Can you generally use corporate discount on prepaid cellular plans?

[Adam8281]

I'm considering breaking out of the "subsidized phone + 2 year contract" rut, and switching to buying my phone outright, and going contract free month-to-month. However, I'm wondering if corporate discounts are generally available on month-to-month prepaid plans (on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mo, & Verizon)? I get 15%-23% corporate discounts with the various carriers, which mitigates some of the price disparity between post-paid and pre-paid plans, unless I would also get the corporate discount on pre-paid plans. Anyone know?

 

[GregMal]

NOPE..........

 

[poofyhairguy]

More specifically- there are reasons that the major carriers re-brand their pre-pay services under a different brand. One reason is to be able to provide crappier service without it hurting the main brand. Another reason is to stop you from doing what you want to do.

 

[gsaldivar]

No.

Prepaid service is already cheap as hell, and usually on-par or better than you can get with corporate discounts on major carriers. No contracts to worry about, same great service at a fraction of the price.

Resist the temptation to cry with two loaves of bread under your arms...

 

[Adam8281]

No.

Prepaid service is already cheap as hell, and usually on-par or better than you can get with corporate discounts on major carriers. No contracts to worry about, same great service at a fraction of the price.

Resist the temptation to cry with two loaves of bread under your arms...

It actually doesn't seem like that huge of a price savings. [Note that I don't care a lick about text messages, since I use free Google Voice text messaging]. For example, for me my On-Contract price with AT&T is $40 (minutes) + $25 (data) - 15% corporate discount = $55.25/month. If I went prepaid, my options would either be the $50/month "unlimited" plan, or the $25/month plan with only 250 voice minutes. Neither of these plans includes SMARTPHONE data (their included data is non-smartphone only), which would require paying another $25/month, for a total of either $75/month (for unlimited minutes) or $50/month (for 250 minutes). The latter option is more expensive than my present ON-CONTRACT plan; the former is cheaper by $5.25, but only includes 250 voice minutes.

It's even worse on Verizon. My On-Contract price with Verizon would be $40 (voice) + $30 (data) - 18% (corporate discount) = $57.40/month. If I went prepaid, the cheapest I could do would be $45 (voice, why in the world is this more expensive than the on-contract voice portion??!?) + $30 (data) = $75. So going prepaid would apparently be $17.50/month more expensive than being on-contract.

I'd hardly describe these scenarios as "crying with two loaves of bread under my arms." Is there something I'm missing? Because it looks as though I'd be better off (from a financial perspective) being On-Contract with a corporate discount than being prepaid without a discount.

 

[gsaldivar]

Check out Virgin mobile, $60/month unlimited everything. You can get their top of the line Android phone (Motorola Triumph) right now for $210 with free shipping (search techbargains for the coupon code).

When comparing price, note that many prepaid providers include all taxes in the quoted monthly price.

 

[Adam8281]

Check out Virgin mobile, $60/month unlimited everything. You can get their top of the line Android phone (Motorola Triumph) right now for $210 with free shipping (search techbargains for the coupon code).

When comparing price, note that many prepaid providers include all taxes in the quoted monthly price.

Yeah, I'm aware of Virgin. However, what I'm actually interested in doing is buying my own phone, probably a Galaxy Nexus, and using it off-contract on a prepaid plan. However, I'd only want to do this if it represented a significant cost-savings over buying a subsidized phone On-Contract. Virgin doesn't allow you to bring your own phone to the plan; you've got to use one of theirs. As for Verizon and AT&T, as I mentioned above, going prepaid with them wouldn't really save me any money (in the case of Verizon it would be MORE money). I know there are MVNO's out there that are cheaper than being on contract, however, are there any MVNO's or prepaid plans that would be cheaper than being on contract (as discounted by corporate discount) AND would allow me to bring my own Top-tier smartphone (e.g., Galaxy Nexus, SGSII, HTC Rezound, etc.)?