Other Connectivity > Cellphones, Providers, and Plans > WARNING: Boost Mobile $3/Day Android Bills if No Usage!

Not taking sides here but if you look at »www.boostmobile.com/shop/plans/d···mer_link it clearly states "$2 DAILY UNLIMITED PLAN: $2/day charge will be deducted regardless of usage at 12:01am in the customers time zone unless the customer cancels the subscription." Now I know it doesn't say the $3 plan but that is from the Daily Unlimited Android page. And the news of the iDEN Shut down has been out there for a long time.
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"I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel, Oh wait it's the train"

My thought is why bother with a plan that costs $90/month by misleadingly calling it $3/daily? Why not just call it the ripoff $90/month plan? At any rate, I switched it over. They no longer offer the by the minute plan, evidently. So I'm stuck using this phone for two months until my balance runs out and then returning the phone.

They just informed me that iDEN is being shut down when I reBoosted in December.

My only thought there would be that one requires a contract, and the other does not....but i don't know that, just a guess.

Neither plan requires a contract. I think the daily plan is a suckers plan. Once you figure it out, you realize you've been suckered.

You are comparing two plans, out of many, available to you in the United States (if you include options from all providers). You think that $55/month from Boost is the best, apparently. If you think $90/month is a scam, the $100+ offerings from Verizon and AT&T must really perplex you. I may even agree.

But if we just stick to the two Boost android plans, yes, $55/month is the better deal to many. Why do they sell amounts of time less than a full month at a different rate? The answer is simple, with two scenarios.

Not everyone uses their phone all the time (pay when you want it on). For example, $12 will get you four days. Maybe that's all you need at that time (a weekend road trip?).

The more common answer is that not everyone is as fortunate as you, able to afford $55 at one time. They pay for smaller units of time, albeit at a higher rate for not paying more in advance. Financing concepts here.

If Boost offered $500 for a year, would you choose that over $55/month? If you have the cash, maybe you would let them hold your money for the savings. Or maybe you would want to do other things with your money over that time period, more important than the savings.

Choose the plan/provider that works best for you.

No company offers billing only on days you use it (anymore). You need a pay as you go plan. Put $90 on Virgin Mobile, and you're set for a year.

Beware yourself making decisions that don't work best for you.

Until Boost turned my trusty, reliable i450 into a paperweight, I was paying just $3.33 a month for phone service (10 cents a minute).

Their daily plan does not make sense at all. They DO charge you when you are NOT using the phone. That's the part that I didn't figure out till I noticed my balance going down $3 every day. I initially chose it because I would use the phone for emergencies.

I'm not fortunate enough to afford $55/month. After my $116 balance that I've accumulated since 2005 with Boost is used up, my phone will become useless. I can't afford to pay that kind of money every month. The only way I could do it is if I shut off the landline and DSL. But to do that, I need a cell signal at the house, which, on the new phone, does not exist. My i450 had a great signal at the house. So now I'm into a much more expensive plan, but have lost use of the phone unless I go out.

Please check their website or call their Care again. They have maintained their PAYGo plan through the move from iDEN to CDMA. You were given bad information. You can check this on their website too. I have two lines with them that I moved from iDEN to CDMA and I have them both still on the PAYGo plan. It is one of the best in the industry.

As for your coverage problem, I feel your pain. One of the great things about iDEN was the relatively low frequencies it used. Compared to the relatively high frequencies the CDMA service travels on iDEN was able to offer great coverage, even through wall, trees, etc. We'll all have to see how Sprint repurposes these iDEN frequencies to know whether it will benefit us all in the future. I'd be surprised if they don't use it for their emerging LTE service, which would be great but probably won't help me for years.

The Boost Mobile daily plans are designed for people that want to have service for a period of time when they make a payment. For instance, you are going on a week long trip and want to use the phone. You would ReBoost for the amount of your plan times the number of days you want to use it. The behavior of the plan is clearly stated on their materials.

Chuw

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Wow, that is shitty to say the least. On the surface it looks like any other pay as you go plan where you pay the daily charge on the days you use it and nothing on days you don't. I would have made that same assumption myself. I checked the terms and conditions on their site and found buried in the fine print that it's billed daily, regardless of use.

I looked to see if the monthly plan requires a contract and I see no indication that it does. Both plans are also "unlimited" so there's no incentive there. Worse is the monthly plan has the shrinking payments option making it an even better deal over time.

I really see NO point in their daily plans at all. There's a $10 reactivation fee so even if you wanted to use it for a vacation or something and only plan to use it for x days you'd need to keep it to no more than 15 days ($3 * 15 + $10 = $55) of "on" time to make it worth while. Who is going to bother with all the on/off nonsense?

