Straight Talk -- anyone use it?

[MandaJo111]

For years I have had a contract with AT&T (well it was cingular first). We have a 4 phone plan and have my mom and step dad on it and they split the bill with us. However, mom brought up the idea of straight talk phones, and we are really considering them. Right now we have 4 phones with 1100 shared minutes, free nights and weekends starting at 7pm, unlimited texts on all and unlimited internet on 3 of the 4. It is running us about $205 a month with the military discount.

 

With straight talk we would be able to get unlimited everything for each phone for $185 a month with no worries about going over minutes or rollover minutes, etc. I have heard that they are on the Verizon network which is pretty good. I am hoping we will get good service here with them as my AT&T phone barely gets service in my house.

 

The main drawback of course is we will have to buy the new phones outright vs. getting phones free or cheap with a contract. Plus the phones they offer are limited. The ones we are looking at are about $190 on walmart.com. But that is cause DH wants one with email and we usually both get the same phones.

 

I am just looking for any personal experiences and/or suggestions before we swap. It will not be till January that our contract runs out so I will probably just get them with income tax return. I am in the research phase of it all right now so your input would be great! :)

 

Thanks!

[Dutchess]

I LOVED straight talk, and they have good customer service to boot. My son is still on ST, however I had to switch to Virgin Mobile because straight talk does not allow AOL emails which simply didnt work for me since one of my work accts was aol email. Other than that, the reception, service and phones from them are awesome. A HUGE upside to no-contract phones (aside from the obvious) is that should you ever break a phone, you can buy another one at a decent price instead of being stuck in a contract and trying to get one with or without the insurance. (PS, Virgin Mobile ROCKS too and they have the Samsung M910 android based phone)

[mysschevous]

My sister in law uses it. Works well. :) I also have a couple of friends who use it with no issues.

[laniebean]

we live in a very rual area and alot of ppl here use them... my daughter has had her for about 6months she has the basic phone nothing special and is very hard on it and it is still working great. I bought hers from the strait talk websight and got a really good price on it. about $30 less then to buy from walmart... so you might try the websight for a better price on the phone you want

[leefamily23]

I have had this for my 17 yr old son for a year and my husband and I have had it since late summer.

 

We love it, we get a better signal on it then we were w/ my Sprint contract phones. We also are paying approx $30 less a month for more for 3 phones then we were for just 2 phones via Sprint.

 

The ONLY downside, if you do not opt for auto bill pay, your phone goes off at midnight the day the prepaid is up. Example, if your prepaid month is up on the 10th of the month, right at midnight on the 10th the phone is off. This has caused me to get up go to work and forget to pay for my phone and it's off. There is no leeway or grace period. You can pay early but it actually cuts days off your current month, it doesn't add it on to extend it. So if the phone was due the 10th and I pay on the 4th to make sure it's taken care of, my phone is only going until the 4th of next month. So, auto pay is really the way to go on this.

 

I think it's a great value, w/ good service areas.

[eileenrich]

Two of my kids have Straight talk unlimited plan for 50.00 a month and they love it. My daughter paid more for a "better" phone, as she puts it, and my sons cheaper phone is holding up better! She is really rough on phones-so get the base phone and try it out first! My son says he gets a reminder on his phone to renew his service so we get a new card for him at WM the week before it expires, then when he gets the reminder he just renews that day.

Good luck!

[whereswaldo]

Call AT&T, ask for the retention department. Explain to them what your planning on doing (changing to straight talk) and have them give you a rate cheaper that what straight talk will be. If they dont , go to straight talk. Have them give you new phones too

[peppysfireball]

I just bought a go phone for my grandkids. It's 2.00 a day unlimited talk and text. I bought the 49.99 phone off of Amazon for 23.00 and it came with 15.00 air credit. I have U.S. Cellular and it was my only option.

[MandaJo111]

Thank you for all the responses. I think contacting AT&T retention first is a good option as well. I will probably try that first and if not I will swap to Straight Talk. I do think I will get the Straight Talk before cancelling my AT&T service just to be sure we like it. You all had some great input thanks!