It's unlimited text and data, first 5Gb at 4G! It includes only 100 min. But you will later find out that each extra min is 10 cents, which is the lowest you can get for prepaid. So far so good.
You may get the plan from Walmart, but as long as you buy a sim activation kit online at t-mobile, you have the choice when you activate. I don't how what happened but I got the sim for free, but today it's $10. I was just going to get a free sim for every kid because I spotted that their $10 pay as you go last for 90 days. Not so fast now in case they drop that again.
The 1st hurdle is actually with AT&T to unlock my phone. I setup profile for my wife but the bill is under my name. It may be the probable cause that I couldn't unlock. I waited until the contract ended and then some, because I can't risk any mishaps in the busiest time of the year. Finally I chat with them online and it was quite helpful. May be it's my phone, they have a procedure that I have to do it. I don't have another carrier's sim at the time so I didn't try. I copied the steps from chat but the 1st line is missing before I realized it.
A couple of days later, I received an email with the instructions. This time they have an unlock code that I don't think I have it before. When the T-Mob sim came, I inserted it, power on, entered the unlock code and it seemed to work. I was on the t-mob network but can't make any calls because my sim wasn't activated. But I am sure they can't fuck me up on the carrier unlock.
I considered carefully when to activate. I tried the activate website and it seemed to work and help to transfer my number too. But when I actually do it I want not to be at a very busy time when there are no real agents to trouble shoot. And I have 2 days off so there is one spare day for fuck ups when they claim to do it in 24 hours. And I don't want to wait too long when it's close to the deadline of the activation of my free sim. And I don't want to start losing things from the package.
So I took the plunge on Xmas eve day before I realized it. It went totally smoothly online until the last payment page. I use Linux and they screw up. Who wouldn't do a website nowadays without sticking to some common standards? I was afraid that I got the number transferred but I can't call because my service wasn't paid.
They don't have online chat. It's terrible when there are so many numbers involved. I tried to pay elsewhere online but they don't have my number registered yet.
I called as the last resort and very soon an agent answered. He was helpful. He got those data that I entered online. Instead of payment, he first deals with the transfer first. AT&T wants to screw me. They want my AT&T account number instead of my phone number. But I have a browser tab on that ready. Now that was OK and before he continued, the phone got cut off. I was using my mobile phone. So I switched to my landline.
Another agent answers the phone very soon. I think the 1st guy is American dealing with carrier transfer and tech stuff. This woman is in India dealing with other non-tech stuff. Now, I got too many apologizes in one day. It sounds as if he is sorry that t-mob website don't support Linux well enough, but that would be a first. She is sorry for the cut off. After a minute or two she confirmed that the transfer is successful and transfers me to payment. This 3rd call center could have been in Mexico. Again I don't have to wait and some agent pickup the phone soon. May be I picked the right day in the year? She is not sure what my problem is and I understand that the usual automatic prepaid payment via the phone is available. So I said goodbye and dial 223 or something. It was wrong. You dial 611 but * or # then 223. Seriously!
I dial 611 again and realized the correct number should be prefixed with a * or # (that I don't remember). It doesn't matter because I couldn't pay anyway. Because the transfer is actually not completed. I called 611 again to find out that I have to wait 2 hours until I got the completion text.
Before that I registered on t-mobile website but then the registration wasn't real because I don't have an active number to go with it.
A couple of hours later I can receive call too. And I got the completion text. Now I can pay online, after registration again. And I sign up for automatic payment. But as soon as I paid, learned to check the balance, my 100 min was up as indicated on the website!! What's going on? I called 611 again with no waiting. The guy assured me that my account status was OK and I can use the phone. 1st they have a funny way to tell the balance. I paid $30 and they say my balance is $0 and I will be paying $30 next month. But really the minutes count is wrong and after some wait the used minutes drops from 100 to 10. But I don't think I made 10 connected calls.
Before the transfer completion I can dial out but incoming calls go straight to my old AT&T voicemail. I looked it up and enter the t-mob voicemail number into my phone and it didn't seem to work.
Somehow it all worked. Then I wanted to setup visual voicemail (for my wife). There is a subscribe button on the website but it does nothing except redirect to your homepage. Then I did what I prefer to do, switch over to her google number voicemail. Android reported that it can't do it and I have to talk to t-mob.
After a while of online search, I confirmed that t-mob don't allow visual voicemail nor forward voicemail for prepaid accounts. This is pretty strange as I would think $50 and up prepaid plans are more popular and the money isn't too bad. I thought I got an old internet post of how to switch to google voice email. In GV I setup a contact with my mobile phone number, then I setup a group for it. If group members call, GV will not try to ring any numbers so the call will go straight to google voicemail. Now I just need to setup call forward in my phone, to forward when no answer to my google number. But the problem is, forwarding isn't allowed by the t-mob network, and that's why you just can't simply change over to GV voicemail. A waste of time.
Those are the catches. I spend half a day doing it, on xmas eve. May be I'm lucky. I could have waited for 24 hour and nothing would happen because AT&T wants my account number.
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