the agent offered no explanation as to why that was. *LOL*@MEL... I have let someone borrow my phone and the first thing they heard was, "PLEASE! Refill your account."

I bought an AT&T GoPhone as back-up in areas where I don't have T-Mobile coverage. I observed that actual usage IS NOT what AT&T charges. I have been using less than a minute calls (54 secs or lower) but I am charged for 2 minutes - 50 cents - instead of 25 cents per minute! I think it is an elaborate way of how AT&T get money from unsuspecting customers. It does not mean a lot to me, but when you think of millions of subscribers (50 million?), then sums up to millions of dollars too.

Coverage is good but Customer Service is a nightmare! Long hold times, they can't get my account straight and I have now had to call three times on the same issue, each time staying on the phone for close to an hour. You get transferred from one person to the next and not one of them knows what they are doing!!!!

AT&T is a good pre-paid phone but as someone else said, you have to PAY to listen to your messages. that should be for free. and, for text on my phone, it costs me 20 cents. those are the only cons that i can think of...otherwise its a good phone

When I added minutes to my daughters phone on line it always told me that the transactin didn't go through. However it did. I have tried since December 08 to get a refund of $100.00. They said they refunded it on the next day, and after sending a copy of my bank statement showing them that it had not been refunded, my account had a security breach and I have not received my money since. My bank caught the breach and notified me right away. I am not saying that it was AT&T, but sure leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Here it is March 09 and still no money from these people. They have a nice scam going on.

I get charged for no answer and when i call another AT&t customer. I have since quit selling them in my store and went strictly to tracephone. I cut the at7t service to all my businesses and will not ever use them again unless they take over tracephone. Sorries cuctomer service since i dealt with Cox cable company.

I have two ATT pay as you go phone services and have noticed I have been charged 50 cents per minute instead of 25 cents..since there are no bills with details of usage..it seems unlikely to get this issue resolved.
What government agency is responsible for oversite? If I could I would give a 0 rating for customer rip offs.

March 24,2009: I just had a Customer Service Rep(Rebecca) explain that ALL cellphone companies now charge a $1 Monthly 911 Admin Fee on their Prepaid(i.e.GoPhone) Cell Plans! NOT Verizon or VirginMobile as I Have BOTH! Why wasn't/isn't this in the Terms of Service agreement? Just talked to ATT Rep in PERSON(Pennsylvania) and they said: "NEVER Ever Heard of Such Fee"! P.S. NEVER Ever BELIEVE ATT Customer Service Reps On The PHONE.
P.P.S. One Month-NO Charge! Explanation-Not Much Phone Usage! HUH!!! Makes NO Sense To ME or ATT Person(LIVE In PA)... WHAT GIVES with ATT Wireless GoPhone PrePaid?

att sucks they charge you not only a doller a day but 10 cents a min on top of the doller i had unicel and was paying 160 a day and i could talk and text with out being charged now i cant get the phone to last more then a week with 50 dollers on it last me like 8 days i think att sucks if i could go back to unicel i would but att bought them out

at&t pre paid started out good.i have 1 major problem with it though!!!!! my prime example i put $25.00 on my pre paid last night and when i went to bed i had a balance of $21.60. i woke up this morning and made 1 phone call and i found that my balance was down an even $10.00 dollars. thats bullcrap, and its not the first time it has happened. i would like to know where the money goes. and further more how the hell do u get a real person on the phone to get your money back!!!! its not like im loaded with money or anything.

For any of you... You deal with paying via the phone or internet to get your minutes, and then have troubles. When I had a Go Phone, it was easy enough to go to AT&T store or agent company and get minutes. They entered the card number,etc. they checked the balance to confirm it took. If it didn't, they called from the store to customer service line (Yes, they have special numbers they call to get in as they are a store and can jump the Queue) and they got it fixed. All they had to was say they were with AT&T store# or Agent# and Cust.Service snapped to. But it is cared for then and there. I had the same thing with Cincinnati Bell's iWireless GSM. Buy the minutes at the store, have them add the minutes and check they took. If something goes wrong, they call and deal with it. Having the ability to say, "Yes, this is store#xxxx, and we are having a problem with minutes we just added to a customer's phone..." gets things done. I never had a problem with CinBell. Only reason I got away is because I am not in Cincinnati area anymore and phone would show "iRoam" too often (which is no biggie since there are no roaming fees), but then you can't access wireless web features or #225 to check balance. Trust me, when you buy minutes, you need to get them at the AT&T store or an Authorized agent who also handles postpay stuff. Have them put them in. Then the blame lies with them if your $25 in minutes don't get credited. 'nuff said. :-)

I have AT&T postpay now though and use Net10 as backup. Porting CinBell number was a snap and was completed within 24 hours.

One of the worst customer service experiences I ever had. Transferred among three different "representatives," getting jerked around for maybe a half hour over what should have been a simple matter, and finally speaking with a supervisor. The "service" reps were clueless and the supervisor was downright haughty and belligerent. NO satisfaction was ultimately provided. I will be changing companies.

Wow! I'm glad I came here before getting an AT&T GO phone. I have been happy with their monthly service plan but was considering changing to save a few bucks. I don't believe this many people are lieing about how bad the charges and service is. Thx to all who posted their comments...

One thing I failed to mention in my review is, when you need to add more money to your phone, you don't have to go to the store and purchase a card. If you have a debit or credit card all you have to do is dial 611 from your phone and you are not charged for the call, just listen to the recording and do as you are prompted to do and you can add money from any where as long as you have your debit or credit card. You have the option to add any where from $15-$100. You can also add your feature packages.

I have had the go phone for a long while now. I haven't had any major problems with it at all. It works just like the ones with the contracts sounds the same and all. You can even buy a different AT & T phone and stick your go phone sim card in it and it works. I first just bought the cheap 19.95 phone then I have spent over $100.00 for my next one and it worked fine. I have gone from state to state with it with no problem at all its just a phone. I am a truck driver and I don't see it cutting out in any area any different than one with a contract would cut out in. I have had both. I just prefer this one because to me it's cheaper. You can talk to anyone with an at& t phone and not be charged minutes just like the ones with contracts, if you choose the $1 a day plan. It is 10 cents a minute if you talk to some one other than an at& t phone. You can check your voice mail with out being charged by using your spouses phone. You can also by features to use such as unlimited texting. I choose the 200 messages a month unlimited for only 4.99. The only thing I don't like, is when you hang up it rings to give you your available amount. I don't think it should ring after hanging up. When you go to make your next call you will see your available amount when you start to dial. Most of us look at our phones when we pick them up any way. So all in all I think it's a great deal.

the "reviews" on this site are obviously fake. I hope att gets busted for this garbage turf marketing.
The review itself is wrong, ATT prepaid does NOT have the same coverage as regular ATT. Huge area missing, lie thw whole state of Wyoming

I did some research and net 10 is owned buy tracfone wireless. I was looking at purchasing the att go phone Motorola razr and realized that it was cheaper at walmart. Then one day i went to target and got the t mobile Motorola razr for even cheaper yet. att needs to lay off there prepaid customers and put the pressure on the ones that have a contract. Prepaid phones are meant to be cheap and work as well as any other phone. i am just so disappointed that they have to do that.

AT&T have aLOT of phones to choose from, more downloables, customer service is excellent, much better than what I got with T-Mobile.

I cannot begin to describe the "run-around" by these people at AT&T. The battery would not keep a charge and in order to mail me another, I was asked to give them my credit card no.? When I told them I didn't have one, I was told to give someone else's number. This is a real scam. Never, never give out your number to anyone for excange of a $20.00 replacement. Needless to say, after speaking with ten more people and getting hung up on,disconnected and transfered to ten other people, I decided I would take the loss of $30.00 balance on the phone that I could use and spread the word about how terrible they treat their customers. I will never again use their service and hope others will learn from this experience.

I tried the ATT Go-Phone for three months and felt that I was ripped off by ATT. They would send me messages and reminders to refill and then deducted from my remaining minutes for these messages. It also deducted minutes for me to check the balance of my remaining minutes.
ATT definitely have lost my trust. I don't know if I want to even use ATT for my regular monthly cell phone plan while I am shopping for one now. The regular users should look carefully how your minutes are being charged by ATT.

At&t is the best because you can chose ur own plan and features

The only proplem that I have with AT&T go phone is that after every call a message is sent to your phone displaying the balance. Is there a way to not let other users of your phone know your business?

at&t's go phone is okay...not the best!! not nearly the best!!! U get no service in my house-u practically have to stand on the sofa next to the window. it's sad...all the commercials say u can get service anywhere, anytime. well, they are lying!!! if u dont a a feature package, every text message is $.25--it's ridiculous. i am definitly going to switch over to alltel or u.s. cellular!!! if u want good service and good package plans....do NOT turn to at&t. that's it!!!

I have never heard of a cell phone company that does not charge you for texts you recieve. you can block texts if you want to, but if you dont want them blocked you are allowing people to send you messages. and you will get charged for those!

- for those of you that got charged for making a call that only rang 4 times but no answer? yes, you are picking up your phone and dialing. when you press send it uses ATT's service to locate that phone. that costs you. deal.

- the dollar a day comes out the day after. so say you used your phone today, you wont see the dollar being taken till tomorrow. so, if you use your phone everyday you will see a dollar taken everyday.

-if you are on the dollar a day plan and you only text, i assure you it does not charge the dollar. VOICE CALLS ONLY.

-yes, you will be charged for making calls to your voicemail. its a call. voicemail is a feature you can choose to use. so it cost money to access it from your phone.

-If your airtime expires, you will not immediately run out of min. 60 days after it expires it will cancel. and if by chance it canceled right after your money expired, they would have been able to resume it, no problem.

they are easy to use. just dont be quick to judge and look at your resources. att.com/mygophone. you can look at your account.

The phone is great, but AT&T does everything it can to con you into buying additional time weeks before your current subscription expires. When you do that, you loose whatever you had left of your subscription because the new period starts immediately. Even when you sign up for periodic automatic billing at 30, 90, or 365 day intervals, they don't actually give you that much time because they renew your subscription before your old one expires. You loose a couple days each time.

I like the service but I wish when my unlimited texting packages is about to run out, AT&T would send me a text telling my that.

The web site is not very helpful to someone who is trying to active a use prepaid cell phone.Your web site is redireting me from one site to another and that is very frustaiting. Whaen your main task is simply trying to active a prepaid cell phone

I was fine w/ the Company especially the free in network calls. However the problems began w/ the $1 a day usage fees... $31/mo right off the bat was taken off my account ... How is that a good deal?

I HATE AT&T with a passion. Their GO-PHONE plan should GO!!! Have to add money weekly and it's about $25 each time. It's a huge rip-off. I loved U.S.Cingular and when AT&T bought them I almost cried. The service is piss poor. You will be on your phone for hours just trying to get technical help. You minutes expire, your text messaging expires and then it's .20/text message. It's absolute crap!!! I agree with Robert 100%. If you can go with Cricket or T-Mobile, do it. My boyfriend GAVE me my Samsung Slider phone and I love it or I would change in a heartbeat.

I have a GO phone for my 85 year old elderly mother living in a nursing home in FL, I am in NY. Last September it came to my attention that her minutes expired and for some reason the automatic billing did not go through and $450.00 in unusd minutes expired. After several calls to ATT they gave us the minutes back with a 25% penalty on a 1 time basis. The same thing happend. On December 9th, my minutes again expired again and again my credit card did not go through on automatic billing. On both occasions I was able to use the credit card that had ben set up for automatic billing to avoid this situation. I asked them why they did not contact me vial e-mail which they have my aaddress, nor by telephone which they have a contact number to reach me. ATT claims they can only contact me via a text message to the phone. Most 85 year olds probably have no understanding of text messages. ATT use of email or phone is for solicitation purposes only not for problems I was told by ATT Customer Service. ATT must have an office that Bernie Madoff works in to steal from its cutomers because thats what they are doing!

ATT is NOT a good plan. Reception is just okay, but that is actually the best thing about them. Expensive and not good deal for "pre-paid" service and that is whether you talk a lot or even just a little bit (especially their flat monthly rates or even their per call rate with the expensive $1 a day charge!). ATT is the most scam-like regarding minutes and roll over. Expiration dates seem to change by one or two days in any given cycle (computer print outs of purchase vs. phone inquiry expiration dates)and then ATT seems to relish the fact that one second past this floating/ambiguious expiration time you lose all accumulated minutes. Also extremely unsecure. Actually had all my minutes used up by TWO SIMULTANEOUS OUTGOING calls I supposely made out of the country. Even the ATT rep couldn't explain it and had no choice but to return minutes (after a 24 hour wait!!). AVOID THEM!!!

i hate att!
they are terrible!
i didn't have service anywhere and i
live in sarasota florida
(that's a big city in florida)
text messages took atleast
20 minutes to send and recieve
and then they would charge
me double the money!
so then i switched to tracfone which is great!

have used this at&t prepaid for about 4 years.....no problems.
only problem is the cost per min. at 25 cents per min.......
and texting at 20 cents...is just too much to handle!!!!
i am switching to t-mobile

1/6/09
Call quality is OK in my area. ATT prepaid rates are too high, esp. txt messaging, ridiculous 20 cents in and out. Most important, ATT steals your minutes. For example, att charges you 2 minutes when your phone shows 55 second; att charges you one call even nobody picks the phone (without answering machine). Customer service sucks, every time you called, they just tell you problem will be solved, but never did. I switched to T-mobile recently, don't know their service yet. But it appears you can't check call history online, only feature I liked in att.

