Cell Phone Information Overload

[Deb19]

Would someone please give me some insight and advice with choosing a new cell phone plan? Currently, we have 3 dumb phones through Sprint.  Our 17 year old daughter will be needing a smartphone for college soon, and I am really tired of living without one too.  I am a teacher and have never jumped on the smartphone bandwagon because of our modest incomes and how outrageous cell phone data plans can be.  I was ready to make the move to Sprint Boost Mobil beacuse I can get 2 gigs for 30 bucks a month x 3 and that puts us to wht we are paying right now for our dumb phones.  Unfortunately, I now have just stumbled upon alot of negative reviews about dropped calls, poor customer service, double billing etc. I am simply overwhelmed with all the information I have read and researched to the point I am not sure what to choose.  Ting only has 2 gigs for all 3 of us to share, and Republic has some bad reviews as of late as well.  I can get 3 smart phones through Sprint, with one being an iphone for 162 a month....the thought of that makes me hyperventilate but I am to the point that that seems like the easiest, safest route to go.  Someone please talk some sense into me.

[protostache]

Forum superstar I.P. Daley has an on-going guide all about this, right here:

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/share-your-badassity/communications-tech-son-of-the-superguide!/

[Deb19]

Thank you....glad I found this forum!

[velocistar237]

I had a dumb phone until a couple weeks ago. After some deliberation, I bought a new, unlocked LG F60 on ebay for $100. I'll continue to use it with my T-Mobile pre-paid plan until that runs out and then switch to P'Tel pre-paid. P'Tel's Paygo costs are low, at 5c/min, 2c/text, and 10c/Mb. They're on the T-Mobile network with no roaming, so I'll need to plan ahead if I go outside T-Mobile's coverage. I'll mostly avoid the data connection by downloading Google Maps areas onto the phone ahead of time, not surfing over a data connection, etc.

https://www.ptel.com/plans

[NotJen]

Do you really need that much data?

Back when I was with AT&T, I was using 1.5GB per month. When I switched to Ting, I made an effort to sign into Wi-Fi more often (it seems to be everywhere these days), and not pull out my phone to do unnecessary things. Big surprise - I now use less than 100MB per month!  And I don't feel "deprived".  I've been very happy with the service in my area (I was able to bring over my old GSM iPhone).

[theglidd]

I have 2 possible solutions:

1. Get 2 Moto G's or E's ($179, $119 respectively) then check out Cricket wireless $35 a month plan. (runs under AT&T)

2. Or check out Ting.

[Deb19]

Thank you for your input!

[Workingmomsaves]

We switched from AT&T to cricket a few months ago and it has been great. I am not sure what kind of phones they have available as we are using our old iPhone 4s still. We have2.5 gigs for 70 bucks/month and 2 lines.

[thd7t]

Ting is usually a good option from Sprint, because you can often bring your existing phone there. 

[HopefulMustache]

Honestly, as much as Verizon has a well-deserved reputation for being overly expensive, they've really become a little more reasonable of late. (Thanks T-Mobile, for putting actual pressure on them!)

With Verizon you could get 10GB to share between three phones for a total of ~$125 a month, or 6GB for $115, provided you bring your own phones. More expensive than Cricket, etc, but if you're worried about coverage Verizon is strong in many areas, and that beats your Sprint price.

Then again, with Sprint I see a big ad on their home page offering 10GB between 4 lines for ~$100 a month. I assume there's some fine print, but is there a reason you wouldn't qualify for that, if you like Sprint and were already considering paying $160+ there?

[Hamster]

Not the very cheapest option (you could get used, for example), but the brand new moto G (3rd gen) just came out, starting at $179. Combined with $10 per month on airvoice wireless (AT&T towers), that is what I am doing. Just keep all unnecessary data turned off and you can learn to keep it within $10/month pretty quickly. Airvoice's website stinks, but I have always had quick responses when calling customer service.

[FiguringItOut]

I've been very happy with MyFamilyMobile from Walmart.  They use Tmobile network.  $30 for first line unlimited talk and text.  $25 for additional lines.  $10 to add unlimited data per line - includes 5 GB of high speed data, then it drops to slow speed data.  You need to buy their sim card at $25 a piece.

I have three phone, and only one of them has data added on.  Comes out to around $110/mo with taxes and fees included. 

As a side note, I am the one with the data added on.  I don't need 5GB of data per month.  I use on average 2GB, floating between 1.5GB and 2.5GB.  However, I looked at other plans and they were offering either only 1GB or only 2GB of data (or high speed data) for the same price.  My typical data use is email, browsing and reading message boards and forums like this one, but I keep track of about 4-5 of them, facebook, google maps for locations/directions, weather, instagram, playing mp3 files from dropbox (need to copy them onto the phone, but keep forgetting), podcasts, etc.  I use more data if I want to stream netflix or youtube.  Those can eat up data really fast. 

Basically, I find this plan to be comparable in price to most other low cost cell service providers, but gives me a bit more flexibility for when I do need (or want) to use more data.

I tried Ting on my kids and didn't like it.  The whole pay per bucket structure doesn't work for me.  I tend to stress every time the threshold for each bucket comes close.  It's like, if you go over by just one txt or one minute, you have to pay more, but then if you are in the next bucket, but only have few txts or minutes in there, you grossly overpaid for those txts/minutes.  And with teens, I can't, and don't want to, control their txting amount.  I have much more important things to deal with and control when it comes to kids.