How to Buy Cell Phone Service

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ben from the Cellphone Broker in San Jose, California. Today, I'm going to show you how to buy cell phone service. There's a couple of things that you need to consider. You need to make sure you do the research and pick the right carrier or provider that fits your needs coverage, price-wise, and phone selection -- also, features that they have available on their network. Then you should go into that company's store. I'd say about 75 percent of the stores in America that would say Sprint or Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T are not owned by that company. It's okay. You can still purchase phones from them, but it's just it's the pricing on the phones might be a little bit different. Oftentimes, it's a lot cheaper and the representatives in those stores are, a lot of times, a little bit easier to work with. 25 percent of the stores in America are corporate-owned, which means they would be owned by AT&T or Verizon, and when you go into those stores, it's usually a little bit more crowded because people know that and they'll usually offer some more services in terms of billing support or technical support. So pick whatever store is closer to your house. It really doesn't matter. They're all going to be able to help you do the same things. You can also consider whether or not you want to get tied into a two-year contract. The majority of the carriers in the United States run off of a two-year commitment, and when you go purchase a phone, they'll give you a...up to, you know, 300 dollar discount when you buy that phone if you sign a two-year contract. However, if you do not want to get locked into a contract, you can definitely choose the prepaid option, which would be MetroPCS, Boost Mobile, or, you know, some other Go Phone carriers -- TracFone. You know, there's a lot of carriers available out there that don't have contracts. You can buy them at Wal-Mart, Target, all over the place, and there's...their coverage is pretty much the same as one of the major networks. However, their pricing is cheaper if you don't use your phone a lot, but it's more expensive if you use your phone quite a bit. I'm Ben from the Cellphone Broker in San Jose. You can check us out online -- myspace.com/cellphonebroker."