kevm14 wrote:- The phone appeared to be in mint condition. It did not have any plastic on the screen as you would be able to satisfyingly peel off on a new phone, but it otherwise appears to have zero imperfections at all. Considering this was $220 and was among the cheapest non-broken used V30 I found on eBay, I am quite satisfied. I think the "seller refurbished" did pretty much suggest this would be my outcome. Also generally, I have found that the condition is always one notch above what is advertised, to keep the buyer happy. I.e. if it says "used phone, some scuffs and scratches are possible," you can basically count on it being mint. Many use a condition standard and again, "seller refurbished" or "manufacturer refurbished" should be about the same as mint or at least excellent.
I was showing the phone to someone at work and noticed that at the bottom edge there ARE signs of wear. It is scuffed near the bottom left corner on the aluminum, and there are some light marks near the charger (like someone was sloppily trying to plug it in and kept missing). Now it is possible this all happened this weekend (i.e. Ian could have conceivably done all of it) but I think I just didn't look closely at the bottom edge. If that is the case, it still took like 2-1/2 days to even notice...
Though it also means the ad was still correct. It literally mentioned a scuff/scratch in the ad.
Got my SIMs in the mail. It actually came with two starter SIMs to give to friends/family as a referral
Came with a SIM removal tool. I guess you pop the SIM in, open the app and everything is ported in like 10 minutes or something.
I found conflicting reports of visual voicemail support for Android though iOS appears to be fully supported. Sounds like VVM may or may not work depending on device. That would be quite annoying to go back to old school voicemail but I would probably wait it out given the substantial savings. Assuming everything else is good. May switch tonight. Not sure yet. I have to do two lines.
So it wasn't too hard to activate and get the numbers ported over. The process went something like this:
- Go to Mint website
- Enter numbers from back of SIM card (the big card)
- Create Mint password
- Then enter a bunch of stuff like name, address, carrier login ID, pin, zipcode
- It pretty much ports the number at that point
- I added a credit card to get auto recharge....though I did that online originally anyway
I did this a second time for Jamie's number. It is basically like having two accounts. I just will manage both as I always have (different numbers but used the same password...).
Note that I did setup the PIN on AT&T's website right before starting all this. It just seemed like a good idea with Mint asking for a "PIN" which is better than giving them my actual login password. I guess I was right because this worked fine.
So the bandwidth test looked good. I will test in other places. Some other comments.
- iPhone automatically handles MMS APN stuff. Good for them. Android not so much. But they provide the settings and I dutifully typed them in. Seemed to work. This was the same deal with AT&T. The 6S used them automatically, and I had to manually enter mine in to get everything to work the first time.
- Again, it is unlimited talk and text. The plans we have now are 5GB data/mo/line.
- WiFi calling is supported though I turned it off on the 6S because it defaults to that and that seems like it will create problems for me. I left it on for Android since you can set it to only use when there is no cell service (but there is WiFi) which seems like the way it should be.
- Mint now (very recently) started supporting visual voicemail on iOS. I tested it and it works. This is good.
- It does not seem to work on my phone. I have to call a number like it is 1999. This is not good. I e-mailed them and it MAY be a matter of them doing something on their end, as some people seemed to have it working at some point. I will give this a chance. I don't think I can go back to dialing a number and managing VM that way, at least not after having VVM for so long. I have manual VM at work though...
So yeah this was pretty easy. Logged into AT&T and it's like....your account is canceled. Didn't have to do anything else.
So I bought phones....used them on my existing provider. Then changed providers. I did all of this without entering any store. I'd say that's the way it ought to be.
Service was a little spotty at Walmart last night. I wasn't in the store too long and didn't walk around much though. Good news: there is Walmart wifi, and so that is there for calling, texting and internet. Actually it downloaded a podcast after I connected to it.