BeigeJournal

I’ve used AT&T long distance for some time now, but I’ve not been using enough long-distance service recently to exceed their monthly minimum, so I’ve been hit with a fee for that. Therefore, I switched to an SBC plan with no minimum.

SBC sent me a $25 gift card as part of their long distance service promotion of the moment. It works like a credit card, but but is a sufficient hassle to actually use that probably lots of people fail to use the full amount, if they use it at all. How clever of them.

Now, one reason that I’m not using much long distance service on my home POTS line is that I’ve switched my Verizon wireless phone to the America’s Choice 400 plan, which is only a few dollars a month more than the plan I was on before but which includes, as the name implies, 400 peak minutes, which is plenty for me, unlimited night and weekend minutes, unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, and domestic long distance. Thus I can now make lots of long distance calls on my cell phone now without any effect on my bill. I’ll add that I’ve been very happy with Verizon. The phone works, the coverage is good, and there are no surprises on the bill.

Verizon has a handy web site on which you can pay your bill, or, if you choose, part of it. So I used my SBC gift card to pay part of my cell phone bill, the cell phone that I use instead of the POTS landline. So for signing up for long distance service I plan to use very rarely, I got money to pay for the service, from another company, that I actually do use. Works for me.