New Phone

Well it is not really new anymore, we’ve had it for over a month, I’ve just never got around to writing about it, ’til now.

We’ve had a pay as you go cell phone from AT&T for some time now (it was still Cingular when we got it.) While we were genuinely happy with it, it was quite small and for those of us who grew up when phones had dials, phone numbers that started with words for the interchange and big handsets we never got used to not having the mouthpiece anywhere near our mouths.

Plus, whenever it would get dumped into Donna?s purse when on, it would come out with a display full of random numbers and we were afraid it might accidentally call someone in Kenya. The keys would get pressed from the phone being jumbled around inside there. It did have a key lock function and we tried using it, but it was more of a hassle before we were always forgetting to unlock the phone before trying to dial someone.

The solution to both those issues was to get a larger flip phone, but for pay as you go customers there is no phone upgrade path. I hunted and hunted around on the AT&T website and couldn?t find any way to do it. I then called their customer service and was told that it just couldn?t be done.

This time when we got down to zero minutes on the phone we thought, what the heck, there are only like 2 dozen people who know our cell phone number anyway, why not just but a new pay as you go phone with a new number? So we picked out a $50 flip phone (Samsung A167) that came with $30 worth of air time.

When the new phone arrived there was a large bright yellow sticker on it that says something to the effect, “ATTENTION AT&T customers just transfer the SIM card from your old phone to this one.” Cool, maybe that will work for me. I plugged the old SIM card in the new phone, turned it on and nothing happened. Not actually nothing, the screen displayed a line of text that roughly implied, ?Sorry Sucker.” Sigh.

So I took out that SIM and put in the one that came with the new phone and went online to the AT&T site and registered the new phone with the same contact info as the old phone and waited. It was supposed to take 30-45 minutes for the $30 airtime to get credited to my new account.

After an hour I checked to see if the minutes were there and they weren?t. For the heck of it I logged into the old phone?s account and what do you know there was $30 worth of airtime! So now we have and old phone we don?t want to use with big minutes and a new phone we want to use that has zero minutes.

Ever the tinker, I take the new SIM card and put it in the old phone. Turned on the phone and it works, no minutes to really test it, but when I check the Own Number in the phone?s menu it reads the new number. So I put the old SIM in the new phone and it works! In spite of everyone saying it can?t be done, it was, I have successfully upgraded my AT&T pay as you go phone.

Now if I only hadn?t erased the contacts of the old SIM in the process of looking to donate it to Cell Phones for Soldiers?