Cricket GSM Sim Card for Cricket Wireless SmartPhones - Carrier Packaging - Older Model

I had an iPhone 4S that was originally on contract with AT&T, but my contract was long over and it was time for me to get a new phone and find a cheaper carrier. I ended up deciding between T-Mobile's $30 prepaid plan and Cricket's Basic plan. Cricket costs a little more for overall less service, but I ended up deciding on Cricket because this runs on AT&T's network, meaning I know I would have the same reception I had before, while T-Mobile could have been worse. Though it runs off AT&T's towers, Cricket is less expensive for a single account compared to AT&T's mobile share plans in exchange for Hotspots (sharing your phone's Internet) being an extra charge, text and voice limitations to domestic on the cheapest plan, and data being capped to 8 Mbps on LTE (whereas on AT&T you could easily see 50 Mbps where I live).I personally like the capped data speeds. First of all, it seems that at the first instant it actually is not capped, so loading pages or downloading things is often very fast. Also 8 Mbps is enough for a phone, and if you get too much speed, it's easy to accidentally have something use all your data in a few minutes. Also once I hit the 2.5 GB limit, rather than being forced to pay AT&T a $15 fee for another GB, I can choose between using 128 Kbps speed or paying $10 for a GB. I like that.Okay so on to the purchase. I bought this card here on Amazon in advance of me getting a new iPhone SE. (Also a neighbor gave me a referral link that I used before signing up, and after I signed up I finished my profile by putting in my Cricket number, so that will give me a $25 credit in a few months.) So then I went to the Cricket Wireless "Join" page (and note: sometimes, depending on my browser or Internet connection possibly, the Cricket website gives a server error or says I can't view the page, so if that happens to you ever, try a different computer or browser), and on the Join page I followed the steps. I'm not sure if I did things in the wrong order, because I actually put my SIM in the phone and powered it up before activating it, which the page on Amazon says while the Cricket site and starter kit say to activate first, but it was no problem. And since the iPhone SE uses a nano SIM, this card worked well. It does include adapters for Micro SIM and standard SIM if you need to use this card with older phones. Also, by the way, this does not include a tool to open a SIM card slot, but the iPhone came with one or you can use a small paper clip.So I followed the steps there on the website, and the website was very smooth, I put in my payment information in the right step and chose to do auto-pay (so that in upcoming months I will get a $5 credit per bill before it charges my card), did the activation, and it activated right away, within a few minutes. Basically I was following the instructions on other reviews here.At the same time as I was doing this, I had my iPhone connected to my MacBook Pro where it downloaded and installed a Carrier update from Cricket over iTunes and then set up my iPhone based on a backup from my iPhone 4S. And by the way the transition from the old phone software and settings (iOS 7 by the way) to the new one wasn't perfect but it was smooth enough after I went through things. I'll get in to a little bit of that later. But in terms of Cricket, the transfer of my number was fast and smooth.Everything seems to be working well, good reception, good speeds, SMS works, it's all good.Okay so some other things to note: I have noticed that if I look up the geolocation of my phone's IP address, it doesn't usually correspond to my region within the USA. If I recall, when I was on AT&T (though I didn't have LTE on my old phone) the IP address was usually at least within a few hundred miles of where I lived. This isn't a huge problem, but when I first signed in to Gmail from the new phone and an out of state IP geolocation, Google freaked out and blocked the login, and I had to go in online and say that it was really me. I don't know for sure if the IP was the problem but it could have been.One of my concerns before switching to Cricket was whether the iPhone's Visual Voicemail would work like it used to on AT&T. Meaning, would I be able to not worry about my voicemail limit, would I be able to use iOS's phone app's Voicemail tab to see a list of voicemails that are stored locally. And it appears that yes it does work. I went in to the Voicemail tab and it let me set it up. The new phone doesn't have the old voicemails that were on my old phone, but I had been able to save old voicemails from my old phone to my computer, and it's not that relevant to Cricket specifically anyway. I haven't had the phone long enough to know for sure how it handles large numbers of voicemails, but I suspect it is the same as before on AT&T.A word on Cricket customer support: It's not the same support people, that I can tell, that AT&T has. I've chatted with the website chat support a few times and sometimes they were helpful and other times they seemed to not know what they were talking about. Pretty typical I guess. Never had to wait long to access chat on the website, but through the Cricket iPhone app it said I was behind a lot of people waiting for chat support, so I don't know what the deal is with that. Also I think you can only do chat or phone for support but not email.I've only been on the Cricket network for a few days so far, so if something changes, I'll try to update this review.Oh, and regarding leaving AT&T: I was about 10 days in to the cycle (postpaid account) when I switched, and they said I'll likely get a bill for that after a few weeks, so if you transfer, keep an eye out for that.When I signed up for Cricket, I was able to use a referral link to get a $25 credit that should post to my account after a few months. If you want to do something similar, you can ask a friend who has Cricket or find links online. My own referral code, if you want to use it, go to:refer (dot) cricketwireless (dot) com (slash) 7mShX5wUpdate: So far I've been using this for about a week and a half. So I have some other observations and updates to share:Regarding the Cricket website not letting me access it, I was having that problem on Safari on my iPhone, but when I went to clear the cache for that site, it started working again. So not sure what the problem with the site is but if you have a problem, try clearing cache and cookies.Regarding chat support through the app, I actually did get through to someone through the app so it does work. Several minutes