I rarely use my GoPhone and am happy enough with the actual service. Customer support is another story entirely. First, they do their best to prevent giving out the money we're due for referrals. A referred person has thirty days to register, and ATT says verification can take forty days; right there, they make it too late to correct any problems. Trying to rectify the situation requires waiting forever on hold, and usually being shifted to another rep who may or may not know anything about the program. Finally, they send emails after the time they were supposed to approve the payouts has expired, and tell you to try again. However, the person referred, who has had the service for awhile by now, is already on their list of current customers, so can't be referred again. They deny the payment initally, and then require jumping through more hoops, which also don't work. Don't count on getting any referral money from their program. If others have had similar problems, a class-action suit might force their compliance. wojunk@yahoo

AT&T has been one headache after the other. At first I liked their reasonable packages and no strings attached GoPhones. It was convenient and pocket friendly. But as time has passed AT&T has gotten ridiculous with it's rates. I have seen the text messages go from free to 10 cent, to 15 cent to 20 cent! Not only that they charge you every time you access your voicemail. That was one of the final straws for me. I just switched back to Sprint (somewhat reluctantly) and will pay for their Simply Everything Plan, that way everything is covered. The price is worth the freedom and convenience.

So long AT&T and good riddance!

I've had my gophone for a year with the pay as you go plan. I havn't had problems with coverage, I'm in the California bay area. I like how you can buy the text cards for how many you want for a set price.

It gets 2 stars because I have luck with the service in a variety of areas, but that's about the best it gets. I am constantly charged for all sorts of things. Like, whenever someone calls me I always am charged 10 cents for it even though I didn't answer it at all! Plus, if someone sends me a message I am right away charged a dollar for that day even if I haven't touched my phone.
I am also very unhappy in how their rates keep going up. When I first got my phone, the texting was at 5 cents per text: I could deal with that. But now, it is at 20 cents per text! And with my plan, I am unable to get a "messaging package" so I have to pay for every stupid 2 word text I receive and/or send.
AT&T Go Phone is a total rip off. I'd rather go with a plan and pay an activation fee that will stay consistent in what they promise and not be totally ripped off by some cell phone cons.

Overall, I must say that I am satisfied with my ATT Go Phone and service, altjough I must admit that the charges to use the internet are a bit ridiculous and also charging a extra .50 cent delivery fee for answer tones. If I had to make a complaint, it would be about the text messaging. I don't think you should be charged for other people sending text messages to your phone. I mean you can't control when other people text you. This uses up all of your minutes, even with a package. I will be switching over to the Prepaid account that gives you minutes and extras as a plan and they automatically take your payment from a checking account or credit card. I will see how that works, if not I will switch back.

They nickle and dime you to death. They charge you to listen to your message's which is a total rip-off. They also charge you for people leaving a message on your phone, even if it's off. I changed to prepaid to save money cause I don't call people much, but they stick it to you anyway they can. ATT prepaid is nothing but a ripoff!!!! Thanks for nothing ATT!

I've been a customer for a couple of years. Whenever I have needed it, I have always found customer service to be poor--difficult to access, giving wrong information, and even at times rude. Recently, because of incorrect information given to me by customer service agents, I had two breaks in service right in a row and lost over $100 in built up airtime. Though they even confirmed that they saw in the notes that I had been given incorrect information, and that they understood that was the cause for the break in service, they refused to reinstate the minutes the second time because there had been a break previously. Yes, let me repeat that--they admitted that they could see in the notes that it was totally their fault, and yet refused to make good. There are other plans just as inexpensive, and it is impossible to believe they could be worse in customer service.

Pros:

With the $1 a day plan (only when your phone is used), all domestic calls are 10c/min. If you want to call internationally, use a domestic "proxy" (forwarding) number and you will only be charged the domestic rate.

Great phones and great selection! Refurbs in my experience are as good as new and a great value (I own several phones, both new and refurb). Refurbs are an even better value when you use a rebate site and can get $20-$30 cash back.

Do not seem to cripple/disable features/functions on their phones like T-Mobile has the nasty habit of doing (so they can charge you for everything, like getting photos off your phone onto your computer).

GSM network, so the phones can be used overseas if tri- or quad-band, and unlocked (important for someone like me who spends much time overseas). You will save a TON by using a sim for the provider of the foreign country you are in... most foreign cellular is prepaid, and VASTLY superior in both features and cost compared to the US (otherwise known as Cell Hell). Most phones can be instantly and easily unlocked with a "HyperSIM/SmartSIM" etc. (SIM unlocking chip). Also, you can use any unlocked GSM phone on their network... I can switch between my smartphone (purchased full-price, unlocked) and an everyday "beater" in 30 seconds by just swapping the sim.

Refill cards readily available and reloading trouble-free, right from the phone.

Their coverage is excellent, at least in my experience. Far better than T-Mobile. I swear I could be 3000 feet down in an iron ore mine and still have a few bars.

Cons:

20 cents per text sent or received (as of recently... the 15 c rate is old info as it has since been raised). Usurious! But it seems all the primary carriers have followed suit, in lock-step. Did I meantion the US is cellular hell?

Insanely expensive data charges if you want to do anything more than look up something on Google... viewing this site would probably cost several dollars!

Customer "service" (what service?) is as bad as it gets. Fortunately, I very rarely find myself needing to avail of it; but the couple of times I did, it was a nightmare.

The $1 a day when you use the phone plan, while it reduces the per-minute rate and thus in one sense is a "pro", is also a "con" at the same time because it wastes a dollar of your load that you get no use out of.

Overall, like all the providers, AT&T has its foibles, but is a good choice, considering the rock and hard place US cellular customers find themselves between, and is by far the better of the two domestic GSM providers.

As an aside, I found a backdoor way to bypass the high cost of text using a Java app. called Nimbuzz, running on the data plan since SMS are less than 1 kB each... worked great for 2 days, long texting sessions cost me only 30-40 cents in *total*... and this was international, mind you! Then they must have figured out what I was doing and locked it out because it will no longer connect to the internet no matter what WAP config I use. Oh well, was nice while it lasted... ;-)

I bought a prepay phone about a year ago and it worked just fine for a couple of months but within the last few times that I have added money It has taken more money than what it should I had $3.85 on time made a free phone call and seconds later I had $.38 WHAT A RIP OFF... I do not recomend this plan to any one and whatever you do DON'T BUY THE SPECIAL FEATURES!! Free nights and Weekends more like CRAP!!

I Do/Don't recomend this because if you lose your phone, they dont offer any plans for inshurance for the phone. Also, they should make the voicemail calls for free, not charging me 5 dollars. Its ok for a last minute resort.

I've had AT&T for several years after they bought out my original carrier. Then it was Cingular which had pathetic customer support. Not it's AT&T again and instead of Free2Go it's GoPhone. I have to buy $25 worth of minutes every 90 days or my minutes will expire and be lost. That comes out to $8.34/month. Not too bad. BUT when my minutes are about to expire they send me email, text messages, and block my call with a voice message that I have to listen through and then push the # key to continue to make my call. Then it charges me 50-75 cents for having to listen to their sale pitch!!! They refuse to stop blocking my calls with their message. They will not acknowledge that their message cost me money. Aside from all that the service is reasonably reliable and it's the only network what will work in my rural area. I'm looking into Net 10 but from what I've read I may just stick with AT&T. I boycotted AT&T for years because of their long distance got-congress-in-their-laps extortion policies but they took over my original cell phone company so I got stuck with them. BTW I had "AutoPay" with Cingular and every 90 days my minutes would expire and I would lose my rollover minutes. They never informed me there was any kind of problem with my credit/debit card or gave me any kind of grace period. Personally I consider AT&T to be a bunch of crooks (Cingular too) but they seem to have me by the, well, you know.

I've had a go phone for about three yrs. I haven't had any major issues & the ones I've had have been taken care of by Cust. Ser. I've been reading about not having good reception, etc., I find the opposite is true. I had the cheap phone & up-graded to a Samsung & am totally satisfied.

I have the AT&T Go phone for $1.00 a day and 10 cents a minutes. I have not seen those 15 cent text messages, the only ones i get are from AT&T. I only had it for a month, usually someone just leaves a voice mail, coz im not there to answer it. how do you know if the 25 cents a minute plan would be bettter if I seem to miss a lot of calls and someone just wnats to leave voice mails for me. would the 25 cents a minute be better?

at first lots of spam calls. got that solved but the coverage is terrible!

ive had a tracfone,simple freedom, tmobile, virgin mobile, and att. do not listen to ppl that do not like att. they are either mentally challenged or too stupid to work a phone. go phone is easy, relatively cheap, great service, it doesnt take an idiot to work the phones. GOD!!!!! everything else is either too expensive of difficult....

This is a rip off.

AT&T lies when they say best coverage.

Travle with AT&T and you wil see how bad it is.

NO SERVICE AT ALL out west and in a lot of the US. Dead Zones everywhere.

I switch to Verizon PrePaid and its the best.

tons of features, Unlimited Nights and Weekends, Unlimited text, pictures, videos, and IMs to anyone as well.

Also, some of the best phone too.

Verizon is the way to go.

I had an at+t prepaid gophone. Needless to say, the customer service was very bad and the custmoer service representatives were rude to me. I would not recommend any gophone at all or any at+t phone

This is the best! I got a Cingular Go Phone back in early 2005 and have never had a problem with the service. I've used the phone in many states including FL, MO, OH, TX and in between. Always a good signal and clear calls. Still have the same phone. I put $25 on it every 3 months.
When AT&T took over Cingular I started some of those annoying text ads from AT&T but I called customer service and they put a stop to it.

The call quality is good but the rates and customer service is very poor. I am changing to another carrier because money/minutes dissappears rapidly out of my account because of a ring one scam that att will not or can not do anything about. the customer service reps are condescending and are hard to understand at times because they have strong accents

my advicejust avoid at&t prepaid service, its a sham as the customer is held at gunpoint pretty much. i ask rhetorically...why lose minutes that have been paid for. tmobile and tracfone, though they have a few issues...are better by far in that one can purchase -one year- cars.

Having had a postpaid account for more than ten years with AT&T, when my daughter needed a pre paid phone, I chose AT&T GoPhone. I made a huge mistake. The service is horrible, they have overcharged me, not included features that I wanted, hung up on me when I called for help, etc. etc. etc. I have now spent more than 7 hours over the least 3 weeks to try and correct the situation to no avail. I will be canceling my entire account with them and oh yes, I have even called the CEO in Houston- no help. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY!!!!!!

It costs so much you might as well get a contract... but get the contract with a company other than at&t. I live in the middle of a midwestern major city and I am lucky to get one bar and I can't use it to talk, only text because the service is so bad. Go phones are WAY to expencieve for the quality they provide. Try a tracfone. Better service no matter where you are and SO MUCh cheaper than this stuff.

WHAT EVER YOU DO DO NOT GET THE PLAN THAT TAKES MONEY OUT OF ACCOUNT, i CHANGED BILLING AND GO PHONE IGNORED AND BILLED OLD DEBIT CARD AND OVERDAWING A UNUSED ACCOUNT, NOW I HAVE TO DRIVE 6 HOURS ON MY DAY OFF TO DISPUTE CHARGES, AND TAKE AT& T TO SMALL CLAIMS COURT.

I bought a go phone in July at Walmart. I was fairly happy with my service and then decided to upgrade from the pay as you go plan to the monthly prepaid plan where they debit it out of your credit or debit card. I bought a new phone for $149.00. It worked great for a month. I went in to pay the bill this past Monday and this dummy in customer service charged my debit card THREE times. She tried to do it a fourth time but by then she had exhausted the funds in my bank account on that card. I spent 4 hours in the AT&T store trying to get this straightened out with no luck. Then because it was declined the fourth time they cut off my service! I called their 'customer care' department and was treated like dirt by most of their representatives. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told I could but she would see to it that I had a 'long, long wait'. I'd already spent 4 hours on the phone with them and couldn't take anymore. My password was reset and given to a rep at their store. He read it off to me quickly and then threw it away so I had no idea what it was. I told them I got the phone in September and they insisted I had gotten it in July. I just couldn't figure it out so tonight I finally got a decent customer service rep who gave me my pin number and I was able to look it up on the web. They had my address as Dallas, Texas. I live in North Carolina. So I'm trying to figure out what is going on now. I did manage to get one of my payments back from my bank and I'm waiting for the rest. I asked a store rep if I could just go back to the pay as you go where you buy a card to add minutes and he said yes but I would have to change my phone number for some reason. Then I find out from their customer service rep on the phone that my phone number will stay the same. I wasn't going to do it but since I just spent so much on a new phone I will unless I can find another company that will use this phone.
AT&T customer service is the worst. DO NOT GET A GO PHONE. It is a total rip off and they are clueless when you ask a question. Even my bank thinks they are a bunch of idiots. Also they are too expensive and very, very rude on the phone.

