Hi Mark & All.
The $49.99 TF deal is kind of silly (IMO) because it only allots 1200 T&V - which means buying refill cards to get that full 365 days of service - and it didn't appear to make a point of that, so I'm guessing that folks may buy it thinking it'll give them 1200 of each MONTHLY, every month vs. 1200 for a full year.
By way of contrast - the Redpocket 'essential' deal, even at twice the price gives 500 of everything each 30 days - and is a bit odd as their 'year' is only 360 days - but it is good because it is a one-and-done deal.
My 2.5 cents on the matter of TF:
It is one of those companies that is just so easy to despise.
My 1st direct exposure was via my (now) partner's TF device - which was actually an Android smartphone - but made dumb by TF - trashed is what I'd call that - if politeness matters, then lobotomized will do.
And...she was paying through the nose for simple uses of only the most basic services.
As soon as I learned that she was putting herself broke buying refill cards, I got her onto a real phone with a drastically lower cost - so low in fact, that she insisted for me to get onto the same plan with her & still it was about 25% of what she had been paying, for far better services for BOTH of us.
We then got together & ended up living in a total dead zone, but being as we needed to go to some places each week, we also added a pair of Ringplus phones to cover where there was no AT&T signal - since it could work on cheap, used phones and the initial costs altogether were trivial - and still - no TF, thank goodness.
BUT:
Then that magic 'sale' came around at a chain just as obnoxious as TF, so I went looking & grabbed 5 cards - and the race was on !!
Spent an enjoyable afternoon driving to 1/2 dozen FD stores and bought all that I could find.
I also got bamboozled by a chain I refer to as 'worst buy' that offered the same deal, but then shipped BYOD SIM kits without the allotments - which I still have, for the moment...
Then I got reminded of just how amazingly obnoxious TF really is by trying to get help from their joke called 'support'.
Getting 2 phones to work with TF was a true time-eater; mine was a nasty Blu phone that was never very good anyhow - and her little, locked TF device was the other, so we used 2 cards at a time for a while, then I tired of the rotten Blu phone & replaced it with a (10 times nicer !!) LG phone & got on Redpocket instead.
After however much time has elapsed since the start of this (non-)adventure, we will soon be 100% free of TF, and I will NOT miss that company's tricks.
(Oh, you had 1700 accumulated minutes ?? So sorry, they are lost now & we cannot get them back...etc.)
Single this and triple that and silly stuff all around - they are almost as easy to despise as FP, which didn't ever work around here anyhow.
The only - only - only goodness we've gotten from them or any of their child companies is the ability to pick up small phones for prices so cheap as to be silly - to be re-purposed into such things as MP3 players.
The best model ever for this was the LG Fuel - what a great little workhorse phone for $5-$10 !!
And fond memories of Android Area 51, which made all that quite easy - but is now just a memory - while I am sitting here looking right at an LG Fuel sitting in a cradle, ready to use as a camera, MP3 recorder, GPS & 1/2 dozen other things that it does quite well despite its age.
Thanks TF, sorta-kinda !!