Ok, its time I tell the truth about something that has a special dislike from me. In the past two years, I have had to put up with people complaining about the fact that I don't have one. They feel that I should fall in and get one. However, I feel that most of the people complaining are actually full of shit.
One reason for this is that a considerable amount of people saying this are in family plans, and 2/3rds of them don't even pay a dime. These family plans are inherently cheaper cause it's multiple users in one bundle. In my case, I have practically no family to speak of. As a result, the majority who fall under family plans and aren't paying a dime have zero right to talk to me since unlike them, I would be paying out the nose for one.
Now let's take a look at the plans. The bare minimum for most services is $40 a month for only a couple of hundred minutes and won't give me the ability to turn off text messages. Now I know this will sound weird, but I hate texting and think its a total waste of money and time which is why I want this. Also, given all this talk about 3G and 4G, why not pass the savings onto us since voice data is not that intensive? I'll tell you why, cause most cell phone carriers care more about making a buck.
Now I know that at this point people will say go prepaid. Well, I hate to break this, but prepaid phones suck. I have looked into this option and the one experience I had was five years ago with Cingular Wireless. In short, they kept sending me text messages until I called fraudulent service on them for it. Also, a considerable amount of research I've done suggests that most of the services are given less bandwidth than the primary carriers. A perfect example of this is that Boost Mobile, which I was a heartbeat from getting, actually is owned by Sprint Nextel, isn't even 3G, and has godawful coverage when compared to Sprint's direct offering.
Last, but not least, the bullshit deposits. I refuse to do a deposit of more than $200 to a cell phone service cause it is an unbalanced price and feels like an act of bad faith. In addition, many of them try to keep people from getting it back by using weird agreement clauses. To me, this is the equivalent of throwing my money in trashcan and setting it on fire so they can go piss off as far as I am concerned.
With this information in mind, I'm calling bullshit on people bitching to me about not having a cellphone. The plans are total garbage for me and I have no chance for a family plan. Prepay services are a total fucking joke. Most importantly, I refuse to do a deposit that I won't get back. With this in mind, the next person who has a problem with me not having a cellphone should be paying for the service themselves or be ready to get berated.