AT&T cell service and Alcatel GoPhone review

We pondered the change for 9 moths give or take.  It's a scary thing to change a business phone over to a pre-paid [dumb] cell phone, but for a savings of $115 a month?  Who could resist?  We don't use and haven't used AT&T for anything but internet (a log time ago) and landline service (both home and business, but business the longest).  Being a business phone, we didn't want to change numbers, and we didn't want any interruption in service.  I was promised (I know one of the ladies that works at the AT&T store here) that there would be no interruption.  The 2 main things that kept us from switching sooner was #1 the talk or horrible service by everyone we asked (friend and people we didn't know), and #2 what about fax machine and credit card processing.  Credit card processing wasn't a big deal, we also do payday loans, so we just hooked up the machine to that line.  For faxing, we can only receive faxes on the payday loan from non loan numbers.  (We can send faxes to the loan place though).  I found an app for my old smart phone (now tablet) called CamScanner.  It works great, and I can send the scanned documents to e-mail and then pass them on to the respective party.  Most service providers, so far, have been happy to correspond via e-mail, when I tell them we no longer have a fax machine.

Anyway......I decided to get an Alcatel phone.  It's promoted as being a messaging phone.  It has web access but like you can see anything on the screen.  LOL!  I've tried to use the web feature, and quite honestly it's a joke.  Mostly it's used for phone, and some texting, although I don't text a lot anymore.  Most texting is done through, Text Now, a  Free Text app, on my old phone, over WiFi.

Now on to the review:

We have had and used this pre-paid phone for a little over a month now.  My overall opinion of the AT& T cell service is way better than I thought it would be.  I don't think we have missed too many calls.  I think it could be better, but no real complaints.

My opinion of the phone in general.  It's ok.  It's a BIG change for me stepping down from an android smart phone on a plan to basically a "dumb phone".  It is rather nice though because I don't feel like I have to always be checking facebook, and twitter, and google+, etc.  I can only check them when I have wifi on my old phone.

Battery life isn't too bad unless you talk a lot!  I always have a charger handy, some customers can get long winded. If  I just have short calls though my battery usually lasts at least 1 day sometimes almost 2 before it has to be recharged.  There have been a few times I have had to charge it  during the day. (Those are good days right? :-) )

I DO like the blue back lit QWERTY keypad.  It's great for the letters, but the symbols and numbers, that are orange, you can't see at all in the dark.  If you have bigger fingers, it may be harder to use the keypad.

Would I recommend AT&T Cell Phone service?  So far, yes.  I haven't had any real problems, and the local person (the one I know) has been more than helpful and has been able to answer my questions and concerns with confidence.

Would I recommend the Alcatel Phone?  Yes.  It is good for texting and calling. If you want more than that.....don't bother.  It's no smart phone, but so far it's doing what we need it to do.  It's saving us money, and that is an big thing these days.

I didn't buy my phone from Amazon, I got it from the local Cellular Store.  This is the one I have (amazon link if you click the picture).