TMobile Prepaid Plan Phones

Hi. I called TMobile about their prepaid plans and told them I wanted to use a Motorola V195. The rep told me that phone wouldn't work with their prepaid service; only the phones they sell with their prepaid kits work with their prepaid service. Can this be right? If the phone is setup for their network (and it is), then why would it matter?

Can anyone confirm this? Does TMobile restrict usage of their prepaid plans to only those phones they sell directly?

[Nazdreg]

I talked to T-Mobile today regarding the same question, I wanted the Motorola PEBL instead of one of the Prepaid Kit-Phones.

The lady I talked to had me on hold while she talked to the technical dept. and finally she said that I had to purchase the new phone at full price, then I had to purchase some kind of activation thingy, and then I could purchase the prepaid airtime I wanted.
So it was possible to get another phone, but it was VERY expensive.

[Wombat]

Branded Phones work with any sim of the brand, prepaid or contract dont matter. Now you may not get some features with a PDA on a prepaid sim om Tmobile, but the phone will work. You need to have a branded phone unlocked to use on another service, not the same one.

Get a t-mobile prepaid sim on eBay, about 10 bucks. you have 2 options there an activated sim typically good for 30 to 60 days (refill to extend as with any prepaid sim unused min roll over.) with 150 min before needing to be refilled. Or an activation kit 60 min good for 90 days.

If you shop around on eBay or the smaller cell shops most will do you a deal on a phone and prepaid card, any phone.

Using a non branded or unlocked phone may require setting it up for that service. But the sim cards are plug and play. Now if you use a phone they dont carry it may not be able to get there downloads, but thats no big dead with a cable or bluetooth.

The exception to this being net10 and Trackphones, these use special software and require a reflash to make the phone usable.

I deal with this a lot, never a bit of trouble.

[carcomptoy]

I had always thought you could just get a pre-paid kit or something and use whatever phone you wanted as long as it was unlocked. I should hope T-Mobile's not restrictive like the aforementioned Net10 and Tracphone.

[gregg]

Originally Posted by Wombat

The exception to this being net10 and Trackphones, these use special software and require a reflash to make the phone usable.

what does "reflash" mean? I have the LG 600g blue tooth phone. I am on net10....I love the fact that it's 10 cents everywhere and mostly use skype on my computer at home anyway. What I REALLY HATE is that according to their customer service (if you can call their scripted broken English any form of service), you can't turn off or block the text messaging which charges you 5 cents for each one. They lump all messages together and if you forget and hit the answer messages when you first turn on the phone it defaults to text and tells me I'm being charged for that message. So...I make sure I hit clear when I first turn on the phone and the look for the phone icon that tells me someone is actually calling me and left a message. I never use texting and wish I could turn it off. I get several annoying messages each day from someone named "ELLE..." I accidentally answered one and it was a message about PETA. Isn't there anything I can do to block these? What about one of those unblocked generic phones? Will they allow me to turn off texting?