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Comment by dlandis | Hacker News Reader

Is there any downside to having a prepaid plan as opposed to a normal plan ? For example when the next year comes up, is there any additional hassle to continue with the same account and pay for another year ?

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I have the annual plan and while the auto-renew didn't work for me for some reason, I was able to pay the amount due on their website hassle-free. In some cases I think the pre-paid is more advantageous if you're not a heavy data user since it allows tethering up to your data limit and also includes 1 month of data rollover.

I think the biggest thing missing through pre-paid is the ability to finance devices through the carrier (if this is something you do). Additionally, something like the iphone upgrade program isn't supported if you are on a prepaid plan either. Also, if you ever travel internationally the pricing is absurd ($35/WEEK extra for 5GB of data).

That said, I get the feeling AT&T isn't thrilled about people that opt for their prepaid plans. Porting my number over required me to wait for hours on hold, their support is horrendous if you ever need to get in touch with them for something, and you have to manage your account through an entirely different website that frankly looks like one giant phishing attempt.

> That said, I get the feeling AT&T isn't thrilled about people that opt for their prepaid plans. Porting my number over required me to wait for hours on hold, their support is horrendous if you ever need to get in touch with them for something, and you have to manage your account through an entirely different website that frankly looks like one giant phishing attempt.

Absolutely. I had the same experience & got the same impression.

Honestly, when I'm getting indicators that I'm doing something that a horrible megacorporation dislikes, but enables because it lacks the will to go through the steps to end some particular line-of-business... that's when I feel like I'm doing something right.

I would have expected them to prefer a prepaid plan, they get all the money up front. Isn't that why they give you a discount, to encourage it? But I guess the discount is why they prefer a postpaid plan? Very odd, I wonder why the prepaid plans even exist, or are discounted.

Postpaid plans (the traditional ones which have contracts) usually give discounted or free phone upgrades while prepaid does not, so they can bring the price down.

Ah, right. (Still a mystery why they offer postpaid at that price if they don't want to).

But I think I'll stick with cricket after all. Still has discounted phone upgrades, still with no contract (although the phone can be unlocked from cricket until you've used it a year on cricket, I still prefer that).

(And, of course, to make things even weirder, cricket is owned by AT&T)

It can have effects on the priority your data receives on the network. This post [0] gives a fair amount of detail - from what I can understand, AT&T gives their prepaid plan the same priority as normal post-paid.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

One tangential hassle is situations like Blizzard demanding phone numbers to play games online and not allowing prepaid for some bad reason.

I have yet to run into any such issues. I'm not even sure it would be possible to identify that my ported number, that I've had for ... 17 years?... is prepaid.

But I don't play WoW or anything, so...

My guess is it depends on prepaid carrier. Some of them appear as 'voip' providers. Funny thing is they have no way to detect actual carrier VOIP services like T-Mobile DIGITS as being VOIP.

If it's first party prepaid, Cricket looks the same as AT&T for example. Some carriers do stuff like buy bandwidth.com numbers, these will show up as voip even if it's only usable from a phone plan.

Prepaid plans often nickel-and-dime you for small features, although that is starting to happen on normal postpaid plans too.

For example:

- 5G

- Visual voicemail

- Roaming (esp. international)

- Tethering

- Limited to lower video resolutions

- Spam filtering

But in this case, the question is about ATT prepaid. My understanding is that 5G, tethering, and Visual voicemail are included. Not sure about the others.

As I understand it 5G is only included on the unlimited data plans.

I have non-unlimited data and 5G.

For AT&T prepaid, I can verify that all of these work as normal (with a post-paid plan) except for international roaming. I haven't traveled internationally since making the switch, so I don't know about that one.

That said, you can always just buy and pop in a prepaid SIM card if you're traveling for extended periods.

> - 5G

"Luddite", don't need it.

> - Visual voicemail

Built into Android.

> - Roaming (esp. international)

Estoy un gringo.

> - Tethering

Built into Android.

> - Limited to lower video resolutions

My eyes can't see 1080p on a phone screen.

> - Spam filtering

Built into Android.

Roaming is a problem, esp if you are in rural areas. Prepaid is good, if you are in a major metro, and you don't go to rural areas much.

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