TUAW has confirmed that AT&T is doing a promotion that gives 1,000 extra rollover minutes to any customer who sends a specific SMS text message to a particular number. It’s good through 31 March 2011. The only catch may be opting in to AT&T special offers.
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Does anybody really care? Does anybody actually use up their voice minutes these days? AFAICT, this article says it all "AT&T Announces Voice is Worthless" http://bit.ly/emkzAb
Honestly, it's an interesting question. Tonya and I share the minimal family plan (700 minutes per month?) but the fact is that we seldom use even a fraction of those. Some of that is that we have a landline that we use for calls we'll both be on, or for calls when we can't accept the iPhone being flaky, but mostly it's because all of our staff conversations happen via Skype now. (And even then, I doubt we use 700 minutes per month, though it would be interesting to check Skype stats, if such a thing is possible.)
All that said, I get the impression that we're still unusual in our use of Skype over voice minutes.
We're on a 700-minute plan, too, and I believe have been for at least four years. I think we use about 200 minutes a month and, with the rollover that's included, we always have a pool of about 6,000 unused minutes!
I used Vonage at work for a few years until replacing that entirely with Skype recently. Most of my calls are now made over Skype directly, and Skype's interface with the regular phone number is finally reliable enough for me to use. I have a cell phone as a backup.
Hmmm. With a five line family plan and a daughter, we have no problem using our 700 minutes.
The interesting thing is I received a *different* text message, asking me to call an 800 number to receive my 1000 bonus rollover minutes. The agent promptly explained that it was sponsored by U-Verse.
We have had U-Verse available, however the outrageous installation and equipment fees, for a one-time charge of $400 plus monthly equipment rental of (now) $4/mo kept me away. In the past, they refused to waive those fees. From my perspective, I wasn't willing to pay them that money just to give them the right to bill me every month in perpetuity.
I told the agent that I was interested but not willing to pay the installation and activation fees. He offered to waive them, all $400 worth, and the monthly equipment rental fee too. And the confirmation email indeed confirmed that.
They must be desperate, because they absolutely wouldn't budge before.
I am so tremendously amused at the level to which working with modern day cellular companies is similar to haggling with merchants in third world bazaars.