Looking for a little guidance on this issue, if you have any suggestions your input is appreciated.

My wife, myself and my daughter are T-Mobile customers, we share 800 minutes which is more than enough for the three of us, but I know we will soon outgrow it as my daughter enters middle school next year. My son is 18 and leaving to go to college in Boston next year and he has had Cingular for about a year. Right now my wife, daughter and I are out of contract and my son will be out of contract June 13. We are trying to decide what to do about our phones. My son left our family plan because he used his phone a lot for work at a law firm and he did not want us to have to pick up overages caused by his job. He got a 600 minute plan and save for the last 2 months has been really good about using only that. the last two months his business has picked up and he is routinely using anywhere from 900-1100 minutes, which translates into very large bills for him. He will not continue to run his business (video editing and computer tech support) at college so his minutes usage should decrease dramatically.

From my perspective it seems to make sense that we would all get on one family plan, that way any conversations between eachother would be free, and beings that we are in Seattle and he will be in Boston this would be a big cost saver. I think that my son would like to stay with Cingular, he has been really happy with it. What are my options? Is there another provider that has better family plans than Cingular?

The other issue we are dealing with right now is that after his prom he "fell down some stairs"(Yeah, kind of like I used to do when I was younger) and he cracked the external display on his V600. He has insurance but does not want to use it if he is not going to stay with Cingular, or if he is going to get a new phone in the future. I know he has his eye on a Razr V3 but he just cannot stand to have a broken phone. Any suggestions?

I would prefer to keep my service with Cingular, Verizon or T-Mobile... I used to have sprint and was not a fan. Let me know if you know of any deals/specials, I am thinking that we need anywhere between 1500-2000 minutes with 4 lines of service.

 

if your son has insurance, then why not get the phone replaced? he paid for it so he might as well use it

 

for my family we got cingular. for 109.99 + taxes we get 1100 minutes, free nights and weekends starting @ 7, free mobile to mobile for cing & at&t, and rollover. that seems like it could be the way to go. plus 4 phones for me, my dad, my mom and my gf. in less than 6 months we've accumulated over 3000 rollover minutes.

 

He cannot decide if he wants to pay the $50 deductible or wait and use the money towards his next phone.