Wal-Mart no contract cell phones? Good, bad, or ugly?

@pilote

I agree with you yes it is the main thing before we up for checking who provides best plan.

And if we are almost traveling everywhere then no contract phones with best plan are better.
No contract phones has higher resale value.
 
gomipile said:
The T-Mobile prepaid plans are pretty good. If all you do is talk, I recommend either the pay-as-you go buying $100 worth of minutes(1000 minutes and 1 year of activation) at a time, or the 1500 minutes per month for $30 monthly prepaid plan if you talk a lot.

T-Mobile has pretty good voice and text coverage out in the boonies where I live, but I can't speak for anywhere but northwest PA personally.
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I have a T-mobile pre-pay plan, but it doesn't seem to be listed on their web page where these quoted plans are listed. I'd recommend calling T-mobile if you are interested in the plan. The plan is through T-mobile, and I have had great service through them. T-mobile used to sell the pre-pay phones, but what I ended up doing was buying an unlocked phone. I pay about $100 dollars every 3 to 4 months, and the minutes don't expire if you pay in $100 payments (gold member), I have the ability to use my internet through wi-fi, but T-mobile offers a "Day Pass" that will allow you to have a data stream.

Good luck finding the right one, this one just seems to be the right match for me.

Edit: I was able to find the plan on their website, it's the "Prepaid, Pay as you go" plan. To stay on track, I'm not sure if Wal-Mart sells unlocked phones, or if they can fill you in on T-mobiles plan.
 
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I've been on "Straight Talk" for ~1 year now at $30 a month plus sales tax. It serves me very well and is less then half what Verizon was charging me.
 
Sid Post said:
I'm looking for feedback on the Wal-Mart no contract cell phones and plans. Straight Talk, Go, Boost, ... is all greek/geek to me. :o

I'm wondering what users experiences are like. Do the no contract phones work well? Are they really cost effective? Do you get a lot of hidden fees?

I'm up on my 2 year contract and have a bad cell phone. I'm considering buying a Wal-Mart no contract phone of some sort and getting one of their no contract plans. However, the "sales guy" really couldn't tell me anything to differentiate any of the plans. He was good at upselling an Apple phone, data plans, and other stuff but couldn't really tell me anything about the Boost, ATT/Go, Straight Talk, etc.

Should I just go cheap with a $40 phone and a $30 plan and see what happens? Any general words of wisdom before I spend my money? THANKS!
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Here's the lowdown on prepaid (I worked in wireless for over 12 years, so I know a tiny bit :D):

There are 2 kinds of prepaid companies: The wireless carriers and 3rd parties (MVNOs) that lease and resell mtes from the Carriers: AT&T, Tmobile, Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, etc.) Which is better? Currently the 3rd party companies. The brands don't matter,as much as pricing and coverage.
Coverage is determined b which carrier they buy minutes from. How to tell? Do your research online. Most buy from AT&T and Verizon and Sprint.
Phones are across the board usually good, if not great. The days of bad phones are not common anymore,but once in a while they are around. You will pay a bit more for a handset with prepaid as you're not subsidizing the phone cost with a 2 year contract.
Prices per minute are not as important as per minute costs including text and internet costs.

That's about it. Currently Wal Mart's own Straight Talk seems to be the best price savings, but the offers always change.

The best part of prepaid is no contract. You can change over and over until you find what you like.
 
If you opt for Straight Talk, Air Voice, Myfamilymobile, page Plus or others you don't have to use one of their phones. For example, I'm using the $30/month unlimited talk and text plan with Air Voice on an iPhone 4S right now. Works fine. (No data but you could pay more to get it. I chose not to.)
 
Boost, Cricket, and Virgin use sprint towers

Family Mobile and Tmobile use Tmobile towers

Straight talk is owned by Tracfone (as is Net 10) and uses ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint towers depending on the phone. If the phone box says GSM at the lower left or has a G after the model name, it's usually ATT towers (GSM-T would be Tmobile). If it has CDMA, CDMA-V, or has a C after the model name it's typically going to be Verizon towers. If it says CDMA-S it will be sprint towers.

With straight talk you used to be able to buy a GSM (ATT) straight talk sim card from their website and put it into your own unlocked GSM phone (ATT / Tmobile) but they stopped that last month, now they only offer Tmobile sim cards for bring your own phone options.

Straight talk is probably the best one going (price / coverage) as far as prepaid phones go but make sure you select the phone that uses the towers that best work in your AO.

ATT Gophone smart phones run $65 / mo or more.

Verizon prepaid smart phones run $80 / mo or more.

Both say $50 unlimited, but that's for regular / messaging phones.
 
I buy a new Tracfone each year with 1200 minutes for less than $100 from a major shopping network.

I find it's cheaper to toss the phone and get a new one each year rather than buy the minutes.

Great reception and since I use it infrequently I almost always have minutes left over. You can also transfer minutes to another Tracfone (that you own) at no charge.
 
I think t-mobile is a+++. I had att and they did nothing but screw up the bill all of the time. I went to t-mobile and I am under contrack but they are so wonderful. if you are a vet you get a 15% discount off your cell phone bill and that is the law.
 
Cellphone service is like real estate, comes down to location. There is no one answer to what is the best cellphone company as it varies as the coverage by the providers of service varies from area to area. Ask around to your neighbors and coworkers who has the best reception to decide if you want to use Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T or Sprint towers. Once that is decided then you can find the best company to provide that service. Straight Talk can actually give you coverage on all 4 major networks but it depends which phone you use\buy from them. T-Mobile has great prices if their coverage is good in your area, a lot of rural areas it is not so good. Verizon and AT&T are the two largest companies with the most complete coverage but they both have holes in their coverage areas, check out the coverage maps on their websites.
 
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