My mom would be traveling around the country for about half a year (yup, the happy retirement). Since her original wireless plan sucks big time, I decided to use my B$ power to get her a new plan with big bonus.

Since currently I am with Verizonwireless, my first thoughts were to add a line to my plan. My current plan costs me $44 dollars a month. Adding a line would be a family plan and about $76/month. But all those options I have on verizonwireless.com are adding a plan for a 2yr contract.

I don't want a 2 year contract since I have already been with them for a year with an ugly phone (big rebates though). I might be switching to other company for their cool phones and rebates.

However, all the other plans I found on Amazon are nowadays 2-yr contract required. Once you select a plan, it would be automatically selected as 2-yr contract without any other options.

What??? Since when they killed all the one-year contracts?

This totally sucks big time.

Verizon rounds your contract to the nearest year. so if you have 10 months left it goes to 12 months. Each line will have its own contract.

I signed up for a one-year contract about 12 months ago. So If I select this family plan, how does it go?

Thanks for your advice!

For limited phone use, it's hard to beat T-mobile's prepaid plans. You get a decent Nokia phone free, and $25 airtime bonus. And once you add $100 in airtime, it doesn't expire for a year.

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Prepaid.aspx

They don't have the $25 offer now, but it keeps coming back once in a while. And the Nokia 6030 that's $29.99 has a $30 rebate. Search in IRD you'll see my post about it.

ok...so you are (almost) out of contract. Your line will have to be renewed to a 1yr contract to get any new plan with a promotion (regardless of if you get a new phone). Your additional line should also be able to be a 1yr contract , but the phone discount will not be as large. (this is assuming it is not some online only plan or something)

Basically i would call cutomer service. Ask how much time is left in your contract. if they say you are out of contract or have a couple of months or less, they will probably try to renew your service...if you need a new phone then now would be the time to get one...(you can chose if you want a 1yr or 2 yr but you will get a bigger discount on the phone for a 2yr deal.)

i would try to negotiate with the person to get a one time credit on your acocunt for renwing a 1 year contract especially if you are not getting a new phone...

i hope this made sense...my original post was deleted

Amazon has an AT&T prepaid for $50 with $40 airtime. Personally I won't pick AT&T since their service is very bad in Boston area, but hey, this is by far the best deal since T-mobile ran out of good deals temperarily.

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-C139-Prepai.../dp/B000OS72UY/

And a quick update: Verizonwireless won't allow any familay plan go for less than 2-yr contract.

Carlos,

Have you considered Sprint SERO? The only downside IMO is the 2-year contract. Other than that, this deal rapes that of Cingular/T-Mobile/Verizon when it comes to savings.

Right now in Boston T-mobile is having a promotion of

1, free razor V3
2, $39.99 per month/1000 min
3, 2-yr contract required.

I hate the 2-yr part, but everything else is soooooo tempting.