advise re Walmart prepaid/no contract cell phones
 

I'm in the market for a no-contract cell phone for my son. I understand Walmart has the best monthly price? I anticipate that he will use it mostly for talking & texting, not so much for the web browsing. I was checking Walmart's website for info, but that seems to be mostly about the phones. There's not a lot of info regarding the service itself. Can someone help me understand the service? Is it a Walmart service, or do they contract with a national provider such as AT&T? Is it pay-as-you-go, meaning my son can purchase more minutes when he's out? Or is it a flat monthly rate no matter how much or little he uses? Do I have to purchase one of their phones, or can I use a phone I purchased somewhere else, or maybe my husband's old phone?

TIA

We have used the TRACFONE pay as you go phones for a number of years. Walmart usually carries the low end phones but if you go to the Tracfone.com website there are any number of phones with lots of features and can be ordered from there also. You can purchase the minute cards at a lot of places like Walmart.

We have had ours for most of 2012. For the most part, the service has been excellent wherever we are. Occasionally we get static, but if we hang up and redial, it's usually fine. It might be good to ask around in your area to see if anyone has it and let you know if it works well in your area. My son had one and worked all over FL and always had great reception. I liked that there was no contract, although you do pay more for the phones than you might pay if you got one of the brand name services. I think we paid $179 each for ours because i wanted the slide out keyboard and large screen. They do have cheaper phones too. You can buy minutes month by month or sign up for auto refill. We do the auto refill for $45/mo ea plus tax. For 2 phones with unlimited everything costs us about $96 month. I have never had an issue with billing, nor have I had to contact customer service. Prior to getting these, we were Sprint customers for 11 years. I was happy with Sprint, but honestly, could not afford the monthly payment for 2 smart phones. This was the only way I could afford it. I've been very happy with it. Hubby talks more than I do. LOL We both text often and I use the web frequently throughout the day. Here is a link.

http://www.straighttalk.com/

Had Verizon for several years--very expensive. Switched to Tracphone a few years ago (hubby and I) now we have a monthly $17.49charge total --both phones for that price! We have automatic day and minutes added for that monthly charge. We went from $170.00 a month to the price above. Can't beat it!

You might look at Consumer Cellular. We have had their service for 5 or 6 years. There is no contract. You buy a basic number of minutes per month. If you are about to go over that (they will email you), you can buy more in small increments. The next month you can have the extra minutes removed. We have 2 phones and our bill runs about $40 a month. We travel a lot, and so far have had no problem with reception, except in areas where everyone has problems! You do have to buy their phone, but can keep your previous number. They have an android phone. DH has one, and I don't know what it does. It's like an Iphone, but not as fancy. We use these phones for all our long distance except 800 numbers when we are at home.

I used to work for Consumer Cellular, and I don't recommend anything other than prepaid phones if you're getting them for a teen or as a gift. I used to spend a lot of time talking to people who got their kid a phone thinking it would get minimal use, only to find that their family member had managed to use literally thousands of text messages in a matter of days and there was no plan they could switch to that would make any significant difference in their bill which had quickly gone into the hundreds of dollars. If you're getting a phone for anyone other than yourself, go with a prepaid company that requires buying a block of minutes/texts/data in advance. That way, when they run out of minutes, the phone stops working until a refill is purchased rather than leaving you with a much larger bill than you ever thought possible.

As far as I know, Walmart doesn't have their own cell phone company. Even if they did, it would just be another reseller, like all the other prepaid and smaller cell phone companies. Consumer Cellular resells blocks of minutes they buy in bulk from AT&T. Tracfone, Net10, and Straight Talk are all the same company, which buys minutes from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Virgin and Boost Mobile are both Sprint resellers. Resellers, however, get low priority on the networks, so if you live in an area where AT&T's network is very busy, you're not going to get very good service with a phone from an AT&T reseller because your calls will drop to make room for actual AT&T customers. I'd recommend trying to find people in your local social circle who use prepaid or smaller cell companies and ask them how their service is. The same company can have excellent service in one area and nearly non-existant service in another.

I just got one of the pay as you go phones. We have issues with towers in our area. There isn't enough of them. They just put a tower up in our town(yeah!!!) and it only works for verizon phones. You should talk to one of the people before you chose a phone to see what towers they will work with. Not sure how your area is, but here we only have at&t and verizon. They sell phones that will not even work in our area. There is a code on the box that will tell you what towers it will work with. At&t phones get no signal at all here but I get full bars because mine is works off of verizon.

I have used Trac phone for about 3 years now. I only use my phone for emergencies and when I'm traveling. No problems with it

If you're talking about Straight Talk, I'd advise you to walk away. There are 3 of us and we all had the $30(?) plan, which is a nice deal. For about a month, none of us had problems. Then we had nothing but trouble and their customer service is TERRIBLE! It took 2 months to get one of the phones replaced and it was a daily 40-minute call of doing the same thing over and over again because they never noted in the account.
When it worked, it was ok.
We switched to T-Mobile and have never had a bit of problem from the service, the phones or anything. As far as I'm concerned, Pre-Pay is the way to go. My 15-year old son has unlimited text and no voice for $15/month (if he uses voice, it's $.10/minute, I think). I had 1500 text or minutes for $30 month and never went over. We recently changed mine and my husband's plans to an emergency use only for $10 (35 minutes that are good for 90 days) because we realized that we weren't really using our phones. So T-Mobile has much more flexible plans without having to buy another phone. (I live in the middle of "nowhere", and T-Mobile and Straight Talk come off the ATT tower, so I lucked out. That's all I get out here!)
Craigslist has lots of prepaid phones too. You don't have to spend as much on the phone as you think.

Good luck!!

We have used Virgin Mobile for years. We prepay $20 every 3 months. We never use up our time so it accumulates. When we got them it was only for emergencies and it is still that mostly. You do not lose your unused minutes as long as you buy the $20 quarterly. I have used it with no problem while traveling also.