T-MOBILE Flex Pay-Help!!!?

[Ian]

What the heck is T-Mobile Flex-Pay and how much does it cost? Is it monthly or yearly, or etc.? Thanks!

[Unregistered]

Flexpay service is a cell phone plan that doesn't give you any surprises.
It is possible to signup for flexpay service with no contract, a 1 year contract or a 2 year contract depending on the location at which you signup.

Most of the plans that are available to regular customers are also available to flexpay customers with a few exceptions such as internet only plans, blackberry data-only plans, and T-Mobile @ home service.

Otherwise the same plan and feature options are available to those whom signup on flexpay. see Unsupported Browser

Main difference between regular monthly service and Flexpay service is that you pay for all of your service charges after you have used them with their regular accounts, where as on flexpay you pay for the services and features before you have used it.

A second difference and very important part is the Flexpay service has a second account for funds, that acts in a very similar way to a piggy bank. The piggy bank, which is called the flexaccount, is used to pay for overages, ringtones, games wallpapers, and any other extra's that you might use above and beyond what was included with any of your chosen plan and features.

When signing up with new T-mobile service you have a very important question to answer.

Do you want a discount on a phone?
If you said yes to this then,
- To get a discount on a new phone you do need to run a credit check and qualify for a contract.
* note you might only qualify for a contract on T-mobiles flexpay service.

If you do not qualify for a contract, then T-Mobile does not permit you to have a discount with a new phone purchase because you could then walk away after 1 day or even an hour of service and they will never get back the amount of money it cost them to purchase, ship to the store and sell you that phone.

Your second decision when opening the service is what type of account you would prefer.

Tmobiles regular service works like this.
You choose a plan, your phone, you get a number, you sign a contract that you can get out of within the first 2 weeks without paying a cancellation fee. You walk out of the store charge the phone at home, play with your phone. You use it in a few different places, you like it and play with it alot then its about a month and a week from being in the store and you get this big bill in the mail. Its like 30 pages. Oh no… you wonder how much did I use my phone. You open the bill and you think I have signed a contract I got my new phone for free. But I have a $200 bill to pay? WOW. Because your plan was 600 minutes which is $40 plus insurance 5 plus 1000 messages for 10 plus some taxes that should be only like 55 plus some taxes but thats only like another 5 so like 60$ what happened. Well there is also that 35 activation fee and each overage minute that you were not aware of but were talking with everyone on your new phone. so those extra 250 minutes at $0.40 per minute cost you an extra $100 and you start with a $200 bill and need to pay it or your service is canceled and you pay a cancelation fee on top of whatever else has occurred. To top it off your current second minutes cycle you have probably already used about 1 1/2 weeks of service and have used about 300 minutes.

Now flexpay service. It doesn’t have those surprises. If you were qualified and chose to open under a contract you did get the discount on the phone or even the free phone, but you also paid for your first month of service So you paid the 40 for the plan and the 5 for insurance and 10 for 1000 message. You walk out of the store you go home charge up the phone and start calling your friends. You love your phone and are happily making some calls. You get a notice in the mail about 1 week after opening the service showing your next payment due in about 3 weeks, and about 2 weeks later, 3 weeks into using this device you are just calling your girl and this voice comes on informing you that you have about $5 remaining to make calls and that your flexaccount is low. Now at this point you have used all your minutes. You can add some money to your flexaccount for the next week noting that any of these minutes coming out of your flexaccount during the last week of your first cycle will deduct from your flexaccount at $0.20 per minute. So if you can wait then you don’t make many calls that week, if you can’t you need to just put more funds into the flexaccount just like it was a piggy bank, You also at that time need to pay for next months service.