Switching from Verizon to Total Wireless

I'm not a penny pincher or a tight-wad. However, I, like many others, do enjoy saving money. My wife and I had started getting serious about our budgeting last year (with great results) so we've been looking for ways to trim some of our bills some more to maximize savings.



In our area, Verizon is the best cell-phone carrier, with AT&T in close second. Neither of them have particularly cheap deals, so you might think that you're simply at the mercy of whatever plans they offer. If so, that's where you're wrong. See, there are many cell phone companies that piggy-back off of the major players' networks. These companies are called MVNOs or Mobile Virtual Network Operators. My wife and I really like Verizon's network and didn't want to switch. However, with Total Wireless, we get to keep using the Verizon network at a much lower price.

We were paying roughly $110/month for 4Gb of shared data along with unlimited talk & text. With Total Wireless, we get 8Gb of shared data along with unlimited talk & text for about $62/month after taxes. The only trade-offs are as follows;

• VoLTE (Voice over LTE, which allows you to use data and voice at the same time) is only on Verizon. 
• Visual Voicemail on the iPhone no longer works. 
• No Personal Hotspot functionality.
• Data speeds are capped at roughly 5Mbps (this will be the case with most MVNOs, however)

The other possible issue for some is that the carrier name may show up differently for some. For many people, this may not be a big deal at all but some people don't want their phone showing a pre-paid carrier on their phone for a variety of reasons. 

If you're fine with the trade-offs, then let's ditch Verizon and save some money. You'll want to first start by going to Total Wireless's website and using their BYOP (Bring your own phone) helper to verify that your phone is compatible with TW's service (which really should be any CDMA-capable phone since it uses Verizon's network). 

https://www.totalwireless.com/wps/portal/home/h/check-compatibility/!ut/p/a1/04_Sj9CPykssy0xPLMnMz0vMAfGjzOIt3Z0NDE0MDL0tXIMMDRwdvQKCjV0NjA2czYEKIoEKXAy8fI0DHT2MgswMLQw8A3zc3VwMfYwNLMwJ6Q_XjwIrwWcCmgIPc1OgAg_nYHdzPwN_NyOoAgMcwNFAvyA3wiDT01ERAMFIaZE!/dl5/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/

The link is ugly but this will take you to the BYOP helper to make sure your phone works. It asks for your serial number in one field but calls for your MEID number in the text above that. If you're checking for an iPhone like I was, neither the serial nor MEID will work. They actually are looking for IMEI number. 

Once you've verified the phone(s) will work, you'll need to buy the SIM cards. Most of the discussion on Reddit and other forums surrounding pre-paid cell-phone plans talk mostly about Straight-Talk, Cricket, or TracFone. However, I'd found some talk about switching to TW using another company's BYOP SIM kit. The Total Wireless SIM kits are available at Walmart for about $10 each, which isn't particularly steep. However, Total Wireless is owned by the same company that owns a number of other MVNOs, such as TracFone. TracFone's SIM kit is only $1 on Amazon and at Best Buy, so you can save nearly $18 on the initial cost of switching by using TracFone's SIM kit as opposed to Total Wireless's.

I can't verify but if you're one of the people who would rather the network name on your phone say "Verizon" as opposed to "TFW", then you'll want to know that several people on the /NoContract subreddit have reported that using the Total Wireless SIM kit didn't change their network name. I used the TracFone kits and I can confirm that the network name shows as "TFW". Again, not a big deal for some but different strokes for different folks. 

With almost any SIM kit, you'll get 3 sizes of SIM card (standard, micro and nano) in GSM and CDMA varieties. In my case, I'm switching over 2 iPhone 7 Pluses (I believe the iPhones since the 4 have used the nano SIM cards but I reserve the right to be wrong.), so I used the CDMA nano SIM cards. I've included a couple pics of the TracFone BYOP SIM kit. 

I'd also purchased the air-time card from Walmart (Total Wireless is sold exclusively through Walmart, though you can also buy air-time and phones through their website). This card was the most expensive part of the switch at $60+ (taxes and such) and was basically our first month of service through TW. TW offers an auto-renew feature where it purchases another month on the last day of your service. The Auto-Renew comes with a discount, which for the plan my wife and I are using, comes down to $62.08/month after taxes. Way cheaper than Big Red.

Getting the SIM card out of the iPhone isn't particularly difficult. Your phone may have come with a small tool designed to open the SIM card tray on the side of the phone. If you don't have that tool (like I didn't) then a small paperclip or safety pin will suffice. You'll want to write down the IMEI number from the phone (found in Settings > General > About) and then power off the phone. For the 6, 6S or 7 (standard or plus sizes), the SIM card tray will be on the right-hand edge of the phone if you're looking at the screen. Obviously, you'll need to remove any case or protective skin to access it. 

Since the Verizon account was under my name, I thought that switching my phone first would knock out the service for my wife's phone so I started with hers. I called Total Wireless Customer Service from my phone while I had my wife's powered off and the SIM card out. The CS Rep asked me for the following info.

• the IMEI number of the device
• the SIM card number on the new SIM
• the phone number to port
• whether the number was a mobile phone number or a land-line number
• the account number for Verizon
• the billing address for the account with Verizon
• the password or security PIN number for the account with Verizon
• the pin number from your Total Wireless air card

I suggest having all of this information written out prior to the switch. After they have the information and the port is in process, they tell you to continue using your phone as is and that when the Verizon service is shut off, put in the Total Wireless SIM card (the SIM card #s are completely numeric so they may not know that you saved a few $ by using the TracFone SIM card) into the phone. They also specify that the port process CAN take up to 72 hours but usually completes in 24 hours or less. After I got off the phone with them, I popped the new SIM card into my wife's phone and powered the phone on. After a couple minutes, it showed a network connection. Calls worked as well as cellular data. 

Rinse and Repeat for my phone. The CS Reps weren't awful but they weren't particularly friendly. I've heard that the Customer Service for many of the MVNOs were awful so I was expecting Scam-Microsoft-Support level of language barrier and unfriendliness. The whole switch process went smoother than I thought it would. 

After both phones were switched over and linked to the same plan, they email you a password so that you can login to your account. I logged into my account where I updated my account information (almost every field was automatically populated with my account number by default), changed my PW and signed up for Auto-Renew. 

All in all, we're still in the first month but I'm excited to see how it goes, if we hate it, then we're not locked into anything so we can switch back to Big Red or to another MVNO whenever we want. I wrote this to be of help for someone in a similar situation, looking to make the same jump. This is a collection of the research I've found on the topic. I hope this helps.