Phone Home. No, Wait, Don't.

This is a Public Service Announcement, which is my way of saying that I just found out something that hadn't made sense before, so I thought I would put it here, where other people can see it, and maybe benefit. Or not.

We have three 'GoPhones'. We pay for them once (or more, depending on usage) a year. We give them $100 per phone, once a year. Due to the weird way that AT&T structures their payments, it's only good for a year. Give them less, and it only counts for 3 or 6 months. When you get to the end of the year, you give them money again. If you do that before the end of the year, or within, I think, one month after the end of the year, you get to keep the money thats in the account, and your account balance is now the amount you gave them plus whatever was in the account. If you don't, then the account balance is the amount you gave them, period. They keep the rest.

That almost makes sense. Its not what I would call a 'pay as you go', but it almost makes sense. Here's the part that I just found out today.

If you look at your account details, it lists two values -- 'Amount towards next bonus(ATNB)' and 'Amount of next refill bonus(AONRB)'. This is the part we just kind-of figured out.
The ATNB is the amount of money you have to give them in order to get the bonus. The AONRB is the amount that they'll add to your payment when you give them that money. It's based on 'level', which I don't understand. For every $100 that you give them, they add $5. This being the phone company, it doesn't work exactly that way, but that seems to be the general idea.

My daughters phone says she has $14 left, the ATNB is $60.01, and the AONRB s $10.00.
My wife's phone says she has $110, the ATNB is $0.00, and the AONRB is $15.00
My phone says I have $32, the ATNB is $0.00, and the AONRB is $15.00.

There doesn't seem to be any correlation between what your account balance is, and the ATBB. It looks like neither I nor my wife have to give them any money to get the bonus (which I assume means that any amount will do), but my daughter has to give them at least $60. And when we do get it, my wife and I will get $15, but my daughter only gets $10. My guess is that the lower the ATBN, the higher the AONRB.

Of course, it could all be based on sunspots.