Hi guys, David and David here from payetteforward.com and upphone.com, and in this video, we're
going to explain why we don't like pay-as-you-go plans and recommend some alternatives in this
video. So with pay as you go plans, the gist is that you give your carrier X amount of
dollars, and then they sort of hold onto it for 30 days; 60 days; 90 days; until it then
disappears. And in the meantime, they deduct how much you use - right — from that amount.
But the amount you pay is usually way more than you would pay if you just get a regular
prepaid plan or postpaid plan. Right. So we're going to rip on one carrier. Yeah, there's
one plan we're going to talk about specifically. It's — it's H2O Wireless's pay as you go
plan. Before we really trash their pay as you go plan, I do want to say that they actually
have some really good data plans right now, where they have, like, they have a data bonus
offer. So you can get like six gigs for $30 — it's ridiculous. Yeah, they have some
great deals. But we're just going to mention this plan. I mean, it's one example, and this
is a broader problem with wireless carriers. Right. I feel like the pay-as-you-go plans
are kind of an outdated model. And more prepaid, no contract stuff is really where it's going.
Yeah. So let's take a look at this one as sort of a typical pay-as-you-go example. What
is pay-as-you-go? No annual contract or hidden fees. That's kind of par for the course. Yeah.
I mean prepaid plans; even — even unlimited data plans these days have no contracts. Yeah,
now they get you with the contract for the phone itself, not with the plan. But you just
have to be careful the marketing because a lot of these things sound cool, but they're
just way outdated. So, 10% discount with auto-recharge. That's also standard. Yeah. Nationwide coverage;
international calling features. This is all stuff — just because you can doesn't mean
it's cheap. Yeah, this is all stuff that you can get with prepaid plans too. Easily accessible
in thousands of stores and online. So if you want to buy this plan in thousands of stores...
Yeah, go to the CVS and get a SIM card. So ten dollars, 90 day expiration. Five cents
per minute or per text message sent or received is a lot. Yep. 10 cents per megabyte for data
and MMS, which is the picture texts. Yep. They're going to charge you for that too.
You 90 days to use it. So let's just talk about the 10 cents per megabyte first. I was
looking for an example of just to demonstrate how expensive this is. We did a web page test
on espn.com and that was what, six megabytes? Yeah, for one page. So if you go to espn.com
once on your phone using your data plan, you are spending 60 cents, and I usually click
around. I'm like looking at the scores, looking at the standings, and by the end of the day,
I'm probably using half a gigabyte of data. That's a lot! At least on ESPN. That's a lot...
you're probably... that sounds like a lot, David, but you might be using more than 10
megabytes. Yeah, or a hundred megabytes, even. Definitely. I don't mean to contradict you
here in this video. I go on ESPN a lot. I go on once, you know, check a few times per
day; check the scores; check to see, yeah. You do! But regardless, 10 cents per megabyte
is just a ton of money. It is. And you can get a great prepaid plan these days, you know.
Thirty — thirty dollars a month for three gigs! Yeah. And think about what uses data —
it's the video. So like, you would run through that much data if you're on ESPN and watching
videos easily. Facebook. Pictures take up a lot of... Streaming video. If you go through
Facebook and scroll, you are going to run out of data, like your ten dollars, in 10
minutes or less! Pretty quickly. Very quickly. And, you know, so 20 minutes on the phone?
That's a dollar. Yeah. Well, another thing too is that most plans these days just give
you unlimited talk and text, and you, there are actually some plans out there where you
can get unlimited talk and text for like $20 a month. Sometimes less. This is a lot cheaper
than that, though, because you have 90 days to use it. If you never use your phone, ever,
and I don't know. I mean, it's great if it's like an emergency phone, maybe. Like, you
know, you don't use your phone that often and you have to call in case of emergency.
But otherwise you've never going to use it. Yeah, but also with emergency phones, we should
point out that every cell phone, even if there isn't a plan associated with it, will still
work with 9-1-1. And that's something actually to double-check because I don't want to say
that on video. I'm almost... I'm like 98% sure. Yeah, me too. I mean, that's online
and that's the way it is, but I don't want to make that guarantee and ask somebody call
9-1-1. Yeah. Yeah, but it works, as long as your phone has service and connects to a tower.
So one one last thing about the expiration dates: Back when I had TracFone; I don't know
if things have changed since then; but if you didn't use your service; you didn't renew
your service after that 90-day or 365-day plan, they just cut you off. You're done.
Yeah, and you had to go get a new phone, new phone number, and top up again. Yeah. And
anything you didn't use is just gone forever. Yeah, so really, the only way to make the
most of a plan like this is to use all of your data and nothing more. Right. So, like,
you're gonna have to time it. Time your minutes, time your text messages. Yeah. I mean, how
many texts do you send a day> I send more than ten. I send enough to justify paying
for a plan with unlimited text. I think most people do nowadays. Yeah, that's the problem
with this model: that people are sending more texts; they're using data more often. They're
not talking as much, which is fine. But really, what you should be looking for is a low-cost
plan with unlimited minutes and unlimited messages. They're not hard to find. Even if
you go on H2O Wireless's website, you can check out their monthly unlimited plans. They're
really cheap. Last thing to point out is that if we're paying 10 cents per megabyte, just... we
pay a lot less than $100 per gigabyte, which is the cost here. So you can get a Verizon
prepaid plan for 35 bucks a month. Yep, right, about. Prepaid plan? And this; 3 gigabytes
would cost $300. That's a lot of money. That's a lot more. So if you don't — if you don't
like the sound of these pay-as-you-go plans; if you have a pay as you go plan right now,
I highly recommend checking out our latest best cell phone plans of the month video.
We'll link to that in the card above and the description section below. Sorry, H2O Wireless.
We love your other plans. Yeah. Pay as you go, not so great. Not as great. Yep. Monthly
unlimited plans, check it out! Pretty good. Check it out. They got bonus deals right now.
It's only 20 bucks a month for unlimited data. Yeah, there you go. 20 bucks — 20 bucks
on H2O Wireless. Unlimited minutes, unlimited messages, one gigabyte of data for $20 a month.
Just buy that plan instead. Thank you guys for watching this video. Give it a thumbs
up if you enjoyed. Leave us a comment down below with any other questions, and don't
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