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Best Path to Avoid Extra Fees when Switching Plans and Transferring Billing Responsibility
I recently got married and my wife has an AT&T plan with unlimited data for her iPhone.
My wife and I are not yet on the same AT&T plan but we are exploring options.
My daughter and I are on another family member's plan and wish to transfer our phones (my iPhone, my daughter's standard mobile phone) to my wife's plan using a transfer of billing responsibility.
All three phones involved are owned by each of us (no current contract obligations).
Because of her relatively low data usage, my wife is willing to give up the unlimited data plan on her iPhone and move to a Mobile Share plan to accommodate multiple phones at a more reasonable price. We are looking at either the 10 GB or 30 GB Mobile Share plan to keep added device costs as low as possible for our current phones and any other devices we might like to add later.
We would like to take a path that would help avoid any extra fees associated with transfer of billing responsibility and activation of the phones on a new plan.
I'm pretty sure that with current promotions we can have the activation fees of $40 per phone waived if we initiate the process online, and I'm pretty sure we would be charged this fee if we go into an AT&T store for assistance in the process.
I'm not sure if we can avoid the transfer of billing responsibility fee for each of the two phones we wish to transfer ($18 each, as I understand it).
I'd like to know the best path to take to for my wife to switch to a Mobile Share plan and transfer the two phones (mine and my daughter's) to my wife's account.
Do we first initiate the transfer of billing responsibility from the current family plan to my wife's existing plan?
Or, do we start a new Mobile Share plan for my wife and THEN initiate a transfer of billing responsibility for the two phones we wish to transfer to her account?
I'm not sure whether the exact order of events is important, but there are so many potential pitfalls in dealing with plan changes that I don't want to take a misstep that we later regret.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
bizhui
Scholar
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457 Messages
10 years ago
You don't want to sign any two year contract. Anything that the rep tell you about in the store, double check and confirm with another person or another store. If you are offer a promotion card with balance in there, you can use those money to pay your bill, don't let them get you to buy those expensive accessories as you don't feel like it but being pressure by those salesperson. Feel free to ask more question. Check your message, I send you a message with what I think.
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GeekBoy
Master
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4.1K Messages
10 years ago
Next up is the talk about your total costs... Take a look at your bill then add the $10 for your wife's phone + $30 for her data and see what the total comes to. Add another $5-10 for the taxes & fees and you will have a good idea of the cost for your current plan with her line included. This assumes that you already have the $30 unlimited texts on your family plan, otherwise you might also want to add that. If any of you want to upgrade your phones, you follow the same old "contract subsidized" routes you always have.
If you move to a Mobile Share plan, then you pay $100 for the 15GB or $130 for the 30GB (under the current promotions) plus you pay $15 for each smartphone that is not under contract and I believe that it is $20 for the "standard"/feature phones. The kicker is that if you want to upgrade your phones, you either pay full price for the phones or you pay $40 for the talk & text portion instead of the $15 discounted rate. You may save a little money now with your phones out of contract, but if any of you wants a new phone, it might cost you more under the Mobile Share than you pay now on the Family Plan. Keep in mind that the whole thing assumes you already have a Family Talk plan for you & your daughter. You would really need to look at all the numbers to see which is the better choice for you, but the Mobile Share plan with 30GB of data would run you about $180 + taxes & governmental fees each month until you upgrade any of your phones (unless you purchase new phones outright at the full cost).
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varuscelli
Scholar
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117 Messages
10 years ago
Thank you, bizhui and GeekBoy/Jerry B.
My daughter and I are on another family member's plan and we need to take ourselves off of that plan, so we don't actually have an option of adding my wife to my plan. The most feasible thing seems to be to either transfer our lines (my daughter's and mine) to my wife's current plan or have her switch plans and then transfer our lines to her "new" plan.
I suppose I could consider enrolling in a new plan myself and then bring my wife into that plan, but since she is a long-term customer of AT&T it would seem easier to either move our phones into her plan (her existing plan or a Mobile Share plan that she could switch to).