Att sucks. Their rates are too high. And now they're are eliminating their 19.99 unlimited data plan. I guess they figured that was too good of deal. I'm switching to t mobile, their prepaid service is just as good if not better than att, and its cheaper. Anyone looking for another prepaid cell plan should check out t mobile.

This can really suckk=[
i ran out of minutes and they IMMEADIATLY gave my number away
when we called customer service they said i had to get a new number,new sim card, and new minutes
and it ended up it would have been like 150$
for a 74$ phone

I got switched to GoPhone by the family plan because texting was killing the bill. So, my mother made me switch to GoPhone. I got the 400 minutes and 3000 N/W plan with unlimited texting. I love GoPhone. I get a signal everywhere and the service is so reliable. Customer service is wonderful as well and I was able to get my Sony Ericsson z310a for free. Overall, I'm happy with AT&T. I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't talk a lot, but still wants a "real" phone.

We have been using go phones for over a year now after our contract was up with TMobile. We have been extremely happy. We use our phones ALOT, my husband is a business owner, and I am a full time student. We have 2 children, one with a phone she uses for texting only. $20 a month unlimited. My husband and I pay about $150 per month for all 3 phones. We have had very few problems with service, and any problems we did have were temporary. One problem I did have a few months ago was I bought a refill card, and it didn't work. The store refused to refund or exchange. I called Customer Service and they added the money, even though I had no proof that I had actually bought a card. (I did have a card and receipt, but they couldn't see it.)

The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because they do charge you for calls that don't connect. They charge you to check voicemail from your phone, although it is free to check it from a landline. And they do indeed begin to charge you for the next minute before the first minute is up.

NO coverage..If you travel AT&T prepaid coverage is not the same as their "regular plans" prepaid only works with certain cell towers "Cingular kept their towers and at&t won't let Prepaid rome off them...May work fin in your home area and most freeways...but don't get off the beatton path...

Pretty happy with the service.

I use the $.25/minute plan. They charge you for outgoing calls and also for incoming calls.

Lately, however, it seems that I also get charged in case a call does not connect. For instance, I try to call a friend, his phone rings 3-4 times, I hang up. And it costs me 25 cents! WTF, AT&T???

Besides that, GoPhone makes a lot of sense if you're not a big cellphone user.

One thing that really bugs me about the prepaid service from AT&T is that they keep boosting up rates, especially on texting. When I first bought my phone 2 years ago, texts were 5 cents/min. In a month, they're going up to 20c/min. Very disappointing.

Nokia 2610 purchased online would not charge on arrival. It took 2 hrs. searching the purchase paperwork and dysfunctional web pages to find out how to obtain support, and before they will replace the defective phone I have to drive it to an AT&T store to have them verify the problem. A very frustrating and discouraging start for my GoPhone tryout.

I just had a prepaid minutes expire. I tried to renew online but it wouldn't let me. I contacted customer service after my minutes expired and recharged to continue service. My balance which was over $100 did not continue on so I lost all that money. Usually other services try to reach you via phone or text you when your minutes are about to expire but AT&T prepaid does not. I do not recommend this service at all.

Got the gophone with $1/day and 10 cents a minute option. Only use for emergencies, which means almost never. Costs a little over $8 a month, since minutes expire, and I couldn't find anything cheaper. Got the cheap Samsung A117 for $10 refurbed on ATT website, purchased $25 card with it and they loaded an extra $10 since I loaded the card within 10 days of activating the phone. Never had a cell phone before and still don't see a pressing need for it. I was able to stop their marketing messages easily, after they offered the option after one of the messages. Battery life might not be the best, but haven't used it enough to check. My first three months are up this week, so I need to reload before expiration to get the leftover minutes rolled over.

would like to be able to want to read texts or not, instead of automatically being charged for text before being read.

I've used Gophone since January of this year. At first it sucked. The $.15 charge for texts was killing me. When they began offering packages for text messaging and night/weekend minutes then I began to enjoy the service.

I use my phone a lot and because of an ex girl friend that messed up my credit I had to switch over to prepaid service. Overall ATT gives the best option... Here's why... for every $100 of refills they credit you extra time, it starts at $5 and increases $5 up to $20. I'm at the top level now so everytime I reach $100 of refills they give me and extra $20.

I buy $100 refill card every month. After I top off I have $120 balance. I purchase the $20 night/weekend package, and the $10 unlimited text package. That leaves me with 900 anytime minutes and what comes out to free nights and weekends. All of which roll over because I always refill before my account expires.
The beauty of it is I don't HAVE to refill with $100 dollars every month. If I don't have the money I do $50 or sometimes just $15 to hold me over until I can put more time on the phone.

Try telling the company of your contracted phone that you'll only be paying 1/4 of the bill this month. I've tried of prepaids and to me ATT provides the best.

AT&T is flat out too expensive on the prepaid... I had AT&T wireless before, during, and for a while after cingular... and my plan was awesome... but I no longer needed a family plan and suddenly... what was I gonna do with a $90 plan for 2 people. I didn't need the massive minutes, so I tried out some prepaid options... and in short, I quickly switched to T-Mobile, where I quickly bought a hundred dollar card (which gave me just over 1,000 minutes), stuck it in my phone, and was good to go for up to a year on it... best of all, because I bought the "gold" minutes plan that does give the one year expiration and also the 10 cents a minute rate with 10 cent texts and 25 cent picture messages... well, at the end of the year, if I still had money left from the $100, I could roll over all of it by purchasing just ten bucks or however much. That's a great system for loyalty and T-Mobile has just been kicking the pants off AT&T in almost all areas (heck, 2 people can share an unlimited everything plan on T-Mobile for $150 a month... compare it to that being the price for 3k minutes on AT&T... everything on T-Mobile is better... and I don't expect that to change for a really long time!)

I like the service but the $0.15 per text whether its incoming or outcoming is outrageos. They are makin plenty of money to just charge $0.05 per message.

I am very very happy with AT&T i like the free m2m and free nights and weekends AT&T has been great !!

I dislike like the phone as the features aren't all there cracked up to be, you can't get roadside assistance with a gophone, and trying to get a straight answer from someone about the maximum dollar amount is like pulling teeth. otherwise being able to call my wife's family from canada for free/ a dollar a day is pretty cool

I don't know why there is such a big difference between the editor's rating the the average users rating. The Editor should reflect.
My personal experience is that AT&T's service sucks. Its web site (to add money) is not working and its customer service tried their best to make themselves unavailable. And they double-charged me and made sure I had no way to complain to them and after I made a dispute claim to my credit card company, they absolutely ensure that I was given a hard time. The reason I came across this web site is that I am trying to look for a better company.

What a rip off. I was being charged for incoming text messages that were from advertisers and then on top of THAT I was 'signed up' for a $9.99 monthly service that I didn't even know about. My minutes were being sucked away without my knowledge. This should be illegal. I will be looking for another provider ASAP. I wasted over $100 on this cell phone spam that I wasn't even aware of. What kind of company permits this to happen to unsuspecting customers? B'bye AT&T.

So far I like the ability to have excellent reception even far out in the country. That is the main plus with AT&T. Second plus is even on the cheapest model it allows you web access. You have to buy a certain model to have web access with Alltel.

One question I have on the AT&T prepaid camera phones:

With the pictures I take are they only viewable on the phone itself or can I email them or store them on a website?

For all you people who complain about the go phone i know what you mean. i work at the call center that handles the prepaid payments for ATT. i takes hundreds of these calls every day and its a pain to listen to your problems as well. We don't get paid much and we are on a time limit per call so when the call takes to long we transfer you to some on else. When you ask for a supervisor you get someone else in the other one hundred cubicles and they aren't supervisors, just some one else who's turn to be a supervisor.

I also purchased a go-phone and since use we only us it for the children when they have to go places like music lessons etc. we rarely use more than $5 per month. I was not told about the fact that if you do not use the total balance you will loose it after the "airtime minutes expire" AT&T have even registered this scam to steal your money as the AccountRollOver plan. NOWHERE does it warn you about this ..... Why would you need to fund an account that still has $70 on it ..... Does not make sense at all. If it has happened to me I am sure it has happpened to others as well ..... Any good lawyers out there for a juicy class action suite .... I do not care about the $70 that AT&T stole from me but this practise needs to stop!

Sept 7 2008

North Florida/Dallas/Chicago

I have had Cingular/AT&T GoPhone service for over a year. The first phone I bought to activate the service was a piece of junk, but that was easily solved by going on eBay and searching for AT&T/Cingular UNLOCKED phones. First had a Sony-Ericsson J220. Decided I wanted a flip phone with no external antenna, since I carry in my pocket and prefer not to get stabbed. I had 2 V3 Razr's, but I broke them both within days, They're really fragile. I'm now using a Samsung W755. It's great. I figure that I spend anywhere from $15-$35/ month on the 25c plan. I recharge online, have never had a problem. I do get a text from AT&T once in a while, which annoys me, but I think you can stop the marketing messages if you want to. I've only tried to reply to a text they sent one time, and it didn't go thru, so I didn't worry about it.
I use GoPhone service to talk. Not text. Not send videos or pictures. Not download music. I have never downloaded a ringtone in my life and never intend to. I saw the post from the guy with unwanted contacts in his phonebook, but I have never had on that I couldn't easily delete. Maybe it's a different plan than mine. If you're the kind who needs to hear inane music rather than a 'ring' when you get a call, or feel some wierd urge to text Buffy and Chip every 15 minutes, this probably isn't the phone for you.
If, like me, you make a few short calls now and then, and only occasionally yap for more than a minute or two, this service is perfect. My credit is excellent, and I can afford a 'regular' plan, but I don't see the sense in it. Why pay $50+ a month when I make about 20 calls a month, at most? I refuse to commit to a plan for two years. With GoPhone, I can get a different phone every month if I want to buy one on eBay/Craigslist/wherever.

Text spam is eating up my pre-paid time and there is no way to turn it off.

I originally bought my gophone when my best friend moved out of state, and her son was staying with us, and she had a gophone so I figured that I would get one so he would be able to stay in touch with her for much cheaper, and wouldn't have to use my computer (as I do for making phone calls).

Until very recently I was very pleased with the service, it allowed me to pay as I needed and could. But within the last month, the network seemed to go down the tubes. I'm constantly getting call failed, or when trying to call my husband on his phone, the "network down" message.

Just tonight, at work our power went out and when our power goes out our store phones do not work, and we relay on our cell phones to contact store and district managers. And of course, guess what happened, network was down. My coworker didn't have a phone on him, so we had to sit in the dark for about a half hour, until finally I "broke" the rules and sent him to find a pay phone which we all know that is getting harder and harder to do now.

Aside from that the service really isn't that bad, and the text package works well for me.

The only other problem I've had was the actual phone. Granted I did buy the cheapest phone you could buy, but in the last week or so, after making a call, or simply hitting a button, when the screen light would go out, the phone would make a pop noise, which freaks me out quite a bit, but that could just be the cheap phone.

I've had the Go Phone and it's predecessors for over 7.5 yrs. Never a dropped call, only had low/no bars once (driving through Illinois/Indiana on I-70), even have service off-road in Rocky Mountains and during other travel around the US, got a free phone every time the service changed (back and forth between AT&T and Cingular).

Yes, the price has gone up slightly during that time. When changing to the new provider and phone, I did have an issue with not being able to call the cell from home, but this was fixed within a day. My spouse has the same plan and has had the same experience.

The only downpoints are: when adding a recharge from the phone, I am charged for the 4-5 minutes it takes to make the transaction. When adding a recharge from another phone, I am asked to input the ph# a minumum of 4 times. Both are aggrevating, but at least I only go through it once every three months.

As for many of the other problems I am reading about in this forum, it sounds like they did not research or read the fine print before agreeing to the service. I can't see how that is the company's fault. You should pick the service or plan that meets your needs, not something that doesn't just so you can complain about it.

No service in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and limited coverage elsewhere, if you travel and need emergency Car phone try another
provider.

I have had mine for about a month and just went to make my first phone call. 15 seconds into an advertisement for AT&T services, I literally destroyed the phone. Never again. I realize it is cheap, but when I pay for a service, I don't expect my phone calls to be way-laid for ads. Sorry. Never again.

This pay per minutes service really sucks. The coverage map is not correct. I just made a loop trip from Mn. to Montana and back. No service before leaving Minnesota and no service the whole trip. Only got service back 200 miles from home. The coverage map shown is for pre-paid coverage and not pay as you go. I had coverage, two or more bars, just no service. Deceptive practices at best.

I had at&t pick your plan for 3 years now. I have to say this is the best thing to happen. im on the 69.99 plan. all the calls are clear. And in 3 years NOT ONE DROPPED CALL. Verizon sucks. AT&T is the way to go trust me with this one.

You've heard the expression being "nickle and dimed to death" that describes the problem with ATT Go Phone. They dime you to death. They claim they don't charge you for a call until you've connected at least for 30 seconds when, in fact, you're charged for every connection, busy, no answer and more importantly even calls less than thirty seconds. Customer service is terrible and that's why I've switched to Verizon for my four phones.

