Is this a good smartphone deal?

[ChiDisneyFan]

Have a chance to upgrade my 2 old flip phones to smartphones with T-Mobile. Been with them for 10 years and thinking this is a pretty good offer, let me know what you think. Currently paying about $60 a month for 400 minutes family plan, 2 flip phones, me and my spouse. I can upgrade to 2 Samsung Blazes for free and add a Samsung S3 for 79.99 in order to get my daughter added to our plan with her first phone, she is 13. The monthly plan would be the same 400 minutes with unlimited text, 2 gb of data for $95 a month. So it is only another 35 a month to add my daughter, get new smartphones and have web and texting. Thinking even if I just added my daughter with a pay as you go phone from Walmart it would be about $35 more a month, is this correct?

 

[newdeal]

get ready for data overages sharing 2gb across 3 phones especially when one is a child

 

[hsmamato2]

get ready for data overages sharing 2gb across 3 phones especially when one is a child

this is true. and 400 minutes to share between 3 people? that is so low..... T mobile wants to 'upgrade' you into a new overpriced contract....understand,the phones are free,the service is where you pay.
much better to look into various prepaid options,like virgin mobile, for 35.00 per phone per month ,(you have to buy your own) you get unlimited data and 350 talk minutes....that's just one example.
I bought a used phone on ebay(smartphone,old droid) cost was 60.00- I pay 30.00 per month prepaid (pagepluscellular) for 250 mb of data (rarely used) and 1200 talk minutes-
contract phones are very expensive in the long run... for your 95.00,and separate phone lines/accounts, you could have unlimited data and LOTS of talk minutes,which saves a lot of money over the 2 years.....

 

[hsmamato2]

also,the pay as you go option from walmart is cheaper for all of you....in the sense you will get more usage for your money.

 

[msmayor]

this is true. and 400 minutes to share between 3 people? that is so low.....

Depends. For my family and our FOUR phones, 400 minutes would still be too many.

Last month we used 47 minutes between all four phones. We have 1500 to share.

Our phones are data and text heavy. Over 7,000 texts across all four lines.

 

[Fire14]

It would work in this house but it would be tight on min. Both Dh and I use or phones for work and there is a teenager on plan also.

 

[erin22]

this is true. and 400 minutes to share between 3 people? that is so low.....

The 2 gigs of data between three people is on the low end, although you could very easily stay within that if you don't stream any videos when you are not on a wifi network.

But I disagree that 400 minutes is too low for 3 people. My husband daughter and I use somewhere around 100 minutes a month. In this era of texting, we virtually never talk on the phone.

 

[ranthony]

It sounds like you and DH don"t use your phones for talking very much if you've been on that plan for 10 years. Now, adding in your daughter might change that dramatically. Does your daughter have a phone now? If so, what is her usage like? By bundling all of you together in a contract you are forced to pay the usage of the max user to avoid overages.

My DH and I went from sharing 1 flip phone last year to our own smart phones. We pay approx. $10 each per month which gets us texting. We don't pay ahead for minutes because we RARELY call anyone and when we do it's only for a minute or two so we just opted for the 10 cents per minute. There are months that he doesn't make a call at all and adds 200 text minutes for $5 and that's all he pays for the month.

We do not have any data on our phones...but use them with wi-fi all the time for free. If we want data we can add it whenever we want but the only time we've needed it was last summer when we were at our cottage for most of the summer and we don't have any type of internet service there. Then, we added it for two months @ $25 per month just to one of the phones so we could have a way to check weather while out on our boat, etc. After the summer...back to $10 or less per month per phone.

The point is...think about how you and your DH are likely to use the phones and if your teen will use it the same way. You can probably do better by buying your phones outright and paying per month for what each user needs.

 

[ChiDisneyFan]

the 400 minutes is not an issue for us, we never come close to this in 10 years of service. Daughter mostly face-times on iPad, she is not a talker on the phone at all. Most of our usage would be between the three of us on tmobile to tmobile via voice or text.

 

[daughtersrus]

We currently have USCellular so everything that come into our phones is free. Most of the talking that we do on our cells are cell to that is free as well.

My DD have data plans and they each use close to 5gb a month. WiFi is free but when they're in the car (not driving of course ), at the gym, at work... they use data.