Good points about upgrading. I don't feel a compelling need to upgrade and would be fine with sticking with the iPhone 5 a while longer (or even getting another slightly used iPhone 5 if I needed one in the next year or so due to any problems with my current one).
On the other hand, I believe my wife will definitely want to upgrade to an iPhone 6 at some point in the next few months. However, if my wife upgrades to the 6 on her current plan, I believe she will be contractually obligated to stick with that plan for another two years (or pay higher monthly costs after switching to Mobile Share). Thus, we would have to move into that her existing plan, take on a higher-cost Mobile Share plan, or start a new plan for just me and my daughter (likely not the most cost effective thing if we want to combine our costs for the best cost-effective plan). I know if we switch to a Mobile Share plan, the scenarios for upgrading will cost more.
It almost seems like something of a wash (nearly the same money either way) if we stay with her old plan and have to tack on a data plan for my phone and perhaps a data plan for my daughter's phone if we upgrade hers from a standard mobile phone to a smart phone (likely a used iPhone purchased outright and not a new one for my daughter).
My guess is that the 10 GB Mobile Share plan at $100 plus the cost of three smart phones added into the plan at $15 each (or two smart phones and one standard mobile) would give us a better cost breakdown at present with a total of $145 plus fees. My wife's current plan costs her $143 per month for the one iPhone with unlimited data and her talk and text plan. The key comparison seems to be in evaluating the cost of upgrading and adding that into the cost of the Mobile Share plan compared to upgrading against her current plan AND adding in extra phones (and taking into account that the discounted iPhone price if applied against her existing plan still has to be figured into yearly cost of ownership).
I've got to say that this evaluation process sucks.
A headache in a situation that might indeed be basically a wash whichever way we decide to go.
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varuscelli
Scholar
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117 Messages
10 years ago
Anyone care to address my question about avoiding activations and/or phone transfer fees by taking the route of initiating the process online?
My guess is that if we transfer two phones to my wife's existing AT&T plan (not a Mobile Share plan), we will incur two $18 fees for transfer of billing responsibility and two $40 activation fees.
I also think that if we bring the two transferred lines into a new Mobile Share plan by initiating the activation online, we can avoid the two $40 activation fees.
I'm not sure about this part. Just trying to interpret the AT&T promotions and general guidelines for transferring phones between accounts AND activating those phones.
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varuscelli
Scholar
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117 Messages
10 years ago
That's a "per upgraded phone" monthly cost on the Mobile Share plan, right?
That is, for any new upgrade that we don't purchase outright, we would pay the $40 per month fee for a specified time, but for any old "owned" phones on the Mobile Share plan, we'd pay the $15 discounted rate (?).
So if we upgraded one phone to the iPhone 6 (on the Mobile Share), that one phone would cost us something in the neighborhood of $40 per month rather than $15 per month. If we upgraded multiple phones on Mobile Share, each one would cost an extra $40 per month instead of the discounted $15.
Just checking...
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GeekBoy
Master
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4.1K Messages
10 years ago
This is where I suggest you look at the numbers for clarification. If you pay the $199 for an iPhone 6 16GB and then pay the additional $25/month for 2 years, that iPhone 6 will cost you $899. If you but the same phone using NEXT18 (24 monthly installments of about $27 each), you only pay the $650 for that iPhone over the 24 months. The difference is that you pay the sales tax up front on the full phone cost with NEXT (and thats all), and with the contract, you pay the $199 plus sales tax up front. In essence you pay $2/month more using NEXT, but you don't pay the $200 up front. NEXT could save you $150-200 over the 2 year period using NEXT over a contract price. Just think it through before making your decisions.
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sandblaster
ACE - Expert
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64.7K Messages
10 years ago
Since you are already ATT customers, there should not be any activation fees, just the billing transfer fees. Since your wife's current plan is a single line plan, she can not add any lines to that plan. She can add additional lines to her account, but they would have to be on a different plan. So, if she converts her current plan to mobile share first, then you will be able to add your lines to that plan.
