frugal living

iWireless by Fredmeyer/Kroger Review

>For those of you who follow my Facebook page you likely know about my recent teenage drama-cell phones. To make a long story short, I had a contract with Sprint for 2 Android’s and a regular text friendly phone for my daughter that I was paying around $165 for. I wanted to find a way to cut my bill and since Sprint was not offering any help in that department and in actuality mysteriously raising my bill bit by bit each month I decided enough is enough. We switched to Cricket and the sales guy was good at his job and managed to up sale me an Android for my daughter.


 For the record, I do like Cricket. I got to keep my phone # and my HTC EVO which I really LOVE. I did NOT have Cricket flash my phone. They wanted $90 each phone and there is no way in…. that I’m paying that kind of money. SO I searched Craigslist and found someone to flash my phones for $20 each. The experience; flashing my phone by a complete stranger I met off of Craigslist, was quite painless. The guy wasn’t a creep and in fact a total family guy that’s just trying to make a living. I am not advocating that you do this but for me I was willing to chance it to save the money. Plus we met at a public place. But, if you do go this route just be sure you are taking precautions and pay attention to your instincts. The best part was I paid $40 total to flash 2 Androids when it was going to cost us $180 through Cricket. My daughter got an Android and then came the lovely drama. There was 400+ picture text messages a day, there was pictured uploaded to Facebook that I never got to approve, there was a spoof video that pissed me off. There was the fact she has unlimited use of the internet without any supervision; that’s when the prepaid from Fredmeyer came into mind. I already had a phone from before Sprint and I was happy with that phone and iWireless.

iWireless by Kroger/Fredmeyer
What it is: It’s a prepaid cell phone service. They also have monthly flat rate unlimited plans available. The Kroger/Fredmeyer plan offers a variety of phones to meet your needs. From very basic flip phones, Text friendly, to full Android operating phones. You can view more information on https://www.iwirelesshome.com/.
Plans: Family Share Plans as low as $80 for 2 lines or as high as $240 for unlimited minutes/text for 5 lines. Individual plans as low as $25 or pay as you go $5 a month and 10c minutes/text. *Picture messaging is extra through ALL the plans. If you do a lot of picture messaging then iwireless may not be the company for you.

Free Minutes: This is my favorite part of the Kroger/Fredmeyer link. If you have a rewards card you will earn 20 free minutes/text for every $100 you spend.  If you have a family plan or individual plan you will get $2 off your monthly bill for every $100 you spend. This includes gift card purchases but not gas purchases. Plus, when you purchase select gift cards you will earn double the free minutes! Go to this page https://www.iwirelesshome.com/free-minutesto read more about how to earn free minutes.
Customer Service: I was talking to customer service twice tonight and have to say they are really easy to work with compared to other prepaid companies. Just do a general Google search and see what I mean. Search “prepaid customer service, net10, go phone, ect”.

I’ll keep you informed on the outcome, if she keeps this phone or if I’ll need to go with a different company. For right now it seems like the $25 a month will work well for her but they gave us a deal where she gets .10 cent text & talk for 3 months. So I’ll likely do that until it expires, unless she ends up sending too many text messages:)

*Another thing I learned and love is incoming text messages are not charged to your account. Only text messaging that you send are charged.
* Something I did not like is picture messaging is extra. .20 cents per picture message. I do not yet know if you are charged .20 cents to view them.

While I am a review blogger and do received review products free of charge,  I did not receive compensation or free product to do this review and it is of my own opinion based on my experience with iwireless for Kroger/Fredmeyer   

 

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