Big Ang said:

However, if you just want the lowest daytime rate and you want 365 day expiry AND you're already with PetroCan, then you can just buy their $100 top-up card (or buy a $25 card every 4 months). And then just wait till Speakout has another of their "Free phone with $100 airtime purchase" and buy a Speakout phone then.

That's exactly what I'm going to do. Will stay with PCM until Speakout has another free phone with 100$ airtime. Even if they will too make 25c/min for all denominations I am almost sure the 365 day expiry will stay.

However, if you just want the lowest daytime rate and you want 365 day expiry AND you're already with PetroCan, then you can just buy their $100 top-up card (or buy a $25 card every 4 months). And then just wait till Speakout has another of their "Free phone with $100 airtime purchase" and buy a Speakout phone then.

A couple of other options:
1. Buy a SO SIM from someone on this forum. You could then port your PCM number to SO (but then you'd lose remaining airtime and the PCM SIM) or use your new SO phone number and sell the PCM SIM to someone who prefers their service (e.g. because there are no 7-11 stores nearby.)
2. Buy a SO phone and SIM at 7-11 then sell the new phone privately or see 1.

Yes, of course PetroCan and Speakout are not the best solution for everyone, like your example shows. If your average phone call is 6+ minutes then of course Rogers is better. And if you make almost all your calls in the evening after 8pm then Rogers has a plan that's better than Speakout/PetroCan as well.

However, if you just want the lowest daytime rate and you want 365 day expiry AND you're already with PetroCan, then you can just buy their $100 top-up card (or buy a $25 card every 4 months). And then just wait till Speakout has another of their "Free phone with $100 airtime purchase" and buy a Speakout phone then.

Sypher said:

i just bought petro mobility base on the rate not even a week ago and now they changed it...gonna switch to SO now after i used up $20.

Is that worth it? Just get Rogers and charge it $100 since if you switch to speakout you'll need to buy another one of their crap phones which is gonna run you $100 anyway.

Saturday said:

Does anyone else think that rogers offer a better pay as you go plan now? Was it rogers that if you charge $100 you get a year until expiration? So if you use more than $100 (or not even since it rolls over) then Rogers is now a much better plan than PC Mobility.

With the new PetroCM rates, one can get away with 75$ per year using 3 X 25$ top-ops. This is cheaper than Rogers. Also, Rogers charges for messages left in and retrieve from the voice mail, even if you use a land line. So, I'll stay with PetroCM for now, as there are no 7-11 in my province. 🙁

So if you use more than $100 (or not even since it rolls over) then Rogers is now a much better plan than PC Mobility.

How so? If you buy $100 vouchers at PCM the per min rate is 22.7¢. Unless you do at least 5 minutes per day then Robbers is still more expensive. To get to that 5 minutes you've spent $1.25 just to start getting the 15¢/min rate.

http://www.rogers.com/web/cont.....aygo_rates

Their All Day Plan
25¢/ minute for first 5 minutes (of each day)
15¢/ minute for all other minutes (that day)

their service provider had raised rates some months ago and that PCM was trying to absorb them but could not any longer. If this is true I would expect that SO rates will go up soon as well.

It's probably true but SO already raised their rates a few months ago. They used to be 20¢/min no matter what size refill you buy. Then they raised it to 25¢/min for $25 and $50 refills.

In any case the service provider for both SO and PCM is ztar, but they buy cell coverage and airtime from Rogers. So it's possible that the price rise started with Rogers, not ztar. In fact, since ztar has reduced their airtime rates in the US nationwide from 20¢ to 15¢ I'd be inclined to lay the blame for increases in Canada on RogersRobbers.

Cheesy move by PetroCan and the PetroCan/Speakout parent company (forgot their name). Not the best way to keep/build their client base, especially with new cellphone competition just around the corner (in a year or so).

Let's face it, the only real advantage Speakout and PetroCan mobility has (or HAD in regards to PetroCan) is the long expiry times.

Once you remove the long expiry time, MOST other cellphone companies have a better prepaid plan - whether it's more options, variety of prepaid plans that might be better for some people, easier to buy airtime, etc etc.

Even Speakout's "Get a free phone with $100 airtime purchase" would be almost useless if the expiry time was only 1 month.

But as it stands now, it is really difficult to recommend PetroCan Mobility to anyone. For example, Fido has their version of the Free Nokia 2760 promo going on, and has lower rates (and their airtime expiry times are only slightly worse than PetroCanada's).

Hopefully the parent company doesn't let Speakout down this crappy path either

I should've bought 2 sim last year with the free phone promotion from speakout :/