Don’t Need to Renew Our AT&T Cell Contract

November 22nd, 2008 · personal finance & money management · 2 Comments

I got my first cell phone 4 years ago this week, when my mom was hospitalized. Being at college 2 hours away, I wanted to be able to start home at a moment’s notice if something happened. So I bought a cell phone on black Friday. Possibly the worst shopping experience of my life. Two years ago when I switched to Cingular (now ATT), Micah and I decided that with 6 months until the wedding we should probably just get a family plan.

I just realized that it’s November again and my contract is up. Micah and I have been talking about some pay-as-you-go options, since we don’t use our cell phones very much. But we hadn’t made any decisions and the contract ends today.

Fortunately, while cell phone contracts end, at least with ATT that doesn’t disrupt your service. Instead, you go on paying whatever you were paying and receiving whatever you were receiving until you choose to either renew/upgrade or end your service. I had a feeling this was the case, but spoke to an ATT customer service representative who confirmed.

So if your cell phone contract is expiring, you don’t have to renew. You’ll continue receiving service as long as you pay (unless they decide that you’re getting too good a rate…but that’s not likely to happen for a while).

Of course, they’ll tempt you with offers of new phones. Both our phones are still fine. And they’ll offer deals. But in this case we think we can get an even better deal. And use our old phones while doing it.

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