If so, I have a question for you as I'm considering using Cingular for my mobile phone provider. I checked their site and they offer a few confusing things that I'd like to get clarity on before I call them and spend $$$:

1. How do Anytime Minutes and Night/Weekend Minutes work?

I understand that Anytime Minutes is the TOTAL number of minutes that your basic plan charge covers at any time, and once you use them up you then pay per minute. But they also have Night/Weekend Minutes, which are for use at night and on the weekend (funnily enough).

But some of the plans have 450 Anytime minutes and 5000 Night/Weekend Minutes. Does this mean that this plan has a total of 5450 minutes? The help text on the Cingular site seems to indicate that the Anytime minutes are still used up along with the Night/Weekend minutes in the appropriate timeslot, which would suggest that the Night/Weekend minutes are a waste of space.

Have I understood this correctly?

As far as calling at night you use up night/weekend minutes first. After those are gone you start burning your Anytime minutes, so you could have 5450 minutes available for nights/weekends, minus whatever Anytime minutes you burn during the day.

Are you seriously worried about burning up 83 1/3 hours of night/weekend calling time?

[ 07-04-2005, 12:17 PM: Message edited by: VulcanRider ]

No, I'm not. I was confused about a statement on their site which suggested that you still use up Anytime minutes as well as Night/Weekend minutes - didn't realise they were mutually exclusive.

Check their times, and time zones for exact info. Our plan runs weekends from Friday @ 2100hrs EST, through Monday 0600hrs EST (Eastern) We have 4 here, and in NY you'd be on EST, then CST, MT, and PT. Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.

Anytime minutes work both ways, call in and call out for 'most' carriers, and are charged during the non-weekend minutes, sometimes at DOUBLE rate time dependent.

Their maketing skills has made it so confusing anymore, and the fact "please wait while all of our customer service people are on break" never seem to get to your call as qued, to get any real information has made it almost annoying. I can't see how they can maintain a customer base.

Why is it that in the US you get charged for incoming calls on your mobile as well as outgoing? So they're effectively charging two people for the same call?

Yup, welcome to the cellphone way of life here... it's one reason, among several, why I don't have one yet. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

All I can figure on that is that it's because they can't determine if you are calling another cell or a land line somewhere. All the carriers know is that you both are on the cell phone using minutes.

Now, if you pay a little extra for their "friends and family" plan or "mobile to mobile" plan, they somehow miraculously know that you are now calling someone on *their* cell from *your* cell and vice versa.

Amazing, isn't it? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

For me, I never worry about minutes. My mother and father had Cingular when he passed and I'm now using his old phone on her plan. She pays $35.00/mo for her phone and $10.00/mo for mine (plus, we added Hiram for another $20.00/mo).

We have rollover minutes, free nights/weekends and something like 650 anytime minutes AND mobile to mobile (which, when you are with Cingular per our plan it is "free"...we use *no* minutes) and we *never* use up all the free stuff. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 07-06-2005, 02:13 PM: Message edited by: Lady Sedai ]