This is how you subsidize the cell phone deals...

My cute Motorola pink Razr has been fritzing out on me the past week or so, dying progressively more frequently each passing day, hour and minute even with a full charge. (Three calls in a row with T thinking I'm hanging up on him)! L and I wander on over to the "phone store" (cough A-T-T) to get a new phone. The salesperson ever so nicely offers to check if I'm eligible for an "upgrade" - Nope, not until July. OK, thinking upgrade=free as before when they were Cingular. I still need a phone and I like this Purple! LG for $99, I'll just pay the $99. Silly me. No, that's the UPGRADE price. Those in between phone/upgrade status people like me will pay $279, plus activation. Now what am I supposed to do? The nice honest salesperson who's last day was last night said to get a GO phone and use it until July! As long as it is the same carrier, otherwise if you stick your SIM card into another phone, terrible awful things will happen. So L and I go to Target and Best Buy (hoping BB might have other models-they don't) -- look at all the cool phones! Look at what AT&T has - uh. Evidently they spent all their money for the iPhone. I had a choice of 2 - a $39.99/$48.99 Samsung camera phone (Target was cheaper) or a Motorola C168i for $19.99 (same price at both stores). I chose the Motorola and it's actually a cute little phone. The sound quality is good, it has even more and louder ringtones than the now silenced Razr. The only things it doesn't have which I like are camera and speaker options. But overall, not a bad deal for less than $20 to carry me through to July...and to keep on hand afterwards if this happens again. Contract upgrade interim? - GO cheap!