Wal-Mart Partners to Provide Cell-Phone Service

[Kalimotxo]

From: Wal-Mart Partners to Provide Cell-Phone Service - Reviews by PC Magazine

Walmart is teaming up with prepaid carrier TracFone to offer Straight Talk, a no-contract wireless service.
Users can choose between a $45 per month plan that offers unlimited calls, texts, and mobile Web access, or a $30 per month plan that provides 1,000 minutes, 1000 texts, and 30MB of mobile Web access.

Straight Talk will offer three flip-phone options: the Motorola W385 for $79.99, the MotoRazr V3a for $99.99, or the LG200 for $29.99.

Once you've selected your phone, you can choose whether to port your existing mobile phone number to Straight Talk or select a new number. You can add minutes or re-up your plan at any time. If you do not refill your Straight Talk account within 30 days after the service end date, however, you lose the number.

The service is available nationwide, with a few exceptions outlined on the company's coverage area map.

The service will be available in Walmart stores, where customers can buy refill cards or Straight Talk phones, or online at walmart.com or straighttalk.com.

Walmart first started working with TracFone last summer with a pilot program in 234 stores, said Greg Hall, vice president of media services at Walmart.

"In light of the savings customers continue to need, we have worked very quickly to extend this offering to all of our Walmart customers nationwide, and just before the holidays," Hall said in a statement.

[maxxpower]

That phone lineup is weak! Half the appeal of this plan is the web access. Offer an old model blackberry or something with a keypad!

[maxxpower]

I did a little digging on the "Straight Talk" site and realized that they do offer other phones. The only qwerty they offer is a Samsung R451C. I have not seen any reviews on this phone yet. I will be curious to hear from anyone with this plan and phone.

[rseifer]

I just purchased the Samsung R451C today at Walmart here in Long Beach, California. It's my first cell phone, and I'm still trying to figure out everything, but it "feels" ok so far. I had some (minor) difficulty setting it up, and after entering a number of settings, the screen froze on me. I called Tech Support, and the lady there suggested yanking the battery and reinstalling it. That idea had occurred to me before I called for assistance, but I didn't want to do that in case it cleared all my settings. However, I pulled out the battery and put it back in, and everything seemed to be ok.

Someplace in the paperwork there are a couple of references to GPS, but I don't think the phone has that. I'm an old guy, and some of the symbology in the owner's guide is quite small, and I had to use a strong magnifier to read some of the instructions.

I called a couple of friends who reside near here, and they both said the sound was OK, and the transmission was clear.

My main purpose for the phone is internet browsing while I am working out at some distance from home, but I'm having only limited success in working the web, and had no success in logging into my stock brokerage account, even after entering my account number and password. I'm sure there's some more fiddling involved before I get this all sorted out, but overall I think I am at least presently happy with the phone (the price was $110 including Calif sales tax) and $30 for the first month's operations.

I very much like the idea of not having to purchase a contract, but can purchase only one or two months of service if I care to do that.

The phone is CDMA. The keyboard slides out, and the keys are reasonably decent in sized, although I'm a touch typist, but wouldn't think of using the phone's keyboard for anything beyond hunt-and-peck.

I don't know if the above means anything to anybody with much more experience than me, but I would be interested in hearing from anybody with some expertise on this. Ralph L. Seifer, Long Beach, California