Walmart Prepaid Phone Plan Rounds Down on Minutes
Walmart and Sprint made a joint announcement today about their new prepaid phone plan, called Common Cents Mobile. While similar in execution to other prepaid phone plans, Common Cents Mobile aims to be more cost-effective by rounding down on minutes.
With most carriers, any number of seconds on a call are rounded up to the next minute. So a 2 minute and 42 second call is actually billed as a 3 minute call. Common Cents Mobile bucks the trend by rounding down. The previous example would be billed as 2 minutes, giving consumers another way to save on minutes.
Common Cents Mobile bills 7 cents for every minute and offers $20 refills of 565 minutes, up to $30 for 844 minutes. Text messages are also $7 each, with an unlimited texting package for $20. Data rates are not fantastic, though. Data costs $1 per megabyte.
That’s not the biggest problem though. Common Cents Mobile has such a poor selection of phones that most customers probably won't be using much data at al l. The phones are in keeping with the cost effective theme of Common Cents Mobile. They range from $20 to $60 and mostly include simple dumbphones.
Still, for consumers who hate contracts and want their minutes to last longer, Common Cents Mobile has a lot to offer. Common Cents Mobile handsets and refill cards will be available at over 700 Walmart locations on May 15.