8/14/08: I once had Cingular (now AT&T) Go-Phone. I switched to T-Mobile Prepaid because AT&T charges customers when someone leave a voicemail message...WHEN THE PHONE IS TURNED OFF!!! I was on the $1 a day plan. It was to my understanding that customers are charged a $1.00 ONLY on days the phone is used. Well, I would check my balance and then I'd shut off my cell phone before I would go to sleep at night. The next day, I'd used my house phone to call my voicemail to find out if anyone called me and left me any messages while I was sleeping. After checking my messages, I'd check my balance again and come to find out that AT&T has charged me for the voice messages left while I was sleeping AND the $1 it charges on days you use your phone. AT&T also charges you when you check your voicemail from a LANDLINE phone!!! If it takes you 3 minutes to listen to your voice messages while using a landline phone, AT&T will charge your prepaid account for that call. Verizon and T-Mobile doesn't charge their customers when they check their voice messages using another phone. Verizon prepaid is too expensive so I went with T-Mobile. I refused to let AT&T nickel and dime me when the reason I've gotten a prepaid phone to begin with was to SAVE money.

All would be fine if they told people up front that they are getting a second (or third) rate level of service with their pre paid service. The call quality of their service is definitely worse than post paid. I have had both on the same phone by the way. Researching the options, if you are in the US then your best bet is probably Virgin mobile. They use the Sprint/Nextel network. Which is not good for anyone that strays far from the interstate system. I have AT&T only because it is a GSM network and I can use the phone unlocked in Europe when there. As for their customer service...You will have a hard time finding worse..

I've used the go-phone, same plan, for several years. I used to have coverage just about everywhere, which was great for traveling. HOWEVER, somewhere along the line, they removed the nationwide roaming capabilities that I have been paying for all this time. I was in rural Oregon for several days, only to find that I have no coverage, where I used to have coverage. Total rip off that they remove the service that made my decision to go with them to begin with, without even a notification. I had no ability to dail 911 in an emergency. I could have died on the rural roads right next to a cell tower simply because I did not have the service that I was promised I would have.

I'm an older man who doesn't talk on the phone just to be talking like everyone else seems to be. (annoying!) I only even use it about half the days of the month, so there's $15 for access. Then my average convo is maybe two minutes, just long enough to say yes, no, or F.U., depending.
At 10 cents a minute, there's maybe another $5 a month, so it's perfect. Also, the phone cost $28.00 at WalMart, I own it completely so they can't say I have to pay for it if I quit. For a cheap phone, it works really well. (Samsung SGH-A117 dualband.) It has a sim card so it could be used with another plan, I guess. This is great compared to Sprint monthly plan I had before, who wanted to charge me $400.00 to quit them! (I reported them to the BBB and finally got out of the plan for less ransom.) And that after 6 years with them. Sprint monthly sux, AT&T GoPhone rox. At least for me.

DONT BUY IT!!!
I purchased ATT Pay As You Go Unlimited Talk two months ago and I am not happy with it.
-First, the quality of the connection is usually non-optimal, with short outages of the voice.
-Second, ATT charges me 10c per minute, which is fine, but the second minute starts before the last minute ended. For example, I get charged 20c, when I have a call of only 48 seconds! It adds up and makes me think ATT is pathetic.
-Third, I have been called for a couple of days by the number 1234567891. I dont know if they sold my number to these marketing agents, which would be very rejectable, but anyway it costs me money even if I reject the call! So it costs me 10c because they call me (I dont pick up) and 1 dollar because I am using the network that day. So the only thing I can do now is turn off my phone and only turn it on if I want to use it. That makes me never do business with AT&T ever again!

I have a go phone and i like it alot, at&t is he best

I been using my AT&T Go Phone for a month now.I been very dissatisfied with my service.I've called & spoke to customer services & they're all on different pages.I recently purchased a $20 fast card from wal-mart.The cashier @ the AT&T connection ctr.stated I'd get unlimited nights and weekends, as well as, unlimited mobile-to-mobile.Before I left wal-mart I called 611.I asked the customer service associate about the same information given by the wal-mart employee.The plan sound like something I'd enjoy.Therefore,I let the associate on the phone top-up the $20 card.Afterward,he explained;$1 day taken off only when phone in use,unlimited mobile-to-mobile,10cents for other calls and unlimited nights and weekends start @ 9p.m until 6a.m.I made a mobile-to-mobile call before I left the store.The recorder came on and stated,I didn't have enough money to cover the call.I went back to the wal-mart employee that sold me the card WITH a different 611 associate on the phone.I told them I was given the wrong information & someone needed to correct it or refund my money back.NO SATIFACTION.I asked to speak to a 611 supervisor.Didn't get no good advice or service BUT had to SETTLE for the $20 to use for mobile-to-mobile.After I use this balance I'm going to discontinue my service.

I've had the Go Phone for about 6 weeks- and it's OK..the thing that is REALLY driving me nutz are the Unsolicited Ads to sell me Ringtones, which A T & T,in their COLOSSal nerve,
CHARGES me for! DOES ANYbody have any idea of how to make THIS STOP? PLEASE let me know if you do! Despite repeated
calls & E-mails I CANNOT seem to shut these Damn Messages oFF! HElp!
Thanks..
TMoran

I'm comparison testing. I have 3 cells with 3 prepaid services and no 2 yr contract phone experience.

I got the first phone, a New storebought Tracfone Nokia 2126 in 2006, added an AT&T/GoPhone Nokia 2610 at a discount price from the website in fall of 2007 (probably a used return or refurb since there was an activation problem, missing free topup card, SIM card was already in phone, and it had some energy saver display issues that made it seem like a refurb or return though it looked new). I added a Virgin Mobile Kyocera K127 MARBL I bought on eBay in 2008. The VM phone itself was new, but the package was open and the battery is a recharge hog so sure they bought it to swap a used for new battery then resold the phone. If the phone was bought on sale it was probably cheaper than buying a new battery off the website.

I'm comparing services to see which I want to stick with as an only phone. I may keep the Tracfone for backup or emergency calls/txting, along with a WAP browser enabled phone, because the phone is reliable as a talk/txt phone even if the prepaid amount for units is more than I pay for time on my GoPhone.

On the AT&T GoPhone I have the 10c/min, $1 a day prepaid plan, which works better than the 25c/min plan if I want to talk for more than a few minutes or make more than one call per day. The Tracfone is more per minute so I use it for very short calls. The GoPhone cost me $5 for about 50mins talk time plus $1 for the daily phone access fee, from CA state, to WA state.

I buy time in smaller amounts because I don't talk much so it costs me more for the Tracfone than the GoPhone per minute, although I can get better Tracfone deals if I buy with debit online, like double minutes or double the service extension time. At 1 unit per minute talk time cost, a 60 unit storebought Tracfone card for 19.99 is about 33c a min and about 16c if I get double minutes online.

It's an older simpler phone with no WAP browser, and the Tracfone WAP in my area was locked down to Tracfone's site at that time so I didn't buy one of their WAP enabled ones and bought the AT&T GoPhone instead to get on the mobile web, MEdia Net. Reading reviews was how I avoided Tracfone's locked down Motorola WAP enabled phone.

It helps when reading service reviews to know what phone the person is using, if it's new or a refurb, because service problems can sometimes be traced to the phone rather than the service.

It's notable that my new in package Tracfone has a battery that lasts a LONG time without recharge even if I leave the phone on for over 12 hours a day for over a week. Of course if I used it for yakking constantly instead of as a backup or emergency phone, it would probably run down faster.

My VM with the suspected used battery has to be recharged every few hours whether I use it or not. It beeps to say feed me so I turn it off unless I'm waiting for messages.

The AT&T GoPhone battery may have been used because it runs down much faster than the Tracfone's that was new, whether or not I'm doing MEdia Net, but it does last long enough to be practical, several days between recharges if in park mode, more often if I do much texting or browsing.

The GoPhone arrived by FedEx within a few days of ordering it by phone from the website info. When the GoPhone failed activation online I was able to activate over the phone (The new in box Tracfone activated online with a PIN activated topup card, and the eBay Virgin Marbl failed online activation but activated with a phone advisor, so a used not storebought phone might be the reason for internet activation failure). The GoPhone's free prepaid card was not in the box, in fact I didn't know it was supposed to have one. The phone advisor sent me the minutes by phone and was nice throughout the activation.

I ordered the phone for $40 from the website and the local store wanted over $100 for new in package. So if the phone had a few minor issues, it was probably because it was discounted to allow for previous use. For that price, it got me in so I can't complain.

The energy saver settings didn't seem to make any difference, the light will go out on the display if I'm not always using the keys. I consider that an annoyance because pressing a key to make the screen light again may cause data input I didn't want. BUT the phone worked well enough for the cheap price to stick with it to try out AT&T's service. I can get a new phone if I want to stick with them. Lately with more use the phone sometimes turns itself off but the Virgin phone has done that too.

The AT&T signal strength is strong in this hilly area south of Yosemite and north of Fresno CA. I usually get MEdia Net without error messages, and the only time I had a problem with it was when they were upgrading the service. That lasted a week or so and a lot of people were complaining at the AT&T website forums.

An annoyance is I couldn't email AT&T even if I logged into my account, I have to login twice to reach my GoPhone prepaid account sort of like being shuffled through the bums back door entry. The contact link sends me in a circle and won't open a dialogue text box, it says I have to login to my account to email them and when I login again to do that, I get the same message all over again. I have to call them to ask questions, but it's not hard to get a service advisor if I say customer service to the automated system when it asks what I want.

I activated with the 29.99 pick your plan autodebit, and added the $5 1mb data pack to that. I found I used MEdia Net more, so I reversed to pay as you go and topped up with $25/90 day by phone, added the 9.99 5mb data pack, and the 9.99 text 1000 messaging pack.

I can track usage of the packs by logging in to the website but haven't figured a way to do that by phone like I can my Virgin texting pack. I can get the AT&T usd balance by phone and I like the balance update they send after each call, txt, or MEdia Net session.

I pay the $1/day phone use charge ONLY if I talk. If I text or do MEdia Net, I get that deducted off of my packs but no $1 charge to use those, and if I didn't have a discount bundle, I'd just pay the 15c per message or 1c per kb fee.

I do have to pay the $1/day fee plus 10c/min to check voicemail and it was annoying because someone who wouldn't reveal their number left a voicemail and it was for someone else's delinquent account. It cost $1.10 to listen to and delete it.

My GoPhone Nokia has a counter I can reset that tells how much data transfer with each session and how much time per session, with totals for all sessions so that helps me manage use if I can't get online to check my data bundle balance.

MEdia Net was my first WAP browser experience and with the Nokia 2610 at 3G fireball speeds. I find it works pretty good, pages load fast, scroll fast, don't glitch very often, and texting or text entry while on the mobile web is FAST, WAY faster than for my Virgin Kyocera MARBL.

BUT though Yahoo mail reply-to worked fine on the GoPhone, for some reason in my hotmail box when I hit reply or try to put a contact in from the addy book, it puts the email addy and subject line from the last person I wrote to. I have to manually enter that data in hotmail. I tried dumping the cache and had to log in again, same problem. On the VM Marbl, Yahoo and MSN mobile reply to worked fine even if very slow text entry compared to the GoPhone.

I want a QWERTY keypad prepaid and T-Mobile's sidekick is twice the price of the Virgin Wildcard, AT&T doesn't offer a QWERTY device on their website for prepaid people.

Someone here said by adding your SIM card to any AT&T or unlocked GSM device it can be used as a prepaid. I didn't know that and am no techie so not sure about 'service provider legality' on doing that but if it's true I would stick with AT&T and drop the Virgin service since their signal at my house is WAY weaker than AT&T's. AT&T has super QWERTY contract devices that would be way cool with unlimited messaging and data prepaid packs.

One problem with the AT&T phone advisor help line, I tried to up my 1mb data pack to the 5mb pack and they said they'd charge me on my debit day the following month but they never did and never got the 5mb plan added. That was when I was doing Pick Your Plan autodebit.

With Pay as You Go I have to phone them to renew that or the txting pack, on or before expiration day or it doesn't refill. I like making the decision and not having to pay should I decide not to refill.

My next phone ideally would be a prepaid QWERTY, camphone, probably with AT&T if I can do the SIM card prepaid swap. Would love a prepaid Windows PDA pocket computer with endless storage for graphics, music, etc. If it works, THAT would be a 5star experience.

I thought the coverage area was excellent - no problems in Alaska. But, several "gotchas": The $.25 per minute rate applies to any part of a minute - that is, a call of 1 minute 1 second is billed $.50. Also, they refused to refund the charges for wrong incoming calls - the number I received must have been popular as I must have had 8 wrong numbers on my first $15 - pretty expensive mistakes, although the Happy Birthday SMS's for someone elses birthday were interesting. Lastly, for non-US residents, the web site doesn't work for non-US credit cards, although it seems like a programming problem and not an AT&T policy, as I can select my country for my billing address - it just keeps telling me to enter the correct state when I click OK.

I love this service!

My old service was with Sprint. I had a regular contract, not a prepaid account. It was horrible. My calls dropped constantly, the service was terrible, and it was an all around horrible experience. I coudln't even buy a new phone without adding an extra (unnecessary) line.

I got my gophone beacuse my husband went way over on our Sprint minutes, and my boyfriend has AT & T (don't ask!!). I'm totally thrilled with my service. Call quality is good, no more dropped calls (guess it WASN'T my fault, eh Sprint?) and it actually costs me LESS every month than my old plan.

