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Call me cheap. I refer to the moths in my wallet as being frugal. I’m going to share some of that chea… er, frugality with you.

Over the years I’ve used Verizon, AT&T (Cingular), and even tried Walmart’s Straight Talk. Straight talk was a total bomb with lousy connections and dropped calls.

I don’t have a land line in the house and I even have free Over-The-Air television. All because I’m not paying cable companies the outrageous amount of money they demand. They can keep their “bundled” services. If I could find a way to get Internet service without them I’d disconnect the cable to my house completely.

My quest has been to find a cheap and reliable cell phone service provider and I finally succeeded. After 30 days of my trial period, I’m sticking with my new provider, Consumer Cellular.

My last cell phone provider was T-Mobile. I went with them because they have a $50 unlimited everything plan. The trouble was that with taxes and fees I was still paying almost $65 each month. It bothed me that having a phone costs me more than $750/year and that was less expensive than Verizon or AT&T.

For the last couple of years I was seeing commercials for Consumer Cellular. You’ve probably seen them. Older couples talking about phone service bills and the expense. One couple tells another about Consumer Cellular.

One of the commercials came on as I was looking at my T-Mobile bill. I went online and looked at their offer:

• A free SIM card for my phone (that I unlocked when I changed from AT&T to T-Mobile).
• Keeping my same cell phone number (no charge).
• A money back guarantee – Within the first 30 days, 30 minutes, 30 texts or 30 MB of data use – whichever comes first. If you are not completely satisfied with the service, simply cancel and they’ll refund your money. No questions asked!
• No shipping charges for the SIM card, or the new phone, if I decided to purchase one of theirs.
• No contract or activation fees.
• 5% discount for AARP members
• Multiple mix and match options for minutes, text, and data.

I chose 600 minutes for $20, plus 1000 texts and 100MB of data for $5.

With tax, now my bill is only $30/month and I set up my account to notify me by email when I exceed 75% and also 100% of my plan usage. Should I be getting close to exceeding my plan allowance I can upgrade my plan for the remainder of that month and then lower it again for the next month without a penalty (other than the plan cost for that month).

I’m saving $420/year. That’s a lot of cash.

Since Consumer Cellular uses the same towers that the AT&T system uses, my connections are solid.

Want a $10 credit on your first bill? Logged in members on WestEastonPA.com will find the required information to use when signing up to Consumer Cellular either by phone or online, by clicking the link below.

WestEastonPA members CLICK HERE.