Now, I may have a solution for you. iDEN operated on 800 MHz as does some Sprint CDMA/1xRTT and LTE deployments but mostly runs on 1900 MHz. With the decommissioning of iDEN, that 800 MHz spectrum is likely to be used to deploy more LTE so you may regain coverage via Boost/Sprint at your house. Verizon Wireless and AT&T operate on 850 MHz and 1900 MHz for voice/3G service. Higher frequencies have a harder time penetrating trees and other objects so perhaps Verizon or AT&T will have better service at your house (if they use 850 MHz in your area anyway). Got any friends that use either of those carriers that can swing by your house and check for you?

Agree about these plans being misleading and pointless. Also, if you don't pay the reconnect fee at least every 3 months, you'll lose your number, too.

I am hoping that they turn on the 800 band soon after iDEN shuts down. In the meantime, I'm experimenting with a Wilson DbPro cell phone booster system. It has a Yagi antenna for outdoors, a panel antenna for indoors, and an amplifier for 800 and 1900 bands. It helps, but oddly enough, pointing the Yagi at the tower down the road results in a worse signal I have to aim it 70° to the east of that tower for optimum signal. However, while I get -90dBm within 7' of the panel antenna now, I am only getting 1 ASU most of the time. I suspect the low ASU rating is due to poor s/n or multipath maybe. There is a 15' high earthen berm across the road from me, between me and the tower, and I suspect knife edge diffraction could be causing cancellation. I might be getting bounced signals off the mountain 2 miles away to the east, which might explain the improvement by pointing away from the tower. Still certain that tower is hot, because if I stand at the base of it, I have 6 bars.

I have to optimize this setup after the temp gets above 0°F next week. Data performance is abyssmal. Downtown, Ookla speedtest is 2.4M/800K.. here at the house with the booster, 429K/18K. Either way, 800MHz would be the saving grace. We're in a PCS hole. My friends don't have service here either. Verizon gets 1 bar in front of the glass sliding door. Forget about Sprint at AT&T. Nextel was the bomb. 4 bars in the livingroom. I miss it already.

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Based on my experience, I think it is possible you are misunderstanding the way the Boost Mobile Daily Unlimited cell phone plans work. For nearly 2 years, now, I have been paying the Boost mobile phone bill, as well as other bills, for an elderly man and his wife who, financially, have been in an extremely unfortunate situation for some time. For, roughly, the first year of that time they were using(sharing) the regular(not Android, BlackBerry, or Nextel system) Boost Mobile cellphone I had bought for them with the Boost Mobile Monthly Unlimited plan; so, I was pre-paying $50, then $45, etc., per month for them. But after about a year it became difficult for me to continue pre-paying that $50, about $600 in a year, every month for them, while still paying my own bills and paying a lot of other bills(their boiler, well water system, and kitchen stove failed within months of each other and I paid for replacements) for the elderly couple. So, when I began having significant health issues, etc., of my own it was painfully clear to me that I would need to reduce the amount of money I was spending to help the elderly couple. It was not easy to decide what to stop paying for the elderly couple because I was not, by any means, paying anything for the elderly couple of which they were not in dire need.

I explained the situation to the elderly couple and I told them that, for the time being, I would only have the cellphone on for 4 days out of the month. We talked about it and decided those 4 days should be, roughly, at the beginning of the month, because that is when they use the cellphone most, usually to make and receive calls regarding payments they should be receiving from various sources and bill payments, etc., that were due. I called Boost Mobile customer support and asked what I would need to do to switch to the $2/day daily unlimited plan. The Boost Mobile rep. said he would switch the cellphone to the daily unlimited plan. I told him I was not ready to make the change yet; he said call customer support when I want to switch to the daily unlimited plan.

Sometime later, I called Boost Mobile customer support and switched to the $2/day daily unlimited plan for the elderly couple. The cellphone was already off, because there was no money in the account, when I walked into a Boost Mobile store to buy $8 cellphone usage, in cash, for their phone. Well, I got a surprise when the cashier said the lowest amount I could buy was $12, to get 6 days cellphone usage. I paid the $12 and called Boost Mobile customer support, after I left the store, and asked why I could not buy $8 cellphone usage. The Boost Mobile rep. told me $12 was the least I could pay in cash at the particular Boost Mobile authorized bricks and mortar store(s) I frequented. To my recollection, he said I could pay $2 at a time if I made the payment online, at Boost Mobile's website, or if I made the payment by calling Boost Mobile customer support, but I preferred to pay in cash.

Now, here is the important point that I think it is possible you are misunderstanding with regard to how the Boost Mobile Daily Unlimited plans work, at least the $2 daily unlimited plans. When you put money into a Boost Mobile account that is on the Daily Unlimited plan, as I understand it and in my own experience, $2 will be deducted from whatever money is in the account EVERYDAY(daily), at around MIDNIGHT, to pre-pay for the “upcoming” day’s data usage, until ALL the money in the account is exhausted. A billing day is defined as being, approximately, midnight to midnight on the next consecutive night. When all the money in the account has been used the cellphone service is “turned off” until you put more money into the account. To my recollection, Boost Mobile turns the cellphone off permanently, meaning you lose the cellphone number you have been using, after the account has had a zero balance for a few months, or so.

