Yeah, Straight Talk had discontinued the sales of AT&T bring your own phone SIMs from their website for a while, but up to a week ago, you were still able to buy the 3-pack of SIM cards with the $45 service card in certain Wal-Mart supercenters. Now they have been officially replaced with the BYOP CDMA pack which consists of no SIM cards, and just a piece of paper inside that allows a CDMA phone not currently on Verizon's network to be re-activated on Verizon (as well as one month of $45 service). The package says it doesn't work with iPhones or any smartphone that is LTE capable.
Heard from a friend at Walmart corporate that all supercenters that still had any of the 3-packs had them taken off the shelf. All of this is because of the well-known ETF bug that exists when you port a phone number from AT&T postpaid to AT&T Straight Talk... how you don't get billed the $325 ETF fee. AT&T isn't too happy about this.
This all seemed too good to be true, so I did my research, learned all I could about what was happening and thought I would give it a shot. I convinced a friend to let me add a line on his account, and left him $325 in cash in case he was issued a bill and I failed in my experiment. Truly, nothing to lose since I needed a new iPhone anyway. I got an Apple refurb model iPhone 5 for just $99 during one of their fire sales. I was thrilled to find out when the package came that it really was an Apple Refurb in every sense of the word. It was brand new, just like the 'replacements' at an Apple Store. Brand new EarPods, complete with case, new cords, new apple stickers, everything still in plastic wrap, and the phone itself physically flawless with all the peel-off plastic still attached. The only thing different then retail was the outer box which was plain white as opposed to the retail box the Black iPhone 5 comes in.
Anyway, I enjoyed my iPhone 5 for 5 weeks on the 5GB LTE with tethering plan. From my research, I learned that the porting bug only works when you port in the SECOND month of postpaid service. That is, your first whole month of service needs to not only be over, but the first month bill must be finished processing and actually delivered to you. Anyone who's ever had AT&T knows that they have this weird week where your bill goes off into the ether and you can't even check it out until they're done processing it. Anyway, once they've issued you your first bill and your well outside your 30-day grace period and now totally cemented into the 2-year contract, now is when I ported my number using a Straight Talk AT&T NanoSIM I had gotten from ebay. Using Straight Talk's website, I opened an account, chose activate this phone, entered the IMEI serial number of the NanoSIM, chose the third option which is "coming from another service", and entered my AT&T phone number attached to the iPhone 5.
Now for the confirmation that something REALLY weird is going on here: after about 10 minutes, the service drops from my phone which currently has the postpaid AT&T NanoSIM inside. I eject the SIM and put in the Straight Talk NanoSIM, and configure the APN settings (my phone is jailbroken, and I use tetherMe to force the settings open). Anyhow, the 4G icon pops up and everything is working fine.... but stranger still... although visual voicemail now didn't work, my at&t voicemail password, along with all my voicemails remained setup exactly how it was with at&T. As in, obviously nothing had changed system wise on their end. This is precisely why this porting trick works, on their end the number is active on their system. Why would they send you a $325 cancellation bill when the number is active on their system?
It's now been 4 months... I've kept my Straight Talk AT&T service current, and have had no problems at all. I had a problem one month with getting throttled, but ever since I started using a VPN service on my iPhone (for $1 a month) I no longer get throttled. I used 9GB last month and average 10/mb sec. I pay about $27 a month for talk/text/data from sellers on ebay selling 3-packs of service cards. Even if these sellers didn't exist it would be $45 a month. There has still been no ETF fee.
It really works. I'm blown away. The way I see it, it's still a lot of work, technically to have to do to truly take advantage of it, but times are really tough and I took the extra $550 I saved on the iphone 5 and put it towards a new computer that I desperately need after a friend stepped on the screen of my old Macbook. AT&T is still getting their money over the 2 years that the contract spans (I'm assuming if I were to ever let my straight talk at&T service lapse I would be issued the $325 ETF fee instantly) but they are just getting it at much slower rate then the $170 a month bill that I would otherwise be paying.
Just thought I'd share an awesome way to get around $450 off the cost of a new or used iPhone and that it did work for me. Whatever you have to do to get one of these remaining SIMs on ebay, I'd easily recommend it. I made a video for how to do the SWAP TRICK to edit your APN settings if your phone isn't jailbroken and on iOS 6.1.3 or 6.1.4 in case you're curious.
http://youtu.be/DeHISkishTs
At the end of the video is also a speed test, so you can see what kind of speeds I get on Straight Talk 4G HSPA+. For the price, I don't think you can do any better!! Hope this helps some of you!!!
