As I reported earlier, I planned to dump Verizon becaused it planned to hike the monthly charge of my low-usage plan from $7.50 to $15.00. I have since decided to try out Virgin Mobile, a pre-paid mobile pure-play. Today I have received the phone I ordered from Amazon.com. It only takes 10 minutes for me to activiate the phone. Tomorrow I will call Verizon to cancel the service.

Here is a return on investment analysis of my switching decision:

If I don't switch, my monthly mobile bill will come at around $18.00 (my original $7.50 plan actually costs close to $10 per month when multiple fees and taxes are included). In a year, it will cost me $216.

Now that I have switched, it costs me $65.27 to buy a phone from Amazon (which included $10 airtime that will expire in 3 months). Virgin Mobile also asks for $20 every three months to keep the phone active, so in one year, it will cost me $65 (one-time) + $20 * 4 = $145. Moving forward, my running cost per year can be as low as $80. It is even $40 lower than the annual cost of the original $7.50 plan (which costs $120 with all extra fees included).

Therefore, I decided to register $71 in my Year 2004 CFI scorecard.