I Got a Year of AT&T Service for $20/mo (and you can too!)

I love a good bargain, but sometimes you really do get what you pay for. When it comes to cell phone service, I’m always looking for something cheaper than my $35/mo Cricket Wireless plan (which includes a $5 discount for autopay). It’s a pretty competitive price for a no-compromise service in my opinion.

I’ve tried a few other carriers to reduce my bill… and it didn’t work out. I actually felt scammed by Red Pocket Mobile. My attempt with Mint was an incomplete and that’s on me. I plugged in the sim chip and got dozens of spam SMS and calls almost right away. I think it got better, but I put it in a super cheap phone (instead of my real number) and then didn’t want to carry two phones around. I also didn’t want to deal with a slow phone when I had a fast one.

Today I come with a cell phone deal from a company you have probably heard of… AT&T. For fair disclosure, I personally bought this deal and I will make no commission if you decide to do the same.

Simply put, you pay $300 upfront for a year of service. Get your yuks in with my bad math while you can. It gets effectively cheaper, just keep reading.

I always give credit where it’s due, so I found the deal through this CNET Cheapskate article. A reader found the promotion and he thought it was good too. Don’t blindly follow that link and sign up yet though. There’s more money to be saved.

I love saving money, but the thing that made me go for it was something many people may consider minor. It’s what we’d call an “edge case” when I was a software engineer. It’s not likely to impact a lot of people, but it impacts me greatly. (I feel my life is a giant edge case, but that’s a different article all together.) This deal included mobile hotspot at no additional charge. On my current Cricket Wireless service (same AT&T network) it is another $10. I don’t need a mobile hotspot. However, my kids love Pokemon and Pokemon Go and we can use some old phones lying around to play… if they have a mobile connection while we walk around. For the 2-4 hours a month we’d use it, it’s hard to spend an extra $10 on a mobile hotspot. Also, I’m certainly not buying a 5 and 6 year old cell phone service.

So instead of paying $45 a month for Cricket with a hotspot, $20 is much, much better.

Ugh, there’s my bad math again. It’s time to fix that.

I Tweeted out this deal and the Awesome Jackie Beck saw it and bought it. She said that if you download the Honey extension for your browser, you’ll get 20% back. I did it and they promised me 20% back, so I expect that it will be legit. I’ve heard of Honey before and it’s reputable, just like Ebates (or Rakuten as it now has been rebranded by the new owners). That 20% back ($60) would make it effectively $20/mo.

If for some reason Honey doesn’t come through, I’ll happily pay $25/mo. It’s still a great price. At a minimum it saves me $10/mo. and solves a problem in my life (the Pokemon Go thing). At a maximum it saves me $15/mo. and still solves that problem.

Other than the saving big money part, perhaps the best part is that you have a full AT&T account. You can go to a store and get good customer service. You won’t find a store for Red Pocket Mobile or Mint.

What happens in a year from now when it expires? I always have Cricket Wireless to go back to. There are almost always deals in the wireless space, and maybe a new one will surface.

I should note that this may be for new AT&T customers only. They won’t just let you switch from your existing plan it seems. However, if you do what I do, have your main phone number ported to Google Voice, you should have no problem. Let me know how it works for you.

How do you actually get the deal? I tried to find a direct link, but couldn’t find a good one. I just used the CNET Cheapskate link, but with Honey installed.

What do you think? Is $20-25 a “buy it now”? Let me know in the comments.