Everyone with any sense of financial responsibility tries to keep their spending within reason, and telephone expenses are no exception.  In fact, one of the most frequent personal budgeting steps is to get rid of the home land line, and to use a cell phone for all calls, taking advantage of the reduction in costs versus years ago, and especially the cost benefit of using a single phone line as opposed to multiples.  Personally, I have been without a land line since November 2006, and have not missed it one bit.  The problem is, however, that many people feel that they are limited in their choice of units when it comes to shopping for a free handset.  I can tell you that used to be the case when you were limited to buying a phone directly from the providers retail outlets, but not any more.

In the beginning of July, I realized that my then-current cellular contract was going to expire in the middle of the month.  Of course, I could have kept the same phone and plan (which was with Sprint) but instead I started looking at other options.  Then I remembered a site for a company called Wirefly which sells the same phones as the cellular companies, but at significantly discounted prices by comparison.  Even though the plans that are offered are the same as through the phone carriers themselves, a site such as this enables consumers to purchase phones that suit their lifestyle better at lower costs or no cost (and sometimes even making money after mail-in rebates!).

The process is rather simple, and does not take much time at all.  All that is involved is selecting  your phone, plan, additional services and accessories (if any).  The entire order took less than ten minutes for me to complete, and within a few hours I received an e-mail that confirmed the approval by AT&T for my new line of service on a brand new (not refurbished) Blackberry Curve 8900 plus a Kingston 2 GB MicroSD card and shipping at a total cost of….$0.  No, I did not leave out any numbers in that price, everything I received was completely free of charge to me.  It really doesn’t get much better than that (except if there was a mail-in rebate on top in which case I would have actually made money off the deal!)

I can’ say that it was all cake, though.  Apparently, the activation process is linked to the tracking number and the new phones are activated within 24 hours of delivery confirmation.  In my particular case, though, the person inputting the tracking information into my order screwed up, adding 2 extra digits to the tracking code so it was never linked to the real FedEx package.  What ended up happening was that the Wirefly system never received the delivery status and subsequently never activated the phone.  I had to call the customer service line and speak to someone who didn’t understand English very well, and therefore could not fully comprehend my situation, but after a couple of times running through the situation, he finally was able to set the activation process in motion.  So, even though I had to wait an extra day and a half to start using the phone, I would have to say that I walked away from the experience quite satisfied.

And, in case you may be wondering about all of those people who aren’t looking to switch to a new provider, you can upgrade to many of the latest phones for the same zero cost (and in the case of the higher-end models, a minimal fee).  I checked out the pricing on the upgrade side of the picture, and it works out very well in that scenario as well.  The only differences are that you have to be eligible to upgrade according to your individual contract specifications, and some of the phones do cost some money to upgrade to, although many upgrades costs less than what the cellular providers will charge for a brand new contract.  All you generally have to do is commit to a new/extended contract, and you are good to go.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:06 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.