When I received the opportunity to check out the Walmart Family Mobile service, which is said to be the best wireless service with no contracts and unlimited plans, I knew this was something I had to check out.
I am sure that you’ve all seen some of my summer traveling photos through social media, right? As wonderful as our summer was, it wasn’t cheap. In fact, we went totally over our budget – even on my Carnival press trip, which was a complimentary trip! How did that happen? By staying in Spain and Italy on my own before and after the trip, and just spending way too much all over the place in general. I came home actually afraid to look at our bank statement and the credit card!
To make matters worse, Chris’s car broke down while I was on the cruise with Angeline, and we had quite a balance on the credit card due to repairs. I began August with a determination to pay off that debt and cut down on some of our bills.
It probably comes as no surprise that we’re a technology-driven household. I blog for a living, so social media and the ability to work 24/7, no matter where I go is incredibly important to me. Chris works in the IT industry, and while he doesn’t do much work outside of on his work laptop, he is all about the games on his iPhone and iPad. Angeline is my budding little social media queen, and has a nicer phone than I do! Ha! Can you believe she has almost 600 followers on Instagram?!
Well, the problem with all of this technology and connectivity via our phones is…the phone bill each month.
Yeah, that’s our actual phone bill. And that doesn’t include our monthly bill for our land line, which we have just for emergencies – you always need a land line when you live in Hurricane Alley! I wanted to cut down services, but we really can’t. Walmart offers unlimited plans, with pretty much the lowest price rate plan I’ve seen here in Miami. So the idea of switching to the Walmart Family mobile plan was an exciting possibility! I even checked their service area and service showed as Excellent or good all throughout our neighborhoods, making it one of the best wireless service providers in our area!
With the Walmart Family Mobile unlimited plan with web, you get unlimited talk, text and data for only $39.88 a month. As you can see, that’s less expensive than any of our lines right now! I mean, we would end up saving $100.36 each month just by switching all of our phones to the Walmart Family Mobile plan! That’s a potential $1200 each year in our savings account just by taking advantage of Walmart Family Mobile’s unlimited plans!
Dude, that is enough for a cruise!
Off I went to Walmart to check out the phones and get information about their lowest price rate plans in person. You can check out my Google+ story here to get the full scoop on my #FamilyMobileSaves #cbias shopping trip!
Now, for the purposes of this research, I bought the Concord, which is an inexpensive smart phone in the Walmart Family Mobile plan. I could either use the $39.88 unlimited plan with talk, text and data, or the $29.88, which is their lowest price rate plan and includes unlimited talk and text. The Concord is normally priced $99.97, but it was on rollback special for $79.88. YAY!
While I bought a pretty basic smart phone, there is actually a wide range of phones available in the Walmart Family Mobile service plan. I think they have something for everyone, whether it’s your child getting their first smart phone (or cell phone, period), an older adult who has never had a smart phone before, down to someone like me who uses their smart phone more than their computer, for everything from personal to business use.
There are simple phones like the Samsung t139 and 606A, which are only $29.88 and $39.88, respectively – and they offer web browsing in addition to talk and text.
Then there’s the myTouch, the Samsung Galaxy S11 – even an iPhone 5! While the phones are a little more expensive than what you would pay if you were to buy a discounted phone through an upgrade with a local carrier, these have NO CONTRACTS!
Once I bought my Concord and the $25 Starter kit (with the SIM card), I had the people at the Walmart Electronics department set it up for me. You have the choice of activating it yourself at home, or having them do it for you – for free. Of course I had them do it for me, who has time for messing that at home? Well, I did have time but what can I say, I’d rather spend that time catching up on all the shows I DVR’d while I was traveling this summer!
You can find out more about the Walmart Family Mobile service and phones, and about online account management online too!
Once our contracts are up with our current carrier, I am pretty sure that we are going to switch all of our lines to Walmart Family Mobile, even with paying full price for the latest model of iPhone through their program, the savings each month will more than make up for the difference in price if we were to upgrade to the new model through our carrier!