Called customer service today and they were just fine, answered all my questions and no problems.

Only reason I didn't give five stars is because the website can be obnoxious to navigate, and because not all the features I thought I was getting (like rollover minutes) were available.

I have the GoPhone Unlimited Talk plan. It irks me that they charge you a minimum of $0.15 for any data message received. I get erroneous text messages from people I don't even know (wrong number?) and I get charged for them even if I don't open them. It's so irritating.

I will try contacting AT&T about having messaging turned off, as it is getting a bit out of hand. I got 4 erroneous messages from people I don't know today alone, costing me $0.60 of my prepaid time. I'm not certain if it incurs the 1$ daily use fee as well since I use my phone to make calls daily. If it does incur the fee, that would just be totally lame.

I originally paid for $25 and found out it expired in 90 days only after it expired, the salesperson did not tell me and it was not clear on the original card.
So I got the $100 card that says it's good for a year (on March 18 08) and tried to use the phone today, they said I would have had to add more money to the account after 90 days, the $100 just keeps the account "open." I said, why?? I had over $90 left, I rarely use the phone at all, taht's what I don't havea monthly plan.
They claim they are going to put the money back on the account but the Customer Service Rep i talked to said it was "too much " money for her to o herself, and she gave it over to a supervisor!
I like the freedom of the phone and generally have not had the coverage problems other people are talking about, but if the policy I was told about today (you have to put more money on a year contract after 90 days or you lose it all) that is just ridiculous.

HORRIBLE Customer Service. I use the Pick your Plan service and my payment is deducted from my checking account every month. Two months ago there was a "glitch" and they withdrew double the amount. I have spent hours and hours on the phone with customer service. They have openly admitted this is their fault but still 2 months later they have yet to refund me. I have been a loyal customre but am now changing to Tmobile. Of course I will get my refund first.

More bars? Lucky to get one in my house.
If you try to add an amount that would give you a balance over $500, it won't take it, period. Per AT&T, you have to use enough minutes to bring you balance down before you can add more!!!

I have had a go-phone for almost two years and it works just fine in my home state (Missouri) and to the east. My big complaint is "no service" in most of the west. Don't be fooled by their nationwide voice coverage map; check out the go-phone coverage. Entire states have no service, not even a roaming option.

Go phone is too expensive. Get a tracfone. Much better price and service.

I have a Go Phone from AT&T. I have bad credit due to an identity theft issue. I bought the phone for 140.00 at an AT&T dealer. They also charge a whopping 25 cents per minute, no matter what time you use it! Why can't they give free evening and weekend minutes? Well, to add insult to injury, I saw the same exact phone on sale at Rite Aid for 19.99!!! Their authorized dealer overcharged me and I am hopping mad. I hate AT&T for their greedy ways, and I am looking to switch as soon as possible. They have lost a customer for life.

GO Phone ROCKS! Its a little pricey but service is good where I live and travel too. On the $1/day plan. I'm a phone junky and on the hunt for a good deall all the time. Am using a mot c139 got for $10 at FYE. It talk and texts well and battery is FABULOUS! Kingsport, TN

I just signed up for AT&T's Go Phone pay-as-you-go service after hours of researching and reading reviews on this site and others. That being said, almost all of the reviews here were more or less worthless. There should be some type of format for reviewers so people who are looking to buy a phone can have quality advice when looking at the options, instead of the hodgepodge of opinions that clutter this site now. For instance, people could write about the coverage provided in the areas in which they live and travel instead of just saying that everything is great or awful. Or they could say why the Go Phone plan did or did not work for them instead of sending off a burst of anger at the company. Why have you had the experience you chose to write about? Could the problems have been avoided by educating yourself beforehand and looking before you leaped? How can what you're writing help the other people that use this site?

I have not had any experience with the service, except for a call home that went through fine right after I paid for the plan. However, I will be using the Go Phone as en emergency/absolutely necessary means of contact while traveling the West Coast in the coming months, so I bought the pay-as-you-go 25 cent flat rate plan for the denomination of $25. I was able to use a basic Motorola phone that was bought three years ago when I went to school in Boston - when the company was still under the Cingular name. I was in and out of the store in 10 minutes for $26.25.

Some things I observed in this process:

Tracfone and Net-10 seem to be as unreliable as they come. Check out the scores of negative feedbacks on their pages elsewhere in this site. My uncle also bought a Tracfone last year and was always struggling to get it to work properly.

T-Mobile has very good deals for prepaid phones. At lower denominations ($25) the price per minute is comparable to AT&T, but it drops to 10 cents a minute if you spend $100 to get the year's worth of service. However, the coverage seems to be very shoddy...make sure you check out the prepaid map on their website before buying.

Verizon by far seems to have the best coverage for prepaid phones, at least from the larger providers. Almost every part of the country is covered by their regular or roaming services. Yet, their prices are expensive when compared to others. The phones on their website begin at $60, there is an activation fee of up to $25-35 (which T-Mobile and AT&T do NOT charge), roaming charges at and ADDITIONAL 69 cents per minute, their only prepaid plan is $1 a day for every day of use plus 10 cents per minute, and the coverage does not extend at a full 90 days at many of the lower denominations.

I was enticed by Page Plus Cellular - they consistently had the highest customer ratings on this website with very few complaints. I did not choose them because (1) their website was lacking in a lot of information and required a credit card (with NO option for paypal), (2) there was no store I could go to in order to have the phone working and in hand (they are either non-existent or just unlisted on the website), (3) for some reason I didn't trust the fact that I would have to go to a convenience store to pick one up and there would be nobody available to help if it was needed, except over the phone.

My advice: look at all the plans available, be skeptical, check and recheck all of the coverage maps, know approximately how many minutes you will use, and do the math to compare the plans that look right for you, BEFORE buying a plan. You could save a significant amount of money by using a phone that you already own. IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, go into a store and speak with an actual person AFTER you have done some research, but BEFORE you buy a phone...then you will know what plans seem best, they could have special deals or promotions, advice or answers that weren't offered elsewhere, or at the very least they will make sure the phone actually works when you walk out of the store.

i bought a att gophone last week and love the service but have not been able to call my cell phone from my home phone

this is the worst thing ever!!! OMG dont do it!! and costumer service is the worst

I have had a similar problem. I bought my phone and pre paid plan in November. I am living overseas and wanted to have a phone when home in the states w/o paying a monthly fee. I used the minutes and even added $100 dollars to ensure the account was good for a year. They discontinued my service and the customer "no" service rep could not tell me why. All she could say was it expired and I had to buy a new sim card. I asked at least 3 times for her to help me and to even reactivate the number. She said I had to buy a new sim card. Thanks for the great advice...I am going to look at another service.

i have at&t for 8 months and they have srvice everywhere their cs is really good to but it is a ripp offf its so expensive one text message is 15 cents and it makes the people not talk first call 1 dollar than eevry min 10 centts so if you put 15 dolars after 1.5 week you are out of money again now im planning to buy a tracfone

I have been a customer of Cingular /AT&T for 8 years and yesterday I thought it might be a good idea to switch from my $39.99 a month plan to the "pick your plan" for $29.99. I thought since I wasn't using all of my 450 minutes anyway and never even came close to scratching the surface of my rollover minutes that I could at least save a few bucks by downgrading. However, this turned out to be the worst idea I've ever had. I went from being on a "month to month" contract and having 2,000+ rollover minutes to now having zero. Yesterday, the first day that I had the new service, I basically used 1/3 of my month's worth of minutes. On top of all this, I even went back to the store 2 hours after making the switch because of having second thoughts and they said there was nothing they could do because this was something I initiated. "I would have to wait 30 days until they/I could do anything". Then I would most likely have to pay an activation fee to switch back to the $39.99 and be locked into a 2 year contract, when I was on a month to month. I am completely frustrated with AT&T, but not surprised. Please do not consider what I did as a viable option, just bite the bullet and pay the extra $9-$10 bucks a month and please learn from my stupidity. AT&T is worthless!!!

I had a go-phone and had to keep paying to keep the service alive even though I was not using all of my purchased minutes. I neglected (forgot)to buy even more minutes to extend the service duration and they canceled my plan and kept well over $100.00 of my minute payments; that really was unfair! And, ATT actually has less bars in my region than MOST other carriers.

I have the go phone, and I THINK AT&T IS THE BEST..

I've had a GoPhone plan for 2 yrs now and I must say that based on my needs and the lack of an overbearing contract this was the right choice for me. AT&T offers a variety of phones that will work (any AT&T phone or unlocked GSM phone will work with their SIM cards). I've had a RAZR, a Palm Treo, and I currently use an iPhone. The data plans are an extra 20 for unlimited use and I pay 10 extra for 1000 text messages. I'm very satisfied with the coverage and they offer rollover for those like me who don't use the entire balance of minutes in a month. I could do without the annoying text messages after every call with my balance but I can live with it knowing I can cxl at any time and I don't have to pay a 200 cxl fee. It simply is what you make of it. Customer service has been very helpful the times I've had to call them for anything and the coverage area is extensive. None of the cell phone companies are perfect nor do they all work everywhere. I based my choice on the variety of phones available and since I can use any AT&T phone I want it was a no brainer... Thumbs up..

I've had a GoPhone for over a year, and am very happy with it. For someone who
only uses a cell phone occasionally, and
for brief conversations, it's perfect. You get the convenience of having a cell
phone without the hassle of an expensive
long-term contract. And you can buy any
AT&T phone and put your SIM card in it
and use it as a prepaid.

When the service was Cingular, I paid 5 cents per text. It jumped to 15 cents per text shortly after plan changed to ATT. 411 calls are outrageously priced! - The parts of the pay-as-you-go plan that really suck!

AT&T has great service.I have a go phone and i use it all the time.a doller charge is not to much at all.Other companys are just to high.I love go phone.Its alot better then paying a monthly bill.AT&T is the best!!!!!!

Pros: Excellent coverage; high data speeds (I live in a 3G area); you can activate a SIM and use any unlocked GSM cell phone; Pick Your Plan has an unlimited data option; customer service is polite.

Cons: Expensive for voice; data usage on Pay as You Go is insanely expensive; customer service is incompetent.

I have been using pre-paid for almost four years now, and trust me, no other company offers better service. Believe me, I know. My daughter has a TracPhone, and the cost per minute on her phone is too high!

Bottom line, this is NOT a service for:

a) undisciplined people;

b) people who use their phone a lot;

c) I-phone users (for the sake of some contributors here, I just won't go there!)

d) Ungrateful, bratty kids who all want exactly what their "friends" have (and who also have no idea what their "friend's" parents have to sacrifice in order to provide those "cool", overpriced gadgets for their kids).

Pre-paid is designed for people who only need basic cell phone service for emergencies, and light cell phone use. With that said, it is just absurd to me that folks expect the same service from a pre-paid provider that post-paid providers offer their customers.

My interest in contract service soured when I found out, to my dismay, and after going through a rough patch, those delinquent cell phone bills wound up on my credit report! I have since paid those bills off, but with three kids, I needed a cell phone. BADLY. Thank goodness for AT & T (Cingular), and the service that they provide to their customers. I don't think that $1 a day is too much to ask when calls are only 10 cents a minute afterward. When using other plans that charge 15 to 33 cents per minute, your calls can add up pretty quickly. If you must yack all day long to your friends, purchase the night and weekend minute package. Call them after nine pm and on the weekends, just as you would if you had a contract plan! Buy a text package if you must text. Adding these features eliminates the problem of using all of your refill minutes. And at $25 a month to recharge the packages, you still come out with a better deal, rather than paying $40 to $70 for contract plans, with minutes and features you may never use. I love my pre-paid phone, and I love the service even more. I don't even have to speak to a customer service representative. The automated service takes care of everything!

I was thinking of switching to T-Mobile (the company my husband is with, and yes, he has a contract) this month because they were giving away free Samsung phones to new customers if they signed up for contracts. But after lining up their rate plans with how much I actually use my phone (which is rarely), I changed my mind. I know that I made the right choice.

AT&T sucks all the way around, anyone interested in filing a class action law suit? Everyone's horror story is mine too. Let's do something to stop this. The services they provide are great, but customer service is horrible. Something really needs to be done. Remember what happened to MCI?

I'm seeing a lot of whining complaints and a few over the top kudos, but I don't really see a lot of level headed reviews of this service. For me, I add $25 every 3 months and rarely need to refill sooner. If you don't use the phone that often, the $.25 per minute flat rate is very reasonable. There is a monthly 911 fee, but those are the breaks. The reception is usually pretty good in the city and along highways, but frequently there's that annoying fraction of a second delay that makes for uncomfortable silences and awkward conversations. AT&T does polute your phone book with useless spam numbers that you cannot delete. Best deal: $25 good for 90 days at a time. I'd like to find a different phone that has better features and a higher quality of reception than the Pantech C-120 I'm currently using, but the empty "I LOVE THIS PHONE" and "AT&T IS THE EVIL" replies aren't really giving me much help. AT&T is what it is. Go phone is a no contract service, so if you don't like their service, stop using it, throw the phone away, and move on. Oh, and what kind of idiot pays $100 (the max) up front without testing to see if the service is right for them in the first place?!

