Virgin mobile changed their pay-as-you-go plan a while ago. Used to be you could top up for any amount you wanted and it wouldn’t expire for 90 days.
I don’t use the cell phone that much. I think I’ve only ever had to buy more than the minimum amount of credit to keep the account alive once, and that was for Anime North. I’d just pay the minimum $15 every three months before the expiry date and my account would just keep growing. I didn’t care how much I was paying per minute or any of that. I was paying $5/month to have a cell phone, and I was pretty much okay with that.
But the bastards changed it on me. Now, if you only put in $15, it expires after 45 days. $10/month instead of $5. Ouch.
They didn’t warn me about this. I just found out the last couple times I topped up. I made a mental note to look into it.
Top up time again and [checked the web page](http://www.virginmobile.ca/site/en/pricesAndFeatures/html/topup.html). They have a sliding scale for expiry now, based on the amount of the top up. If I top up at $25, it expires after 90 days. That’s $8.33/month, which is better than $10. That’s the best option. $100 expires after a year, but that’s still $8.33/month, and you’re locking up more money than you need to.
I’m pretty sure cell phone companies just don’t want me as a customer. Or at least they don’t see my usage pattern as something they want to bother with. (If somebody were to offer some sort of decent data plan, they could probably milk me for more, but data in Canada universally sucks ass). At least Virgin comes reasonably close to offering something that I can live with without substantial amounts of anger and hatred.
* * *
I am currently living on my easy chair, alternating between the cold compress and a heating pad. My sister (who does sports therapy stuff so deals with things like cracked ribs a lot) says this is potentially a good thing. I’d rather stick to the heat, but she says the cold compress is what I should be doing at least until tomorrow.
I can’t sit up straight for any length of time, which makes doing my job rather difficult. I’m going to try bringing the computer into the living room to see if I can set up an easy chair workstation. This could be fun. (It’ll just take a while. I think I’ll use my desk chair to wheel various components back and forth. Lifting and carrying stuff is bad).