of wait while it goes from "22nd in line" to "1st in line" though. Also the app once in a while doesn't load with some technical difficulties, but the MyAT&T app didn't use to be perfect in that way either.Also, my old iPhone 4S didn't have working WiFi, and I needed to have Internet access for it to let me erase all content and settings, so I used my Cricket sim in that temporarily. The 4S uses a microSIM while the iPhone SE uses the smaller nanoSIM. So I used the included adapter that came with the starter kit to fit it into my iPhone. When I removed the adapter, the plastic was definitely not that strong and bent out of shape very easily, but I was able to bend it back and with slight difficulty fit my sim with the adapter into my iPhone 4S, and it worked. Not a great experience but it worked.Later on, I was checking visual voicemail, and the greeting, and there was some problem where I could not play or modify the greeting through the iPhone interface, like it was unresponsive. I'm not sure exactly what the cause was or if it was Cricket's fault, but I did manage to get it working again and it seems to be normal.I had also noticed that MMS wasn't working, and I tried googling and was reading things about not being able to change carrier settings and all, but it turned out that was all fine and I needed to switch the MMS option On in Settings>Messages.Regarding what I said about IP addresses, it may actually be that rather than the IPs being associated with out of state locations, they are just not associated with any region besides "United States." Just a minor observation.Last observation: On phone calls, I saw the phone drop LTE and go on to 4G (which actually was slightly better reception than LTE). Turns out Cricket doesn't have VoLTE (yet). Not a major problem but an observation.Another update: I noticed that in the past, when I would call a landline, back when I was on AT&T, they would see on Caller ID my number and my name. Now on Cricket it shows my number and "Wireless Caller". Don't like that, not sure if that can be changed, but it's a minor thing.Yet another update: So I've been using Cricket for almost 3 months now. Everything is still working well, but I have a couple more observations. One is that after you use up the data for the month, it does drop to about 128 Kbps for downloads, but you can still upload data at full speed, until the billing cycle ends. In my experience, the billing cycle seems to restart in the eastern US time zone even though I'm on the West Coast, but the data did not return to normal speed at that time. It didn't return to normal speed after midnight even. It was back to normal by the daytime though. That capped data speed is super annoying, but it's still there if you really need it, it can even stream Pandora okay. You can get an app to track how much data you're using though to avoid this.Also, the credit/discount that I mentioned above for using a referral code (in my case, from a neighbor who has Cricket) did finally apply to my account.And last, I was about 10 days into my AT&T billing cycle before I switched to Cricket, but I never had to pay from that billing cycle. I'm happy about that but don't know if that is something you can normally rely on.

I used these sim cards purchased via Amazon to switch over all 3 of our phones with their phone #s from AT&T to Cricket. It was so much easier & less painful than I thought it was going to be. Here's some useful info:First of all, believe the reviews here about the process and don't bother to contact Cricket customer service. I used Cricket chat and asked about how to do the transfer process using sims purchased online. My goal was to have the shortest service interruption possible since all we have are cell phones (no land line) and we can't go without them for long. Well, the whole idea of purchasing the sims ahead of time completely blew the mind of the Cricket rep I got on chat. She insisted that I place an order online via the Cricket website and wait up to 2 days for the sim to arrive in the mail, by which time she assured me that the phone number would be ported & the sim ready to go. Never mind that shortly after placing that order I'd be sitting around with a dead phone waiting for them to mail my sim! Plus, she said we'd have to do the phones one at a time to get the multiple phone discount, so I'd go through this process three separate times before finishing. Thank goodness for the reviews here!If you're transferring a phone (& perhaps a phone #) to Cricket, buy your sim ahead of time. Then when you're ready to switch:1) Go to cricketwireless.com/join and follow the instructions. Starting there works whether you're adding a line to an existing account or creating a new one - it will ask you after you submit the sim & IMEI on the 1st page.2) It will add your sim card to the cart for $0 because you already paid for it. Select your service plan - it showed the multiple phone discount when I was adding a line.3) You'll be prompted to pay. No activation fee or sim card cost was added, no taxes or fees - just the 1st month of service plan I chose. Finish checkout.4) Then you'll be asked about whether you want a new phone # or to port one in. If porting, you'll be asked info about your current service provider account.5) On the confirmation page, there is an Activate button to activate your phone. (Start using your current phone with the Cricket sim). Click this & switch your sim.It took less than 30 minutes for each of our phones to have active service on the Cricket sim once I clicked Activate.Also, Cricket CS was right about doing it one at a time, but it was still done all in one morning. I did the 1st one, creating the account in the process. Right away I opened another browser tab & did the 2nd one, choosing to add the line to the existing account. The service plan options reflected the $10 discount. Once done, I repeated the process for the 3rd line, added it to the existing account, and saw the $20 discount reflected in my service plan options.One more note: my biggest concern was with unlocking one of our phones. It was still considered on contract & locked until after the service plan was cancelled, at which point I was free to submit an unlock request & wait who knows how long. I had an old phone on hand to use with my Cricket sim while waiting for the unlock, but I found that my Cricket sim worked right away. I learned via AT&T customer service that the Cricket sim is the only one that would work on an AT&T locked phone (which makes sense since it's the same network). And it did. Yay, no crappy old temp phone while I waited!