AT&T SUCKS.....so does their NEW Customer SERVICE...ha! On Feb 23 I purchased a go phone with monthly access plan of $49.99. It took 7 days to receive the phone..they put insufficeint address on the box. Received the phone finally on the 29th. (No instructions or directions included in case the phone didnt work or I wanted to cancel my service.) plugged in charged and called on the 1st to activate. Phone stopped charging after first day. Called customer NON service and was switched around to 3 different offices finally got a rep who told me I would have to buy a new phone and then send back the one that didnt work. Maybe they would refund my money. Spoke with his supervisor who told me he was not going to argue with me. He would be crazy to send me a $189 dollar phone without charging me. Needless to say I ordered the phone so that I could use the minutes I have paid for. I reminded the supervisor to put my complete address on the invoice etc...Well guess what DHL called me yesterday because there was insufficient address on the box AGAIN!!! Here it is March 7 and I have been unable to access my prepaid minutes. In total I have spent 3 hours and 19 minutes on the phone mostly on hold and being transferred from one incompetent rep to another. I can't seem to find out how to discontinue my service that is automatically deducted from my checking account, monthly. Does anyone know the answer to that? I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN SUING THEM....AT&T SUCKS DO NOT DO BUSINESS HERE

this phone sucks. i rather have alltel. for a $1 a day i can have unlimted calls/text/night and weekends! this isnt even worth 1 star

I love it, I love the in calling. It is even free to some other company cells (net 10 and tracfone) when they are using the att network!

I order the 25-cent plan yesterday. Four representatives said the plan used AT&T total coverage including parter areas, not true. You can only use the AT&T system with AT&T's prepaid plans. All representatives misrepresented the service.

the worst customer service ever. their bill payment online service is down most of the time and don't even own up to and shut your phone off anyway. i spend half my time trying to pay the bill. when i do get someone on the phone they insist that it is my bank. i even went and got a gift card and they still insisted it was my bank. one rep admitted it was them because she had gotten more than one call stating they were having problem. i have a friend whose husband works there and he says they go down all the time and they don't even have at&t.

i bought my phone just a week a go and i didn't know how the go phone plan works, but now that i have read all of these comments i could finally tell how it works. so far it is a bad plan.i love my phone but bad service i,m disappointed.
now that i got the phone and the service,
i went to "shop for music" and they charged me $1.50 and i didn't even buy anything.

Total piece of JUNK. I lost minutes just carrying it, I think it accidentally turns on. I made 2 phone calls & it quit. I had just forked out another $25. for future calls. Customer service says, TOUGH LUCK. I think AT&T has a business selling the phones, & a 2nd business selling minutes that never get used because the junky phone quits. I DO NOT RECOMMEND this phone.

I'd give it 0 stars if it was an option. I purchased a GoPhone after Christmas for $6 at Best Buy. Intent is to use it when traveling and leave my pricey SmartPhone home. I went to activate it today, spent about 20 minutes going through their routine, couldn't get it to work. Got ahold of a live person and they said my SIM card was already used and cancelled. I told them I just took it out of packaging- how could it be used. The guy said "Well I've put it in twice and it's no good". I asked what I was supposed to do with this. All he could say was that my card was no good. I asked him if someone could have fraudulently used these # to make more cards- no answer. It was obvious to me that he didn't believe me. I asked to talk to a higher authority and he offered his supervisor, and said "they'll tell you the same thing that I just did". I asked if anyone else with some authority, and he said he could transfer me but I would have to wait approx 20 minutes. I hung up. GREAT! I have a phone w/a bad SIM card, lost 40 minutes of my time, and still have a brand new non-functioning phone. I am tempted to toss it.

AT&T phone service is one of the worst service in industry. They don't help customers and they just cover their ass. They paid telemarkerters to call you every days, trick you into their serive. you paid huge expense a lousy phone service.

I saw ATT GoPhone had a special on their website for a Nokia 2610 for $9.99.

I went ahead and ordered two phones, one for me and one for my wife. I got an order confirmation which said I would be getting my phones in 3 to 5 days. So far so good.

A week later, I had received nothing and the "check order status" page was displaying an error. So I called the phone on the page to get the status of my order. After 10 mins on hold and after talking to one agent I was put on hold again and transferred to the "web orders" representative. The web orders lady was completely clueless and was having some trouble giving me the status of my order. After checking various things and placing me on brief hold she came back and told me that my order had been canceled because they couldn't get my credit history.

I said, WTF!, I am purchasing a $9.99 PREPAID phone. Why the heck do they need to check my credit history. She was unable to give me a satisfactory answer and suggested I visit an ATT retail outlet.

This is the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Why didn't I get an email stating that my order had been canceled, and why is a credit check required when purchasing a stupid prepaid phone. Isn't that the point of buying prepaid? To avoid credit checks? Unbelievable.

I bought a cingular go-phone 1 & 1yr. ago. It was the best option for me at the time. I paid a dollar a day when I used the phone, the text messages were 10 cents apiece and calls were 10 cents per minute with free cingular mobile to mobile. When AT&T bought them out text messages went up to 15 cents apiece and it is now 20 cents per minute not 10. I went to my local store and was told I would have to upgrade to a pick your plan phone to not get charged like that anymore. It was just another way to get you to spend more money either on the plan or on a new phone. So I am done and am looking for something else.

Well I've now got a Go Phone, and I can't find any information on how to activate it. It's a used phone, but i still can't activate it even using the old number. Any advice since the people at Radio Shack know diddly-squat about it?

I gave AT&T the lowest rating not because the coverage was terrible, which is was, but I gave it that rating because after having the phone 5 days and seeing such poor coverage in the city I found out that they charge a $25 fee for returning the $29 phone during the 30 day 'free' trial period, all because I scratched off the secret number needed to activate the phone... How can you try a phone without activating it? Wish I could have chosen 0 stars.

I happen to have a go phone for a little over a month now and only had problems the first two days.Which was because there policy was new to me and I did not undestand. Ever since then,I have had no problems. The dollar a day works for me because it is way cheaper than what i was paying for monthly. I have unlimited incoming and i DO NOT call out. I put $4.99 amonth for text and that rounds me up to $34.99 a month. When with a contract I was paying almost twice a month. The key is to let it work for you by first deciding what you need. Then check out what the companies have to offer.

After 3 months of pre paid service, the new phone I bought (at&t product CG180) did not work. It was under warranty, so a replacement phone was sent to me (note: a re-furbished one , not a new one). BUT, I am out about one week of use waiting for the replacement to arrive. AT&T refused to adjust or credit or extend to accomodate. I am paying in advance for one month of service and because of thsir defective product I am only getting 3 weeks of service. I think that is wrong. There are plaety of choices for pre-paid, maybe it is better to go with a company that specializes in pre-paid, and not a biggie like at&t.

Immediate Scam. Although they advertise .25/minute rates, the truth is they will arbitrarily set the length of the call based on "disconnecting from the tower". So it is almost impossible to make a call less than one minute! SKIP THIS SERVICE!

This "Web Page Provider Information" needs to be updated: The following is WRONG:
"Earliest Minute Expiration: ..but those minutes expire after being unused for one year." That's Not true.
I've had a pre-paid Cingular/At&T for 16 years, and just switched to GoPhone. My old plan was a variable rate (but text was free); as GoPhone gives the option for a .10 cent or .25 cent plan. If you renew before expiration the "Unused Portion" is rolled over, regardless of which plan or the amount you recharged. BUT the max. limit you can carry in your account is $500.00 (anything over $500 you will loose !!!!!)
If you use your phone a lot, make more than 1 call a Day, the .10 cent option is best. If you don't use your phone a lot and don't talk long then the .25 option will save you a bundle.
(remember the .10 plan will cost right of the bat $1.10 while the .25 plan you start at .25 cents

I've lost almost 400 dollars not renewing on time, so now I renew the day before just to be safe.
And when you renew be sure you renew with GoPhone or MUST be AT&T "owned store" if a non-store screws up. You loose.

Another clue: - add 3 seconds that it takes for the switching unit to know that you've hung-up. So if you talked 60 seconds exactly (counting the rings before answer) you will be charged .20 or .50 cents depending on which plan. [Not .10 or .25 respectively]

For an 800, 888,877,866, & (855?) use a pay phone or use a landline. Your nuts throwing your money away using your cell when it could have been Free.

911 Emergency & 611 and *777# are Free, contrary to some posts here.

In final all Cell Phone carriers charge way too much. Highway robbery. And therefore it's only you that can control how much you like to talk. Some people I know spent $100 a month have nothing to show for it as they get older. Yuk.

If you've been with Cingular/AT&T as long as I have you will learn that even its Customer Service reps gives out wrong answers. So call back later and talk to another, and another rep if you have to and get a written manual to read the details.

Try out other services in your area until your happy. Complaining won't help a bit, but loosing customers will certainly hit their bottom line.
Good Luck.

Hi All ~ Just want to clear something up that I have seen mentioned over and over on this page. At&t and Cingular DO NOT EXIST !! These are just names that are used because the were or are in the publics vocabulary. SBC gobbled Cingular and then........gobbled At&t!! The reason they use the AT&T name is becuase of recognition........not because they are AT&T. The good ole boys running the show are here in San Antonio TEXAS in a bulding with SBC on it. So if you loved the company when it was Cingular and hate it now that it is AT&T and want to blame the latter, no no! Now that they have such a huge chunk of the market there is no reason to have a great product nor service, THEY WILL MAKE THE MONEY ANYWAYS!! Just want your furstration and anger to be directed in the right direction....LOL. It's all about the benjamins baby, and they could give a flip about customer satisfaction!!

I got my phone the other day and luv it so far, havent had any problems w/ it. the only bad thing about it is that the minutes go 2 fast.

GO PHONE is terrible in voice quality and dropped calls.
It does not have the same geographic coverage as the regular voice plans. I was stuck this weekend in OR where AT&T GO PHONE does NOT work but the regular AT&T voice plans work. When I bought AT&T GO PHONE I was not aware of this significant difference.

I purchased the go phone plan and found it very expensive as everything seems to be extra. I called to cancel the plan and was told without my secret number I couldn't .... I asked how to get it and she told me I had to go through the website. I cannot sign into the website with the secret number (pin) and customer service email will not take go phone correspondence. What the heck! Horrible customer service and terrible reception ... avoid at all cost.

Avoid at all costs. If one purchases a 365 day renewal, the 365 days begin from your date of purchase, not from your previous expiration date. I just lost 3 weeks of activation due to this abhorant practice. Even TracFone did this correctly.

When I tried to email AT&T about it, I wasn't allowed to, since I'm a GoPhone customer.

I cannot believe the BBB has not informed about AT&T. I purchased a GoPhone as a Xmas present on Dec. 14th. The phone was damaged and was returned on Dec. 26th. It is now Jan 17th a nd not only do I not have a replacement phone, i have not been credited back the money for the phone. It took the phone 12 days to go from Dallas to Ft. Worth. I could have driven there in 20 minutes. The damaged phone was received in the warehouse and was still active and waiting to process a payment on the 18th of Jan. Are you kidding me? At what point do these divisions sync up and realize that something is wrong somewhere? I will never use AT&T wireless ever again. Whether it is prepaid or plan. DON'T DO IT!Save yourself the heartache and get a Metro!

Well this thing is allright but umm, it just explains the big question i have 1/2 way. it says "blahblah 1.00 a day when using digital voice service, does it charge 1.00 that day if you just text msg or web browse? btw if you live in the sticks like me service is horrible =/

I really like being with at&t and like having the free night and weekend mins.

just got my phone in the mail. very cheap from website, excellent phone... pay as you go is okay, except it automatically costs 25 cents every time you dial even if its 1 second... but i dont use my phone hardly at all so it's great since i dont have a contract.

Go phone sucks really bad I get dropped calls all the time...ever since AT&T took over its been nothing but BAD service. I plan to switch to another service carrier!

The go phone works perfect for what I need and I am not tied to it by contract, thats probably the best thing about it. That and the sevice area is great!

Well, thank you all for your comments here. I had been looking at AT&T but getting very wary because of this odd $1/day fee. On my current account with T-mobil I get telemarketers and scammers calling at least once per day so if I port my number I am sure I'd continue to have the same problems, and have to pay $1/day. It seems like all of these cell phone companies are thieves, it's just a question of which ones are worst. We need to form a consumers organization which will sue these bastards until they start treating us well. I'd rather pay more money per minute than having all sorts of lies told to me, billing "mistakes" and complicated rules that are very hard to understand, and sometimes they change them at will and you won't even know.

What's funny is people depend on cellular service to save their life if they're lost or stranded..what a bad idea. With screwed up service and spotty coverage, you could die trying to get help because of some incompetence at the cell phone company. Don't depend on your cell phone, if backpacking, sailing, etc. make sure you have a reliable radio like GMRS or even HAM.

Just got the phone. Switched from US Cellular because of coverage reasons. ATT was the only one that works EVERYWHERE. But was on phone with customer service for ever. ATT home service SUCKS to.AS well as their Internet. No other choice so Ill just pay out the arse for the . UGG and I got a crappy phone when I WAS using a Motorola RAZR. Why pay &170 bucks for a phone I already have .I just wont work on ATT. UGGGG

I've had there contract phones and you get more minutes for less money but.If your like me and barely use your phone it's only for emergency's or if someone else needs to use a phone for a second.What sense does it make to put yourself in a contract.

