Wednesday, September 07, 2022

Rather Than Buy A Phone From My AT&T Carrier, I Bought An Unlocked Phone And Transferred Everything Myself

Buying a new cellphone is very much like buying a new car.

Car dealerships always try to upsell you to get higher commissions. And the second you're approved for the loan and sign the deal; get in the car and drive off the lot, it immediately depreciates and becomes a relic. And it doesn't matter what brand of car (or cellphone) you purchase, or what price you pay. Therefore, my personal preference is to purchase a less expensive cellphone, instead of spending $600-$1,000. I mean, come on, it's a phone, not a kidney or a lung.

Cellphones, like cars, are purposely programed to last for a limited time so that you have to repurchase a new one. And their life span seems to be getting shorter and shorter with each cellphone I purchase. Take for instance, the battery in my previous phone, which lasted less than a year before it started quickly dying only a few hours after I charged it. And I'm someone who streams a lot of music through my cellphone; therefore, I need a long-lasting battery.

So, yes, it was time to shop for a new phone. Which was a task I dreaded more than having shingles and poison ivy at once.

But by the conclusion of this post, you'll discover that my story has a happy and satisfying ending.

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My cellphone carrier is AT&T and I have a prepaid plan ($30.00 for unlimited calls and texting, and 5GB of data). And if I go over the data, I don't get charged, it just gets a bit slower. I can live with that. Now, to be honest, I don't have any complaints about the cellular service, as far as being stable and reliable. No matter where I am, I always get strong cellular service on my phone. In that respect, AT&T rocks.

However...

...what I do have a major complaint about (and conveyed this to an AT&T supervisor on the phone last week), is that their in-store customer service is horrendous. And I knew that my call with the supervisor was being recorded, so I really let my opinions fly. Whenever I go into one of their retail stores, I am either treated like I'm invisible, or feel as though I am walking into a car dealership and all the salespeople are sizing me up to get a sense of how much money I'm willing to spend on a phone before they actually approach and ask if I need any assistance. We have several AT&T stores here in Center City, Philadelphia, and they are all the same. When you finally get someone to help you (because they are always on their own cellphones, texting or gaming), they will slothfully walk up to you and say in a robotic voice, "What brings you in today?"

And the second I told them that I am a prepaid customer who is looking for a prepaid phone, they completely lost interest in helping me. In all the stores I visited, every salesperson informed me that AT&T no longer sells prepaid phones to prepaid customers. I even had a young lady at one of the stores tell me that they no longer offer prepaid phones because they don't make much money from them. They would rather you purchase one of their high end phones and make monthly payments. And if I wanted a prepaid phone, I'd have to go to Best Buy, Walmart, or Target and purchase an unlocked phone. When I asked her if I purchased an unlocked phone, could they transfer the SIM card and data for me from my old phone to my new one, she said, "Yes", but I could tell she was trying to dissuade me from bringing the phone to them, but rather do it myself.

I walked out of there feeling as if my eight years of being a loyal, AT&T prepaid customer meant nothing to them. I was not only hurt, but pissed. That's when I decided to contact the company directly and tell them what I thought.

And of course, the supervisor expressed how sorry AT&T was for having had such a negative experience in their retail stores and apologized to me. But again, I was told that I couldn't update my prepaid phone online or in one of their stores. They only offered prepaid phones for first-time customers.

Now, does that make any sense to you? Because all first-time customers who purchase a prepaid phone will eventually need a new phone, but won't be able to get one from AT&T because they will no longer be a first-time customer. DUH!

So, do you know what I did?

I said, "To hell with this! I'm going online and researching where I can purchase an unlocked phone and teach myself how to transfer the SIM card and data from my old phone to my new phone."

And that's exactly what I did.

After doing some shopping around, I also found the perfect unlocked phone at Target (which was on sale for $179.99), that had a long-lasting battery, and lots of space.

So I bought it, and then went home and transferred my old phone to my new phone, and it worked like a charm. I was proud of myself for doing it on my own and not needing a ~~fucking~~ non-helpful salesperson to do it for me. And that's what I plan on doing in the future.

By the way, after a full charge, I can get TWO days of battery life from this phone.

Here are a few photographs of my new Moto G Power 2022...