Heard from a friend at Walmart corporate that all supercenters that still had any of the 3-packs had them taken off the shelf. All of this is because of the well-known ETF bug that exists when you port a phone number from AT&T postpaid to AT&T Straight Talk... how you don't get billed the $325 ETF fee. AT&T isn't too happy about this.
This all seemed too good to be true, so I did my research, learned all I could about what was happening and thought I would give it a shot. I convinced a friend to let me add a line on his account, and left him $325 in cash in case he was issued a bill and I failed in my experiment. Truly, nothing to lose since I needed a new iPhone anyway. I got an Apple refurb model iPhone 5 for just $99 during one of their fire sales. I was thrilled to find out when the package came that it really was an Apple Refurb in every sense of the word. It was brand new, just like the 'replacements' at an Apple Store. Brand new EarPods, complete with case, new cords, new apple stickers, everything still in plastic wrap, and the phone itself physically flawless with all the peel-off plastic still attached. The only thing different then retail was the outer box which was plain white as opposed to the retail box the Black iPhone 5 comes in.
Anyway, I enjoyed my iPhone 5 for 5 weeks on the 5GB LTE with tethering plan. From my research, I learned that the porting bug only works when you port in the SECOND month of postpaid service. That is, your first whole month of service needs to not only be over, but the first month bill must be finished processing and actually delivered to you. Anyone who's ever had AT&T knows that they have this weird week where your bill goes off into the ether and you can't even check it out until they're done processing it. Anyway, once they've issued you your first bill and your well outside your 30-day grace period and now totally cemented into the 2-year contract, now is when I ported my number using a Straight Talk AT&T NanoSIM I had gotten from ebay. Using Straight Talk's website, I opened an account, chose activate this phone, entered the IMEI serial number of the NanoSIM, chose the third option which is "coming from another service", and entered my AT&T phone number attached to the iPhone 5.
Now for the confirmation that something REALLY weird is going on here: after about 10 minutes, the service drops from my phone which currently has the postpaid AT&T NanoSIM inside. I eject the SIM and put in the Straight Talk NanoSIM, and configure the APN settings (my phone is jailbroken, and I use tetherMe to force the settings open). Anyhow, the 4G icon pops up and everything is working fine.... but stranger still... although visual voicemail now didn't work, my at&t voicemail password, along with all my voicemails remained setup exactly how it was with at&T. As in, obviously nothing had changed system wise on their end. This is precisely why this porting trick works, on their end the number is active on their system. Why would they send you a $325 cancellation bill when the number is active on their system?
It's now been 4 months... I've kept my Straight Talk AT&T service current, and have had no problems at all. I had a problem one month with getting throttled, but ever since I started using a VPN service on my iPhone (for $1 a month) I no longer get throttled. I used 9GB last month and average 10/mb sec. I pay about $27 a month for talk/text/data from sellers on ebay selling 3-packs of service cards. Even if these sellers didn't exist it would be $45 a month. There has still been no ETF fee.
It really works. I'm blown away. The way I see it, it's still a lot of work, technically to have to do to truly take advantage of it, but times are really tough and I took the extra $550 I saved on the iphone 5 and put it towards a new computer that I desperately need after a friend stepped on the screen of my old Macbook. AT&T is still getting their money over the 2 years that the contract spans (I'm assuming if I were to ever let my straight talk at&T service lapse I would be issued the $325 ETF fee instantly) but they are just getting it at much slower rate then the $170 a month bill that I would otherwise be paying.
Just thought I'd share an awesome way to get around $450 off the cost of a new or used iPhone and that it did work for me. Whatever you have to do to get one of these remaining SIMs on ebay, I'd easily recommend it. I made a video for how to do the SWAP TRICK to edit your APN settings if your phone isn't jailbroken and on iOS 6.1.3 or 6.1.4 in case you're curious.
http://youtu.be/DeHISkishTs
At the end of the video is also a speed test, so you can see what kind of speeds I get on Straight Talk 4G HSPA+. For the price, I don't think you can do any better!! Hope this helps some of you!!!
