As most of you know, I have an iPhone and love it. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the best relationship with AT&T.

 

In an effort to save money, My fiancee and I went to a lower rate plan (450 minute family plan and limited text messages). The phone rep for AT&T said that based on our monthly usage, that would be fine for us. I don’t know what they were looking at, because we went over on minutes the first month.

 

A second call, and the phone rep insisted that I take the unlimited voice plan and it would only be $10 more than what we were paying. Because I was rushed and didn’t get to process what was being said, I agreed. It was $60 more, once the first bill showed up.

 

Another call, and this rep talked me into an 1100 minute plan, as we could pick five numbers to call for free. It reduced the bill, but not by much. This is where I drew the line.

 

When I got my iPhone, thanks to a letter from my doctor, I qualified for a disability plan: Text and Data only for $50 a month, all unlimited. I decided to go back to this, then drop my girlfriend’s plan down to 450 minutes and unlimited texts (she only uses ~30 minutes a month, but texts a lot). Since the regular phone reps cannot handle disability plans, they had to send it off to another department which would back-date it– I wouldn’t get a quote about the price due to that. The next two months, they screwed up the bill, so I had no idea what the charge was.

 

During this time, I tried a few things out for discounted phone service. I only call three people, for the most part. All three are long distance.

  • A home phone with long distance would have been $45 a month, so that was out.
  • I tried Skype, which worked out to $8.99 a month. The price was right, but the service was extremely spotty.
  • I was recently turned on to TTY service, so I’ve been using that to call businesses and keep my stress levels down (it works WONDERFULLY!). It’s just too impersonal for the three people I actually want to call.
  • I went back to AT&T to price my options and was talked into a Go Phone ($2 for unlimited use each day it’s used). It worked out to about $15 a month.

 

Yesterday, I received a correct bill from AT&T, finally. By switching to a disability plan, or cell phone bills went down a grand total of $10 a month. I was actually spending $5 more a month for a plan with no voice service, and a cheap-ass cell phone that charged me for a day if someone would let the voicemail pick up! Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off.

 

After trying to call AT&T’s call center with TTY service, I was disconnected six times (by AT&T). I guess they didn’t want their average call time to go up from it. Not exactly disability friendly, AT&T. I gave up on the call center, and went to one of their local stores. The person there was able to get us on a family plan with shared unlimited texts (saving $10 a month), and a 700 minute plan with free mobile-to-mobile calls ($10 more a month), breaking even. Why couldn’t this be done originally?!

 

In the end, while AT&T may have a disability plan that’s great for someone who’s on a plan by themselves, it’s an absolute joke for those in a family. It saves no money, in the end, and feels like a spit in the face from a major corporation.