T-Mobile and TuYo updates

On the T-Mobile front, a few things have changed on the phone lineups. The Samsung t109, a basic phone, is $50. The nokia 1680, a camera bar phone, is the same price. Currently T-Mobile has a promotion, however, that'll give you an extra $10 at activation, $10 after a month of service and $10 after another month of service, presumably in addition to the usual $15 in activation credit you get with a t-Mobile To Go phone, though I might be wrong about that last bit.

On TuYo, the largest t-Mobile reseller, you've got a Sony Ericsson z310a (review coming sometime in the future) for $90 (ech), the Motorola w220 for $50 (meh) and the Nokia 1208 (review coming eventually) for $30 (hmm). Rates are good, though; text messaging is a scant five cents per message at this point. You can also, for $5, get no-extra-charge calling to Mexico, Hondouras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Finally, Club MAX is out, a loyalty program that is at least halfway decent. $50 in refills gets you a $5 bonus, another $50 gets you another 45, another $100 gets you another $10 and a final $100 gets you $20 additional added onto your account.

At that point, you're a TuYo VIP. Problem is, I'm not quite sure what that means. The website isn't set up to tell you, either. What I did find out though is that, for $3 per month, you can get 100 text messages per month, a decent discount from the already-cheap 5 cents per message on pay-per-use texting.

Gophone Loyalty Program Shrinks

In these troubled economic times (drink) AT&T is lowering the value of its Gophone program for people who have been on the service for awhile. This comes on the heels of turnig their "unlimited" $20/month data plan into a 100 MB/month plan, which is only enough for non-smartphones...just like AT&T likes it.

The change: after your first $100 refill 9where you'll get $5 as a bonus) you'll get $10 per $100 added. This is in contrast to the current program, which steps up to $15 and eventually $20, depending on how much money you give AT&T.

Of course, not many people knew about this loyalty program, but dumbing it down doesn't help AT&T's case, especially if Verizon decides to keep Alltel's U Prepaid system around after the impending merger.

Tracfone Sweepstakes!

Nope, I'm not dead. Just have been very busy, and there hasn't been too much prepaid news lately. I think I'll do some phone reviews over the break...which will be starting in a little over 18 hours for me...but until then

TRACFONE SWEEPSTAKES!

Thanks to The Turk, it has been brought to my attention that Tracfone is giving five winners per month, for the next twelve months, Visa gift cards of various values: $500, $250, $100, $75 and $30. Nothing to sneeze at, especially 1st through 3rd prizes.

You don't have to have a Tracfone to enter the drawing, though you do have to fill out a short questionnaire about the phone plan you're on right now (oddly enough, Sprint isn't listed in the carrier selection dropdown, so I had to select Other). You can enter once per day, and anyone 13 or older can join the fun.

Nothing to lose, so far as I can tell. I'd say enter early, enter often!