Realize that this is the same thing that happens when you are on a Monthly Unlimited plan and you buy, say, $100 in cellphone usage. You expect, essentially, to have 2 MONTHS of CONSECUTIVE cellphone usage; Boost Mobile takes the next $50 from your account balance, automatically, when the pre-payment for your upcoming(next) Monthly Unlimited service is due. If there is no money in the account, then, the cellphone service is “turned off” until you put more money into that account. So, if there is only $100 in your Boost Mobile cellphone budget for, say, the upcoming 4 months and you want to stay on the $50 Monthly Unlimited plan, then, in my experience, you need to make sure you only have money in that account that you want Boost Mobile to use right away. If you put the entire $100 of your 4 month cellphone budget money into the account at once, then, Boost Mobile will take a $50 prepayment from your account, on the day the pre-payment is due, for 2 CONSECUTIVE months.

Similarly, if you are on the Boost Mobile $2 Daily Unlimited plan, then, Boost Mobile will take $2 from the account balance, to pre-pay for the upcoming day’s cellphone usage, EVERYDAY, at around MIDNIGHT, or so. If you only have, say, $20 in your Boost Mobile cellphone budget for, say, the next 2 months, then, you must make sure you only have $2 in that account for each consecutive day(approximately midnight to midnight) of cellphone usage you want. Boost Mobile does not, “automatically”, not charge you, while there is MONEY IN THE ACCOUNT, for any days in which you have not had any cellphone usage, while you are on the Daily Unlimited plan, anymore than they do that(not charge you), while there is money in the account, for any month(s) you have not had any cellphone usage, while you are on a monthly unlimited plan.

Also, in my experience, you must make sure that you call Boost Mobile customer support and, specifically, have them switch you off the Daily Unlimited plan IF you no longer want to be on that plan in the same way you needed to call Boost Mobile customer support to switch to that plan. Otherwise, if you changed your plan to the Daily Unlimited plan at some point and, then, you put $50 into that Boost Mobile daily unlimited plan account, then, Boost Mobile will continue to take $2 from that account’s balance, EVERYDAY, consecutively, at around midnight, until there is no more money in the account to use. So, in that case, at about 25 days into the month you will find that your cellphone service has been turned off. When you call Boost Mobile customer support they will tell you your account is still on the Daily unlimited plan, which costs you $2 EVERYDAY; you did not call Boost Mobile customer support and tell them, right before you put that $50 in the account, to switch you back to the MONTHLY UNLIMITED plan. This situation actually happened to me, more or less, exactly as described.

I was paying the elderly couple’s Boost Mobile Daily Unlimited plan cellphone bill, by going to the local Boost Mobile authorized bricks and mortar store and paying $12 cash, for 6 days usage, for a good number of months. During that time, usually around the beginning of each month, they had just that, 6 days in which they could use the Boost Mobile cellphone; after those 6 days the phone was off for the next 24 days, or so. 6 days was better than nothing and, as I mentioned, the beginning of the month was best, because that usually was when they needed a phone to make calls about money they were expecting, bills they needed to pay, medical appointments, trying to sell their property, etcetera. Again, to my recollection, a Boost Mobile customer support rep. said I could pay $2 at a time if I made the payment online, at Boost Mobile’s website, or if I made the payment by calling Boost Mobile customer support, but I preferred to pay in cash.

The only Boost Mobile cellphone plan I am aware of, although I have no experience with the plan, in which you are, “automatically”, not charged unless you use the cellphone is the Pay As You Go plan, but I think that plan is only available for regular(not Android, BlackBerry, or Nextel system) Boost Mobile cellphones and, in my opinion, you pay an enormous amount of money for the “privilege”. “With Pay As You Go, you pay … 20¢/minute and 20¢/text message” is what the Boost Mobile website says, but that means, of course, that a 100 minute call, a little over an hour and a half, will cost you $20. It is easy to exhaust $4(20 minutes), including on hold time, etc., while using the phone in an attempt to take care of routine necessities, appointments, banks, utility companies, etc.. And, maybe more importantly, at the Boost Mobile Pay As You Go rate if you use the cellphone for a meager 10 minutes a day you still end up having paid $60 at the end of 1 month. It can really, really, be difficult if you need a working phone, right away, but, in my opinion, a person may as well “save” enough money to use the Daily Unlimited plan instead of the Pay As You Go plan. If you pay with a credit/debit? card, by calling Boost Mobile customer support to make the payment, you can switch the phone to the Daily Unlimited plan, put, say, $2 into the account with your card, and have unlimited use of the cellphone for 24hours; which is 1,440 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes of cellphone usage, for the exact same amount of money.

note: As I understand it Boost Mobile has made some changes, in the latter months of 2012, to the way money you put into your account is “allocated”, etcetera. My experience(s), as described above, are, primarily, for a nearly 2 year period of time, thru about March 2012.

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