Can I cancel my AT&T contract and switch to prepaid?

Question

Level 1

5 points

Can I cancel my AT&T contract and switch to prepaid?

I used to have a Pay As You Go account with AT&T which I switched to a contract for the iPhone.

I'm still within the first 30 days so I can cancel the contract without paying the $175.

What I want is to cancel my contract, *keep my phone number* and switch back to pre-paid.

Can this be done?
Are there any drawbacks (will visual voicemail still work)?

If I understand correctly:
pre-paid means = $50 a month+tax = 200 min + unlimited data
contract means = $60 a month+tax = 450 min + unlimited data + 5000 nights/weekends

Windows Vista

Posted on Jul 31, 2007 10:14 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 31, 2007 10:21 AM in response to gozu

Contact AT&T Wireless customer support which is the only place you can get your questions answered for certain.

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Answer 2

Jul 31, 2007 10:21 AM in response to gozu

There is a lower amount of minutes on the pre-paid plans but otherwise, you should be able to break your contract and re-activate without much hassle. As far as keeping your own number, I don't know. AT&T is very picky about these things. They wouldn't let me keep my old number from another AT&T account after I did a new activation on the iPhone.

Call AT&T and find out...

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Answer 3

FBMike

Level 1

35 points

Jul 31, 2007 10:37 AM in response to gozu

I'm not sure if they would allow you to, since the prepaid one is 'subject to credit approval' (little/no/poor credit).

To answer the other questions though:

Visual Voicemail still works
The downsides are: Lower minutes, no Night/Weekend minutes, no SMS messages, annoying messages after every transaction ("Your last transaction cost $0.15. Your remaining balance is $29.85") - It does this after accessing the internet (with a "Your transaction cost $0.00.." message), placing a call, receiving/sending a text message, etc..

I'm happy with the Pay As You Go plan because I very rarely use the phone function (I've used $1.05 worth over the past month, mainly using it for the internet). I also like to know exactly what my balance is, etc.. Seeing some of the stories of outrageous bills on a contract plan worries me!

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Answer 4

gozu Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 31, 2007 3:41 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Calling AT&T customer service and asking them these type of questions is not working for me.

Seriously. I spent about 4 hours on the phone and another hour in a corporate store JUST to get my old ATT number working on the iPhone. After I specified a hundred trillion times exactly what I wanted and been given bad info by THREE separate reps.

And to add insult to injury, the 4th rep which I called from the corporate store just wouldn't understand that I bought the iPhone free and clear and claimed that there was no such thing as a 30 day cancel period without penalty.

And that's why I posted this here instead of calling AT&T. I trust the information I get here a lot more.

Message was edited by: Host

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Answer 5

Hutch51

Level 1

126 points

Jul 31, 2007 10:47 AM in response to FBMike

That's not exactly true. The $69 and $89 pay as you go plans offer unlimited night and weekend minutes and the $59 offers 1000 anytime minutes. Only the least expensive plan offers no night and weekend minutes.

However the rest is absolutely true. I use the Pay as you go (having escaped from an AT&T contract a couple of years ago I swore I'd never do it again) and I love it. I too don't use many minutes and don't mind the reminders. The data reminders are a tad annoying, but you only get them when using Edge. Also, I would advise against using a Yahoo Pushmail account with the prepaid, as a number of users (myself included) have figured out that it causes the annoying reminders to come up randomly, even when not using the phone, often waking up to 40 or fifty of them that needed to be cleared. Once I got rid of my yahoo email though, I only get a couple a day.

Good Luck

Shaun

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Answer 6

Jul 31, 2007 1:11 PM in response to gozu

No matter what anyone specifies here, someone at AT&T must take care of it.

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Answer 7

gozu Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 31, 2007 1:28 PM in response to Allan Sampson

I know that. However, I do not wish to reinvent the wheel (if someone else has already done what I want to do) or spend any more time talking to AT&T than I need to.

Furthermore, there might be unofficial solution(s) to my problem which AT&T wouldn't know about or care to share with me.

Message was edited by: gozu

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Answer 8

Jul 31, 2007 2:13 PM in response to gozu

Only the folks ATT can answer your question. It depends on their policies and procedures. Even if someone knew whether you could keep the number or not, you still will have to deal with ATT to accomplish it. While I can't think of a technical reason that you could not keep the number there may be issues that I am not aware of that would prevent it.

Bottom line is you are going to have to accomplish this task by calling ATT or going to one of their stores.

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Answer 9

gozu Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 31, 2007 3:32 PM in response to Al Van Malsen

I understand that perfectly. In fact, it seems utterly obvious. I value past experiences of other people and I am trying to get as much useful information as I can before contacting AT&T.

I don't need people to tell me to contact AT&T.

In other words, if someone here has managed to pull this off, or fail pulling this off, then that testimony will be very valuable to me. "Go to battle prepared" and "Do your homework" are based on the same principle.

Message was edited by: Host

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