NotSmellyPrepaid

I'm thinking about Alltel prepaid for the favorite number and free N/W features on their pay-by-the-day plan (75c/day). I've seen Alltel phones for sale on walmart.com, and I have located a store within 100 miles of my home as well. I've also figured out a way to get one shipped to me via the website. Any opinions on which of these 3 methods of acquiring a phone is best? If I buy a handset through Wal-Mart, how does the activation process work? Is there still a $35 activation fee that way?

Thanks!

HATMAN

You have to call them on the phone, can't do on line. Also, you have to pick a zip code that is on their towers footprint. I had to pick a town that is 30 miles West of me. I didn't care if I had a local number or not. Mine works on Sprint, Verizon and U S Cellular. The hard part is finding their local footprint. I used zip 53566, Monroe Wisconsin. Check this forum for a lot of Alltel info...
http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/alltel-users/

P.S. This phone seems to work on just about any CDMA carrier in the country. As I mentioned B4, depending where I am at in my town (population @ 50,000) the phone defaults to Sprint. If that signal is absent, it goes next to Verizon, then to U S Cellular.

NotSmellyPrepaid

Here was what I figured out that I think will work to place an online order. On the online form, they ask for a landline number within the city that you are claiming for your zip code and home coverage area. If you go to grandcentral.com and also to whitepages.com in 2 different tabs, here's how it works. First find a zip code that works for Alltel. Then figure out the area code for that zip, go to grandcentral and look to see if they have numbers in that area code. If they do, look through the cities listed. Double check the offered numbers through whitepages.com on the reverse phone number search. More than a couple of grandcentral's numbers are former "landline" exchanges that still show up as landlines on whitepages.com Pick one of those, sign up for it, and use it as the home telephone number on your Alltel order.

I'm guessing this will work if they don't have any *other* mechanisms in place for verifying your residence other than a landline number in the city you're claiming.

Brings me back to my original question: Can I buy an Alltel phone at Wal-Mart and activate it online? Save myself the 100+ mile each way drive to a B&M Alltel store?

HATMAN

I thought that the Wal-farts in Alltel's footprint only carried the Simple Freedom ? ? (SF is owned by Alltel)

NotSmellyPrepaid

I think you're right - I just pulled up the walmart.com site a little while ago and noticed that the logo included the words Simple Freedom. Does this mean that Simple Freedom phones cannot be activated on Alltel U plans? Ugh... Back to the grandcentral.com landline swapping scheme... What do you think of that idea?

HATMAN

Simple Freedom isn't too shabby. 15 cents a minute, same coverage, but I think you need to put some money on it every 60 days. I had one but I sold it to one of my wifes' friends, she loves the phone and service...

NotSmellyPrepaid

The purpose of this phone would be as a substitute for a landline... 15 cpm is way too steep for my purposes. But I really wanted the "favorite number" feature of AlltelU in order to pair it up with a grandcentral.com number. GrandCentral has the option to show your GC number on the caller ID of the phone you're forwarding calls to instead of the number of the person actually calling you. Is this making sense yet? $22.50/month for ALL my incoming calls. Plus, GC has another feature where you can log into your online account and "click2call" from the puter, it routes it to your forwarding number (where it shows as your GC favorite number calling you), you answer it, and then it calls the person you want to talk to. So that same $22.50/month can also buy a whole bunch of outgoing calls, too. I think I think too much.

HATMAN

Here is the latest Alltel PRL, takes some patience to figure it out...

PRL at_00606