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GeekBoy
Master
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4.1K Messages
10 years ago
A couple points to consider. You can't open a new Family Talk plan now, but if you already have one, you can still add more phones to it. This means that if you think you will keep the Family Share plan, you would need to transfer your two lines into her account.
Here is what I would suggest. Transfer your phone and your daughter's phone into your wife's account now. That would put all the phones on the same account, and would give you the one bill to be able to more easily compare things. That would raise her bill by $10 for your daughter's current phone, and by $40 for your phone with a 3GB data plan (or unlimited if that's what you have how). If she has unlimited text for herself, it will cost you $10 more to bump it up to cover all 3 phones. That would increase her bill by about $60 (plus taxes etc.). At that point, you could wait a couple months to see how it works out and to think about moving to the Mobile Share plan or not.
You can move the account to Mobile Share at any time, so you could do that later. The key is for phones under contract, so I would suggest not upgrading any phones until you do your research there. Since we don't know when the current promotions will end, let's use the "base" costs/numbers, so the 10GB data plan would cost you $100, plus $40 for each smartphone + $20 for your daughter's "non-smartphone" - $25 for each smartphone not under contract. That would be about $150/month (plus taxes, etc.) for the phones with no contracts. Next do an upgrade for one phone and you can pay $200 for the phone plus losing the $25/month discount and you go to $175/month (plus taxes, etc). You could also upgrade the phone using NEXT so you only pay the sales taxes up front and then pay about $27/month for the phone. That still takes you to about $175/month plus taxes, etc. At this point it still looks cheaper than the Family Talk plan, but you've only upgraded one phone. If you upgrade a second smartphone, then it's about the same cost as the current Family plan.
If you move your daughter to a smartphone, it may be cheaper on Mobile Share, because you would need to add a data plan on the Family Talk account for her too, so it would add about $30 on the Family Talk plan, but it would basically only cost you the cost of the phone under the Mobile Share plan, and you already said you wold give her a second hand smartphone, so it wouldn't cost you anything on your bill.
The big thing to remember is that if you move wife's account to a Mobile Share plan, you can't go back to the old Family Talk plan she has now. It looks like the Mobile Share will possibly save you money (as long as you don't upgrade your phones or cost you about the same if you upgrade all of the smartphones) so that might be the way to save the most money in the long run.
As for the other fees, I'm not sure about them. When we moved from 2 Family Talk accounts to a Single Family Talk account, then to Mobile Share back in February, we did it all in one phone call, and I don't remember any fees other than the normal monthly service fees. It might have been a special case for mine because I had trouble trying to make the changes at a store right after the Mobile Share Value Plans were announced, and I ended up talking with a Social Media Manager who made my account changes for me. There are no extra charges to move from the Family Talk to Mobile Share, but I'm not sure about that transfer of billing responsibilty fee you mention. They may be able to waive it or they may not.
The other thing to remember to check is to see if your (or your wife) qualifies for an employee discount through your work. My cell phone account is in my wife's name because her employer gave a 22% discount on service, where my old one only gave about 20%. Those numbers can add up quickly when you start dealing with $100 or higher data plans, so you want to make sure you get it if you qualify...
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varuscelli
Scholar
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117 Messages
10 years ago
Good points about not being able to merely add lines to my wife's existing plan since it's an individual plan. I did not realize we could not do that (and hers is an individual plan). That sure looks like it would push us toward a Mobile Share plan. Thanks, sandblaster.
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varuscelli
Scholar
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117 Messages
10 years ago
Wow, thanks Jerry B for the detailed reply. This is all good info for us to consider.
I'm crunching some numbers now with different scenarios, for each plan building in at least one upgraded iPhone 6.
It's actually looking as though the Mobile Share will work best for us (either the 10GB or the 30GB promotion).
If we can get by on 10GB, which I think we can, it would work out to a very desirable monthly cost (even with a new 6 added in, given the cost of her current plan).
Kind of hard to pass up the 30GB promotion, though -- even though we might not find ourselves needing nearly that much data based on our historical use).
Hey, thanks all of your for great info for us to think about.
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