In the meantime, I am going to be using my Concord as a secondary phone and I will check back with y’all after I’ve used it – and the Walmart Family Mobile plan – for about a month. I can’t wait to share my findings with you guys!
You can also check out this digital magazine to get great ideas for back to school (including saving money on your kid’s cell phones!). It’s put out by Collective Bias, the company that hired me to share this blog post with you!
Tammy says
August 20, 2013 at 5:56 pmMy husband just activated a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Walmart Family Mobile and he is really happy with it so far. He didn’t have a smart phone prior to compare it to, but I use a different pre-paid service which is only $10 less a month than the WFM unlimited and I only get 300 hundred talk minutes and he gets way better data service then I do.
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:27 pmWow, it sounds like this is an even better deal that I thought it was!
Jennifer says
August 20, 2013 at 8:07 pmI have been shopping for a new phone and plan. I have not looked at this yet but now I am planning on it.
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:24 pmI hope you find one that you like! They had plenty of options 🙂
Penelope (NYC Blogger) says
August 20, 2013 at 8:12 pmWow, I didn’t even know they had this service!
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:25 pmHonestly, neither did I until Collective Bias mentioned it! It’s opened a whole new world to me, I’m already trying to get my mom to go buy one of their phones. LOL
Liz says
August 20, 2013 at 11:02 pmIt really bugs me how these carriers force us into contracts the way they do so I totally appreciate that this service requires none of that crap.
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:23 pmRight?! We are stick for 1.5-2 years for all three phone lines because we’ve always taken the upgrades. I am tempted to see if we can unlock our iPhones and switch to Walmart’s plan and see what happens. LOL
Mellisa says
August 21, 2013 at 11:55 amMy son is getting older and really begging for a cell phone, this sounds like it would be the perfect start.
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:16 pmYeah, one of the simpler phones with that $29.88 monthly fee would be the perfect starter phone! Especially since he’s little and will probably lose it (Angeline went through 4 phones before she was 10), you wouldn’t have lost much $! 🙂
Amber K says
August 21, 2013 at 2:32 pmI’m totally drooling over the savings here. We pay almost the same price for 2 phones WITHOUT unlimited anything.
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:15 pmOh yikes! We do have a family plan and Chris and I are grandfathered in for data. But it all adds up like crazy!
Jenn says
August 21, 2013 at 10:09 pmI shudder to think of our cell bill, especially when you point out that a cruise could be taken with the savings! Ack!
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:12 pmYou know me, I think of all money saved as potential travel funds LOL!
Donna says
August 21, 2013 at 10:15 pmWhen my contract expires, I’d definitely consider this!
Jennifer Quillen says
August 21, 2013 at 11:14 pmWe were going over our last cell bill today and it was NOT pretty…all of our international charges came through and hubs wasn’t happy. LOL I wish we didn’t have these stupid contracts!
Courtney says
August 22, 2013 at 9:21 amI’m definitely contemplating something like this for us once our contract is up. Our prices have gone too high!
LyndaS says
August 22, 2013 at 5:50 pmI am a big fan of the prepaid service plans.
(Would you believe that when the tornadoes broke out in Alabama in 2011 that even our land lines went down?!)
Jennifer Quillen says
August 22, 2013 at 6:01 pmI can believe it, I remember that some people were without a phone line for weeks after Hurricane Andrew! Here in Miami, it’s usually the cell lines that go down, or they get overloaded after an emergency.
Robin Gagnon {Mom Foodie} says
August 22, 2013 at 8:37 pmUnless you have a specific need for 4g this is a heck of a deal.
HilLesha says
August 24, 2013 at 5:45 pmOnce my contract with AT&T is up, I’m going back this route.
Mallery says
September 9, 2013 at 11:21 pmI can’t wait to switch over to these plans. The money I will save in a year could remodel a room in our house!