I have had AT&T/Cingular Pay As You Go for about 2 years now, the .10/min $1.00/day plan. Majority of the time things work well with the service. But ever once in a while when I call into my Voicemail from a LAN Line money comes off my phone like I was on an active call, sometimes when someone else calls and I don't pick up and it goes to voicemail or if I hit ignore and send it to voicemail- I get charged as if I answered the phone and had a conversation. Usually when I call in to let them know what's going on, I get refunded back my money, and Im always told they would open up a ticket and someone from the Tech Dept would get back to me in a couple of days. Well no one has ever gotten back to me and I'm used to their lack of follow up. Within the last 2 days, this problem started happening again, where I'm being charged for calls going to voicemail. Only this time when I called in, they're telling me they are justified in charging me airtime because when I hit ignore I acknowledged I have a call, so where's the airtime usage there I asked? And what about when I don't hit ignore and the call goes to voicemail by itslef, why am I still being charged then? Well they answered that by telling me they could charge for the phone ringing more than 30 seconds. I know for a fact I had my phone set up to go to voicemail after 20 seconds. When I told the person that, their response was, well I don't have that information in front of me. Is anyone else having this problem? It seems they are charging people just for hitting ignore on their cell phones and think they are justified in doing so, but where's the airtime usage? I was on the phone with them for about an hour, spoke to three different people, two of them being supervisors, and all of them telling me the same BS story. In the end I did get my money credited back, but a took a lot of arguing and this is a problem that happens every now and then. So I'm sure I'll be on the phone with them about this in the future. Are there any lawyers out there that can give their opinion in terms of some sort of class action lawsuit? Users out there, are you experienceing the similar problems with AT&T/Cingular?

I have the $69.99 plan, and was being deducted from my credit card, and I changed my credit card info, but I still had $75 worth of time on my phone and they disconnected my phone, because they could charge my cc again. I think thats a rip off and lost my $75 worth of time that I had left. That really sucks for them to take or rip you off for your money just like that, because they couldnt charge my cc again. And this is without a contract!!!!!!!!!!!

As a Employee of a AT&T customer service I find it disturbing reading these posts. I know myself from past experiances MOST the Customer service reps are well trained as well very kind and helpfull. However when we have to deal with people daily who just wish to scam the system, dont know how to use there phones and just generaly silly things (like subscribing to things liek joke a day and then complaining you get the texts).. as a customer rep these things tend to make it harder to deal with the real issues. It is hard to filter out the scammers from the legit complaints. as for the plans GO phone DO offer several plans.. from Pay as you go to a pick your plan. both have great advantages of NO CONTRACTS.. NO CREDIT CHECKS and most times phones are basicaly free or dirt cheap. I dont know why people would start complaining AFTER they buy the product. If people actually took the time to educate themself on things they buy and wish to use perhaps then the world will be a nicer place....

I LIKE ATT. I HAVE A GO PHONE AND WORKS FLAWLESS. C/S IS SOMETHING TO BE ADMIRED BUT WITH ALL THE OUTSOURCING OH WELL. HAD A VERIZON PLAN MAN DO THEY STICK IT TO YOU. NO WAY WILL I EVER GO BACK TO THEM I GIVE ATT THUMBS UP

i like the phone that i got the pantech c120 but the rates are awful. 25 cents a min. plus a $1 access fee uf you use the 10 cents min. they are a rip off i went to net10 and got a phone for 10 cents a min which is not ripping me off i wouldnt reccommend it

I hate gophone. It has got to be the worst thing on planet earth to even consider.

I'd rather not have a cell phone than pay this crap any longer.

Greg..
Yes please dont waste your time with a go phone, and I did read that in the terms and conditions but when I asked them about that they said thats how your mins will come off depending on when you call (n&w would come off n&w min.and so on) Depending on which plan you buy will determine ur unlimited mobile to mobile so I chose the plan the offered the unlimited and Im not getting it.....I actually have the At&t rep involved from the store I bought it from and he said the same thing, that I should not be losing my mins for an at&t call, he said he has worked for this company for 8 years and has never heard off that!! So hopefully something will get worked out....

Amy -
It is pretty crappy that they don't give you unlimited mobile-mobile at night or weekends. But it does say so in the Terms & Conditions, you just have to read carefully. In the section called "Charges" it says "Minutes will be depleted according to usage in the following order: Night and Weekend Minutes, Mobile to Mobile Minutes and Anytime Minutes."
I came here to find out if I should buy a Go Phone. Thanks to everyones comments I now know not to even think about it.

Well first of all let me start by saying I wish they had something less then a 1 star rating because At&t don't even deserve that!!! I purchased this phone last night 12/11/07, when I got home and activated it I chose to go with the pick your plan deal instead of the pay as you go plan for a few reasons. I chose the $49.99 plan that offered 400 anytime mins. 3000 night and weekend mins. and UNLIMITED mobile to mobile (another at&t phone) seemed perfect since my husband has an At&t phone, I chose this phone because he has had this service for 2 years and never a bit of trouble, but this is when it was with cingular, NOT At&t.... Anyway came home got the phone setup, picked my plan and started calling my husbands At&t phone to make sure everything was working correctly, why not, hes At&t it will be free no mins lost because I have UNLIMITED mobile to mobile....... After I called his phone and found out mine was working i went and dialed *777# to check my mins and to my shock it was taking away from my night and weekend mins everytime I called his phone!! After trying to fiqure this out on my own, I called the At&t customer care, I asked the lady why am I losing mins for a mobile to mobile call.. Her response "Mam, you should'nt be losing mins for these calls, let me check" she comes back on the phone and tells me that I am not being charged, "yes, mam I am it is taking mins off of my phone!!" after 10 mins with this woman and her getting RUDE, I said a few choice words and hung up! After that I was still not happy and kept calling trying to fiqure out what was going on, AFTER talking to SEVEN At&t c.care employees and EVERY single one of them telling me "No mam you should not be getting charged for these, thats why it is unlimited mobile to mobile!" I was MAD!! I called again on 12/12/07 and again same answer, I asked to speak with a manager and this is what he said " mam after 9pm your unlimited is not unlimted" WHAT???? How do you advertise unlimited mobile to mobile? IT's NOT!!! Acted like it was my fault I didnt know this and I can tell you know, I read every book every pamplet and there terms and conditions on there website and NO WHERE does it say after 9 pm at night you are no longer unlimted ( unless you want to jump up to the $70 plan so u can have unlimted night and weekends, thats the only plan that really offers unlimted )
"How can this be my fault sir, when EVERY At&t employee I talked do, (The ones that are there to help when you have trouble) don't even know this!!!!"
Sorry mam is there anything else!!! Thats it!!!
C.Care sucks, very rude, they have know idea what is going! I guarantee you that if you would ask four different at&t c.care reps the same question you would get 4 different answers Not even closey related to each other! And they rate these people now the No. 1 wireless service provider in the USA. I BEG TO DIFFER!! save you money and your time wasted on the phone and go somewhere else!

I was shocked to learn on this week that the 49.99 rate plan no longer has free nights and weekends. I do not like the new AT&T because of all the rate changes.I will be switching to Verizon in 08

Pretty good phone. But service is terrible.

AT&T is the worst cingular was bad before the merger, they billing is horrible, i had both regular services and pay as you go and i had to leave them all together, people go somewhere else leave AT&T they rip you off big time. you don't need them.

Got mine about a month ago and it has worked perfectly i've read alot of reviewa in consumer reports about att and they've given the other three big names like, Alltel, Verizon and t-mobile pretty good stars , but i think it all just depends on what area you live in..I'm thinking of using this phone as my regular phone for my home it has great battery life i charge it about every 8-10 days with other phones like CDMA i usually charge those about every 4 days ..so from now on i'm sticking with go phone pay as you go

Can't beat this deal,1 dollar charge only the day you use your phone you can make or receive unlimited anytime calls to other att or cingular customers,and for all other calls 10cents per minute US and MEX.If most of your friends,coworkers and family have att or cingular service as are mine stop looking around,this is the best deal for your dollar.

Does anyone know if, on the 0.10c prepaid plan, if you call another ATT phone, does the $1.00 daily fee get charged? It says unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile, but the $1 charge would suck!

since at&t has taken over cingular I can be sure of being disconnected three times while talking to heart patients over the phone, this is not a good thing, I have had to get a home phone as well so I dont get disconnected and what good is a cell phone if you cant talk on it,,,,

I have to agree with many of the reviews here in some aspects.
I have the pay as you go phone and haven't had too many problems with coverage areas or the phone itself. I just don't agree that we need to be charged as much as ATT is now charging for texts or for the daily fee of 1.00 if the phone isn't used.
If they would drop those charges I would be very pleased with the service.

I bought my phone a little while ago. The service is ok, customer service can be ok... depends. The whole time i've had it, they've never managed to be able to activate my GPRS. Oh well, I'll soon be gone.

I love da repaid phone but we cant get know of free minutes unless u spend dis much or unless u have an cridit card

The coverage area seems to be one of the
biggest complaints. You can get to
customer service if you talk to the right people. I had a phone for over a yr. & it was stolen. Insurance came in handy.

I like the service plans you have. The
only promblem is the coverage area.
I thought ATT would improve that!!

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Customer service is nonexistent. They drop your service when you've paid in a timely fashion; fail to debit your checking account altogether and call you a deadbeat. When you call a customer rep, wait times are often 30 minutes or more. ANY other service is better.

forget this. go with tmobile. prepaid 1000 mins for $100, good for up to one year. no daily fees, etc. best deal, by far, trust me, i've checked everywhere.

Customer service sux now it seems like they want to suck the money right out of my wallet.I knew att would mess everything up

ATT service is TERRIBLE i live in a big town and yet cant get ANY service hardly anywhere, also they changed their rates, a couple weeks after i got my phone, it's TERRIBLE! I'm switching!!!!!!!!

I like it but really hate getting the minutes for it.

Cingualr prepaid was the bomb, but now that att took over they are on that bull crap thy try to charge you for ever thang it don't make no since for text messaging to cost .15 cents when .5 cents a message was just fine and they will take your dollar even if you don't use your phone!

Beware, AT&T quietly takes away much of their normal National coverage on their pre-paid plans.Look at the map provided for coverage in the US.

if you are using an unlocked or unbranded phone, cingular is begining to block them off of their network (they know) and will eliminate part of your service (i could not receive incoming calls).

now i am switching to T-mobile. sucks because i loved cingular, but now they completely suck

I'm providing a review to let the people know that thier reviews helped me from making a bigger mistake than going with Tracfone (awful). I've decided to pass on Gophone & ATT as well. Thanks

I started with Cingular back in 2000. My phone was set up by Cingular Office of the President for me to have for emergency use. I had a KH668 phone. It was sooo old it said SWBELL when I turned it on.Everytime my phone screwed up. I called CServ to be told I had no phone. I go to local Cingular stores, "oh your phone is broke you need a new one($50+)". I didn't tell the rep I had 10 more phones at home. I called the person that set up my phone--all it needed was reprogrammed..They gave me codes and just for experiment in future everytime I had problem w/phone I would go to a different Cingular store--SORRY SIR YOUR PHONE IS BROKEN($70+ for new phone). I would reenter codes and same old SWBELLphone worked fine with CINGULAR for 6 yrs.
I keep my current phone shut off unless calling out and I have a little notebook ledger of my phone use but I am always getting charged for text messages--I don't even access and charged for days($1)/calls(.10) I don't make.
I get told I cant use any of my old phones that new phones have to be purchased. I was totally happy w/setup I had before.
.35day/.10night per minute.Free incoming
Not a lot to keep track of, now I have a new set of charges to figure out since AT&T took over. I have incurred about15 of the $1.00/day charges along w/a bunch of $.10chgs for days I never used my phone. Since AT&T crawled into bed w/Cingular I never can get help from customer service. I have 16 text messages on my phone. No one has my cell number--how can they text message me?? Why should I incur charges for 17incoming calls or 16text messages when I don't even know who they are from.

I originally went prepaid cellular back when it was Bellsouth. They changed from requiring a $20 min. refresh to the account every 180 days to every 90 days, effectively doubling the price. It was not a deal breaker, so I stayed with them. Whey they became Cingular I stayed with them and was satisfied with the service. When I had to buy new phones due to GSM changeover, I stayed with Cingular because of that satisfaction. Now, a year later, AT&T has turned me into an increasingly dissatified customer. Despite what the person above says about it being the nature of the GSM system to charge you from the time you "send", I was NEVER charged for an unanswered (incompleted) call by Cingular. What's more,the minutes that my phone displays should be tied directly to the per-minute charge, but apparently AT&T sees it differently. I made a call last night (I'm on the flat rate $0.25/min) that lasted 43 seconds. Should be 25 cents, right? Not according to AT&T, it was one minute and eleven seconds, therefore I was charged for two minutes. This is not surprising, AT&T has quietly and subversively changing rates without telling the customer on prepaid long distance calling cards. You may think the 1000 min. card you just bought will render 1000 min. of call time, but if the call begins and ends within the same state (e.g. Florida), you've not got only a 200 min. card because they're going to charge you 5 units (15 cents) for the in-state call that would cost you 1 unit (3 cents) if it crossed state lines. Originally they said the FCC required this, but the FCC says they don't regulate in-state calls. Then the story changed and they said the Public Service Commission required it, but the PSC says they don't regulate in-state calls either. So, I've found an alternative prepaid long distance card that charges me what it says on the card, 3 cents for in-state or out of state calls. Now I need to start looking for another prepaid cell service. Even the name "AT&T" is bogus and has no relation to the original American Telephone & Telegraph. It's owned by a conglomerate whose acronym most people wouldn't recognize. Deception appears to be their way of doing business.

i luv this fone and i had a prepaid fone for 6 years and it is still workin good..........

