I believe I've mentioned this before, but if not, I was searching for a cheaper cell phone plan when I happened upon The Unofficial 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless Canada Consumer Page. It spoke of a deal from 7-11 where for $100 you get $100 of air-time ($0.20 per minute local) plus a new phone (which also included 5 minutes air time.) So for $100, you get a free phone and $105 of air time. And, the air time has a 365 day expiry "limit".
Since I don't spend a lot of time on the phone, nor does my wife, and we are paying $100 /mth ($1200 a year) for two cells phone, this $100 deal, even if I need to add an additional $200 or $400 of air time over the year (doubtful) I still come out ahead.
So my first attempt to get this deal (about a month ago) failed, as all the phones were sold out, and the deal was not on any more. The lady behind the counter did tell me that they were going to bring back the deal and the phone shipment was due in on Nov 15th.
So this weekend I head down to the local 7-11 and sure enough, the deal was on and phones were available. $228 later ($100 each for the two phones, plus taxes) and away I go with two active working phones each with 525 minutes of airtime (well, not really as there is about a $0.99 per month 911 charge, so you lose 3 minutes a month, but I can live with that.)
I should mention, the lady that sold me the phone was very friendly and seemed to be quite knowledgeable as I double checked on some information such as sim card capability with Rogers and phone number portability and she assured me both should be no problem.
So I get home, pop open my phone, swap out the sim cards, put the phone back together, power it up, and all phones worked as they should. My Rogers cell phones were now on the Speakout network and my new speakout phones were running on the Rogers network (no surprise here as Speakout uses the Rogers network anyway, but you never know.)
Next steps:
1) Get my Rogers phone numbers ported over to my Speakout account. Called Speakout customer service this morning and checked to make sure my numbers were portable ... they are ... and to check all the information they would need from me in order for them to be able to make the change. They need the account number, any password associated with the account, and the INEI/ESN number of the phone (usually found inside the phone under the battery) Since I called from work, and I didn't have all the phones with me I will gather the information tonight and call them again.
2) Cancel my Rogers account. I need to leave this account active until the numbers are ported over (2 or 3 business days from request date.) I suspect that I will have to pay a $200 early termination penalty, but that's ok, I'll still save a bundle this year.
Stay tuned.
2 comments:
4 months later.... you've had lots of time to compare services with Rogers, are you happy with the 711 deal?
Very happy .... I'm not a big cell phone users and after 5 months I still have about $35 left on the account.
So I've spent about $70 over the last 5 months ... much better than the $250 I would have paid using Rogers Cell.
The phone itself is on the Rogers network, so quality is as good as my old phone server (which makes sense as I'm using my old phone over the same network as my old carrier.)
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