New Phone! Switched Providers!

So yesterday I went all over town, which includes 3 places to look at new phones. I first went to bell. I thought I would get an android phone, I like google, I have an i-pod touch, and it's what D has and he likes his. When I got there I told her I was looking to upgrade and was thinking android. She shakes her head at me. I said really? She said they aren't supposed to but they don't recommend androids because they get a lot of returns on them. I said then I was thinking about the windows phone. She shakes her head again and says, "Same thing." I ask her what she does suggest then and she says either blackberry or i-phone. Ugh. I looked around a bit and asked some questions, and the best deal they could get me with the options I have already is to add $25 to the plan I already have and make my bill about $72 per month including taxes. Or I could keep my phone plan which is $42 a month and then just buy the phone for $500. No thanks.

So I headed to Telus. That's the provider D is with. Pretty much the same deal with them, the best option would be the $63 before taxes to include the features I wanted. No thanks. Plus he was a pushy salesman, definitely no thanks.

Then I headed to The Source. They have Bell phones and Virgin phones there. I started off looking at the Bell phones and she only had good things to say about the androids, and pointed out the Incredible S which is their newest phone. Again she said the best deal for my money and what I wanted would be about $72 a month with taxes. Ughh here we are again. Then as I was paying for an ipod charger I needed to pick up, she suggests Virgin mobile and says they have the same phone but they have cheaper plans. We look into it and for everything I want it would total $56 a month with taxes. Not too bad, I told her I needed to think about it and would be back with D to help me decide.

So after work D comes with me to The Source and I ended up switching to Virgin and getting the new HTC phone. It was $99, but comes on sale today for $49, so she said to come back today and she will give me a refund. Awesome! So far I really like it and Virgin seems good too. They use the same towers as Bell so reception won't be a problem here.

I get local evenings and weekends, 150 anytime minutes, unlimited texting including picture texts, call waiting, call display, message centre, 100MB of data. I hardly use my phone for calling (just receiving jobs for school), D and I mostly text, I call people on my parent's landline. I don't know how long 100 MB will last me, but I have wifi at my house and D's house so I can just switch to that and save my data. Also Virgin gives you the option to check what your data is at within the past two hours whenever you like, so it's easy to track your usage. They also won't charge you for overuse for the first two months since you are sort of learning how much data you do use. So far, I like it!