I had a package with AT&T 450 min/rollover and paid around 65 a month. Did not like it since I did not use the cell a lot. Called to cancel and they ofered a pay as you go plan that I have not seen, herad or read about. They said I would be charged $15 a month for 60 min that will rollover, plus taxes ofcourse. I have not received my first bill yet, but don't expect to pay more than $20. If I use the 60 min a month I am free to purchase more minutes, or wait until other month comes for a new 60 min. Has anyone been given this option, and if so how is it been going?
Thanks,
Taylor, FL

i bought this grate phone from wallmart and one mouth later.sorry 3weeks after i started usein this phone.tex mes were 5 cents then i went 2 work sent my sons mother a texed and was told that i was gona b chared 15 cents because no reson so att tells me they cent out tex in aug of 07 now i bought my phone in oct of 07 so how did i get my tex in aug so they tell me 2bring it back 2 wallmatr 4refund i still have a week to do this wallmart say no yuo have 15days to do this return so att blows dont buy thir crap

ATTN: DAVE...
Regarding your thoughts on class action lawsuit; I've been checking into that, I know TONS of people that will join. I feel badly for these people that think they have a good deal, they'll find out the hard way, & AT&T will be laughing all the way to the bank. Question: If you agree that they suck (& we know they DO suck, like a Dyson vacuum cleaner!) why did you give them a rating of 4 stars?

I HATE AT&T!!! Here's why: They are a HUGE corporate conglomeration that no one can challenge & win. They have a monopoly on landlines, & I predict they will own every nook & cranny of this country within 10 years. The United States of AT&T.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw AT&T in the top 3 rated providers! They have been the bane of my existence ever since they took over Cingular. I had no problems with Cingular, and nothing BUT problems with AT&T! They ripped me off for 5 mos. of service I never received on my DSL, told me they would only refund ONE month b/c that's "their policy." So I told them I wouldn't pay for the cell phone they also had control of, (after I made a $70 payment!) & they promptly turned it off! I'm going to try T-mobile prepaid phone, it has very good reviews. Talk to other people before you go with AT&T... everyone I know has had ridiculous problems with them (they sold my friend's long distance contract to MCI, & never TOLD her! She found out when she got her bill at $0.90/minute!) We have an ongoing hatred for AT&T where I work; you can't EVER get through to a c/s rep, when you finally do, they don't know anything, and are rude. They have screwed up our account beyond belief, & have driven everyone that has to deal with them, insane. Seriously. I'm trying to spread the word: Beware of AT&T. They do whatever they want, & you will be at their mercy, of which they have none.

I love this fone but i hate how it has to take a dollar away everyday!!!

I cannot get my GoPhone activated. Bought it today - went online tonight but activation failed. Called the automated service number - activation failed again. System said it was transferring me to an "activation specialist" - but surprise! - that office was closed. Glad I wasn't stupid enough to go ahead and buy extra minutes - not sure now whether the service will work or not. Will give it one more try tomorrow - if no success then the GoPhone goes in the trash and I will try someone else.

I JUST GOT MY GOPHONE AS U GO... I PICKED THE PLAN WITH UNLIMITED TALK TIME... THERE WAS ALREADY 10 DOLLARS FOR FREE WHEN I CALLED TO ACTIVATE THE PHONE... THAT LASTED ME UP TO 2 HOURS OF TALK TIME... I WANT TO GET THE 25 CARD FOR 14.99 THE ONLY THING THAT I DONT LIKE IS WHEN BUYING UR CARD IT DOESNT TELL U HOW MANY MINS U ARE BUYING??? Y IS THAT?

i love my go phone because i dont have to pay a mothly contracti love it hope everyonelse loves it to -_- <3

good service but sometimes i can send a text message and somtimes i can't call c/s and text support no help. i have to text the person then dail 611 and listen to that and then the text will go through.

Just started having problems with my Go Phone--tried to retrieve messages as usual--dialed 1 and got recored message that "this number cannot be reached as dialed, etc." Then tried 611 for customer service--same recording. Then tried retrieving messages via landline and went through prompts BUT automated system said my passcode was invalid! Went to AT&T website---my account opened up when I typed in my 4-digit passcode. Go Phone--go figure! Anyone else have these problems on 10/17/07?problems. No way to find out if anyone called and left a message--how frustrating. Any tips out there?

I don't have a problem with the pick your plan service. What I would like to know is why ATT somehow forgets to take my automatic monthly payment when I have a decent amount of rollover waiting. They don't have a problem taking the auto payment when I have $1.10 left for the month, but if I've got $22 something, forget it... Airtime expires and of course when you go on to pay manually, it pretends you never set up a payment option. This does not occur on any kind of schedule, like the 6th month, or year of service, just when I have decent rollover to pass on.

Working for ATT gophone, i can answer a few of these complaints. I'm not for ATT or against it, i'm just trying to clear a few things up.

@#2 Barbara
The 911 tax has nothing to do with a phone company- its a state tax. oh, there is no 100 "package"- you added $100 to your Payg account and have 365 days until they expire
$25 expires in 90 days

@ Prasanna
You are charged for the ringtime on out going calls because of the nature of the GSM system. Basically, when you dial a number it is going through a huge complex network of computers and towers and systems to get to the other end. You have to be charged for that, your still using a service. HOw ever you are not charged when someone is calling you. I know thats kind of a crappy answer, but its almost 5am, if you come back to this page ever and would like to know more i can explane it in greater detail :)

@Dorie-
not getting good service when people around you are? try turning your phone off and on more often. if that doesn't fix, call ATT

@neel
same thing as above

@Jus Poor
Your not charged the $1 usage fee on the 10cent/min if someone calls you and it goes to voice mail. that also has a bit to do with the GSM network

if anyone reads this and has questions i'll check through here once a week... and not all CSR are bad, most actually want to help

Cingular was good to great in many ways though as things started to change it has become lousy Service ares w/o good cust. service is bad.
Pros-If you want to have a service that covers a broad area ok. As Cingular I came to like them fairly well though not now.
Cons-areas came in when not expected and others expected did not. Plans appear to be appealing though in the long run service is the most important. They have become low and inconsiderate overall only use if you have no viable option.I have tried many. Beware former user...

AT&T is thebest if you didn't know you do now so when you get time just spread the word.

got my pre-pay go phone 3 weeks ago and already have used up $50. was supposed to be set up for .10/min , but ended up at .25/min. but even worse are the dead spots w/ no coverage. one dead area is 45 miles long. these peaple sell you a communication device on which you are unable to commicate. i was told that plan phone don't have this problem, but pre-pay does not use the same towers. if i knew this before i bought it, i would have used another carrier. dealing with att has turned out to be one big mistake. after reading the reviews, maybe there is grounds for a class action lawsuit. if you agree leave a review saying so

I've had cingluar now Att go phone since march 2005 n before that ATT regular plan phone. Since the ATT takeover u can no longer use the go phone until your money on the phone runs to zero. you must submit a payment at least by 2 days after your payment was due. Or they turn ur phone off regardless if u have funds left on ur phone. Then when u do submit payment they wipe all the funds or rollover money u had on the phone clean. TO zero. cingular did not do this.

I think they would have a pretty good service if they dropped the $1 charge a day 4 using your phone,if someone calls you they hit you for a $1,Wife has Virgin Mobile & it's far,far better and cheaper, so I will change !

AT&T had the absolutely worst reputation of any wireless service, then they merged changed their name to become cingular... then surprise! guess who's back from hiding.... "the new At&t"....I feel sorry for those using their crap service....horrible I recommend T-mobile #1 and Verizon #2

I am in Memphis..i have taken 'pick your plan'. here there is no signal. Hw can At&T be the top wireless provider?

have had ATT prepaid for about a year w/old Nokia phone. Everything was great until I had to renew minutes (by my cell phone) and used the 800# I THOUGHT was to purchase mins. No one told me, nor did I get info that dialing 611 is free. Bottom line, it cost me $4.50 and 26 minutes on hold to get a $25.00 recharge on my service. I have since spent 1 1/2 hours on eternal hold w/ATT "customer service" an oxymoron. After talking to 10 CSRs I finally got a helpful CSR who said she is going to do a courtesy refund. It's not the $4.50 that matters, it's just the principle of paying money to buy minutes - ATT needs to upgrad their customer service, reduce the loops you go thru to even GET to a LIVE PERSON, and make their services customer oriented. Are they getting too big for their britches? didn't have these problems when it was Cingular

I have had a cingular go phone for more than 9 years and now that AT&T has taken over it is not as good or the same.
I just got a message yesterday that the rate is going to 15c a min. Why/ I think
it is wrong to raise rates. As big as AT&T is they do not have to raise the rates. It is already to high. I am really disappointed and will most likely change companies.
Sad

the reception is good. the only thing i hate about the Go Phone is the minute charges.

If I had known what problems with customer service I'd encounter before purchasing the $100 prepaid account I would have DEFINITELY chosen a Trac Phone. The representatives don't know what they're doing and it takes a lottery of prompts and incompetent people to finally find a person who can even "access" my account. As soon as I use up the time I'll definitely look elsewhere --- ATT is a total ripoff.

They even charge you for the ringing time for outgoing calls!!! imagine if the person at the other end was away for a hour you will be paying a lot just for trying to contact them .. and all the utility you get is hearing the ringing tone..
Its unethical to do something like that since ringing is not a service. customers should be charged only for the service they get. when I talked this to customer service they were speachless

I bought my phone at the end of july, and i am pretty satisfied with it. It has basically everything on it. This phone is the nokia 6102i prepaid phone. The only thing I do not like about it is that it doesn`t have a lot of memory or storage space for games, ringtones, etc. for example, say you dont have any ringtones or pictures saved on it. If you put about 3 or 4 ringtones (125kbs. each) on it, you could only hold about 9 pictures on it whereas if you had over 35 pictures on it, you could have only 1 ringtone on it. Its a good phone, it just has only about 1.5 megabytes of storage space on it, which really sucks. Another thing is that this phone has a radio on it. But you cant use the radio feature on this phone BECAUSE it is a prepaid phone. And that is very idiotic because why put a radio on it if you cant use it. Though if you buy this phone with a contract or plan, you can use the radio. However there are much better plan phones you can buy. Overall, my service is pretty good, and I have not had any problems with anything so far. I MILDLY recommend this phone and MILDLY recommend AT&T prepaid gophones.

CSR from which I bought my phones placed me on the wrong plan initially. Had to return to office to have minutes refunded. Often I am charged double for short calls.

I bought my phone when cingular had it.
One year prepaid. Now I do not get service
when other people with cell phones get
good service. I have no bars in same areas.

I switched from a contract phone to the gophone as I was only using 250 minutes a month and paying for 500. My service would not offer any other plan for less money and other contracts did not have a lesser plan that really accomodated my usage.
MY COMPLAINTS with gophone: ATT seems to be taking more money for my calls. EXAMPLE: I made a call last night to my son no longer than 3 minutes, but I was charged $.60 cents. I've noticed this on several calls. My other complaint is that I should get the same areas as anyone who has ATT. I was travelling with my sister and she had service and I had no bars. ATT is making money off me and therefore I should be able to get usage from the towers along the way if another ATT users can get them.
I have dealt with customer service once (english speaking)and have no complaints. I would advise users to watch that minutes bought are applied as that is why I had to call.
My service in the areas I have bars, which is very limited, is great.

I HATE CINUGLAR PAY AS YOU GO!!!...they messed up the wireing on my phone and didnt do any thing bout it!!!

WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE!

ATT Go phone: don't do it if you have an iphone. They will give you continual pop ups on your iphone every 3 seconds. Also, the customer service is the worst!

Worst Customer service experience ever.
I originally set up a prepaid plan on June 30 with my new iphone. I set up an ATT plan on July 20 after being convinced I could sign a contract and the phone was solid.
I had to get a new phone number to set up my new phone but the ATT rep told me I would not have to worry about the old phone/ basically it would be cancelled and the prepaid amount would dissolve. This is where it get's ugly. ATT billed me for the old phone I had not been using on July 31. Not cool. Today I called customer care to resolve the issue and to learn that I was misinformed, I actually had to call to cancel my go phone plan and interesingly it seems like they are 2 different companies. After being on the phone for 55 min. and talking with over 3 reps. I ended up in the payment center with a rep named Karen. Absolutely rude, unhelpful, and definetely the worst customer service experience. The icing on the cake was as I asked for her supervisors name, she would not give me that info and hung up on me in the middl