Straighttalk from Wallmart users?

[jays375]

Been hearing a lot of people switching over to using Straighttalk from Wallmart.Anybody here using it,would like to know the cons?

[oldskool83]

in the country it seems to suck, in the city it seems fine.

[DasUberKraut]

I've been using it for about 6 months now in Eau Claire, WI area.
I have a rooted & SIM unlocked AT&T Motorola Atrix HD running Straight Talk 4G LTE.
I have a modified SIM card as well. Service is great inside the city. Most buildings will kill a signal quick though.
I also live in a trailer. Which is a struggle to gain any signal. Frustrating as hell.
But, like I said in the city. Some main highways and freeways will let you get a signal now and then too.

[Rookie]

I live in Merrillville IN. and it will be a year in Dec. when I got mine. I bought the Samsung galaxy proclaim from straight talk. Its 3g, a basic smart phone, my first. it was one of them that is on the verizon network. $49.00 a month for unlimited talk, text and data. Like stated above, inside buildings are bad but I've never had a dropped call, sound is good, and for what I use it for I like it. I'm not a big net user but I like it when I need to look some thing up.

[kb0nly]

If one of the major carriers serves your area, Verizon or AT&T you would be better off going with them. If you don't want to be in contract they do have prepaid service as well.

Down here in MN the local WalMart sells it, and everyone gets frustrated with it. It works fine in the city that has the WalMart, because that is where the towers it works with are located, beyond that its pretty much nothing for service. I used to have a straight talk phone for work, it was the shop phone i brought home overnight for after hour calls. Well it wouldn't work at home, worked great at the shop with full bars but nada at my home because the tower here is Verizon and evidently straight talk couldnt run on it. The nearest tower to me that worked with it was an AT&T tower, looks like here they are the only ones allowing straight talk to associate with, that was about 7 miles and on another side of a ridge so it was spotty even outside at best.

Better check and see what towers it will use, how far you are from them, etc. I have a lot of friends her that are on Verizon prepaid, the only bad thing is they had to buy the phone they use, around $300 or so depending on model, and then no contract.

Right now Verizon, just as an example, has a few phones around $50 and a $30 activation, so $80 is what your basically paying for the phone. A smart phone runs $40 a month for access, that gives you unlimited talk and unlimited text, data will run another $60 for a 2gb a month plan. So around $100 a month with taxes and fees. No reason to fear the contract if your going to pay close to that on prepaid anyway. We have AT&T breaking into the area now, which is forcing Verizon to be a little more competitive, thank god for that! So prices are moving around a bit.

But anyway, overall, my experience with straight talk was so so... If i was always in a largely populated area no problem. But even then some large nearby towns had no service either, so its hit or miss.

[200x350xtriz250]

I guess I'm the only one that likes it. I don't live in the city but am not way out there either. Going on 2 years now. As good a signal as when I was with Verizon. No smart phone here, just a phone with a full key board. About $32 a month for 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 250mb(?) of web. Verizon was running us about $75 for 2 phones sharing 500 minutes, pay as you go texts and no web. What we were told when we bought our straight talk phones is that different straight talk phones work with different cell carriers and that greatly affects the signal you get. You have to check the box to see which phone works with which carrier. Boxes with CDMA use Verizon towers, GSM use AT&T and CDMAS uses Sprint. This is what we were told by the Walmart associate. So far that has checked out or we have gotten lucky but our coverage has been the same as when we had Verizon (we went with CDMA phones). My zip is 28006 if you want to see how far out of the city we are for reference. But we have also traveled to rural SC, as well as through VA, WVA and OH and keep good signal almost the whole way - a few places in the mountains were not good but I can't imagine any phone gets good signal there.


Cons - 1 - you pay full price for the phone you want. 2 - there are more phone options online than in the stores but we can't tell which carrier each phone is for online. I believe smart phones require the $45 unlimited plan.

[rg97]

If one of the major carriers serves your area, Verizon or AT&T you would be better off going with them.
I disagree. I live in the middle of nowhere, about a hour north of pittsburgh, and I have no service trouble except for one dang restaurant in a close town... I get nothing there, but my dad's at&t phone doesnt get a signal either. I pay either 40 or 45 a month for unlimited talk,text, and data and I have a pretty dang good smartphone (samsung galaxy 2 - bought unlocked for around 150-200). I dont see why people would be willing to pay an extra $60 a month for the exact same thing from a major carrier.

[jfaulkner02]

I find it interesting seeing so much negative about it. My fiancee and I have had Straight Talk for about 1 1/2 yrs now. We switched from ATT, which is the largest cell provider in our area. We have not even one complaint. The service is the same, if not slightly better than with ATT. We have lived in both the country and in town. For 48 and some change a month, you cannot beat it.

[kb0nly]

I disagree. I live in the middle of nowhere, about a hour north of pittsburgh, and I have no service trouble except for one dang restaurant in a close town... I get nothing there, but my dad's at&t phone doesnt get a signal either. I pay either 40 or 45 a month for unlimited talk,text, and data and I have a pretty dang good smartphone (samsung galaxy 2 - bought unlocked for around 150-200). I dont see why people would be willing to pay an extra $60 a month for the exact same thing from a major carrier.

Probably because they have no choice like me. If it works good in your area then awesome, but here your pretty well screwed. The carriers here are Verizon and AT&T, there is some prepaid markets that work so-so but there is tower battles between them and the companies that own them. A lot of the companies like T-Mobile and Sprint have had a hard time breaking in this area because Verizon owns everything and they want to keep it that way, so they push out the competition by charging them huge carrier fees for using their towers.

I get unlimited talk and text and 2gb of data, but we have three lines of service also, it works great on the share plan because we don't use much data. Two lines are smart phones, $40 a month each, plus $60 for data, and the third line is a home phone for $20 a month. Our local phone company charges $39.95 for basic phone only so i save money there. $160 a month for three lines... So at $45 a month on straight talk for each line i would spend a little less, $135 - but the signal is total crap at home so i had to go with what works rather than whats cheap. I use my phone for business as well as personal, can't have a so-so coverage plan... LOL

I wish these other carriers would get in to our market but i have changed carriers three times in the last five years without doing it myself!! I was originally MidWest Wireless, which had a large portion of the state here as well as South Dakota, they got bought out by Alltel, and then a little while after that they got bought out by Verizon. So i just rode along through all the takeovers. Nothing i could do but tackle it head on. We didn't even have AT&T service here until last summer.