Friday, May 21, 2021

Completely Honest Review of Reach Mobile

Reach Mobile is a service designed to provide high-quality phone and data plans at affordable rates. They pride themselves on having great coverage and fantastic customer service — all at a fair price. Interested in trying it out? Read this completely ...
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Completely Honest Review of Reach Mobile

Reach Mobile is a service designed to provide high-quality phone and data plans at affordable rates. They pride themselves on having great coverage and fantastic customer service — all at a fair price. Interested in trying it out? Read this completely honest Reach Mobile review to help you decide!

{Psst! Be sure to check out all my other completely honest reviews, too!}

my honest Reach Mobile review

I had the opportunity to try out the Reach Mobile service and give an honest review. (This post is sponsored by Reach Mobile. Links used in this post are my affiliate links. All opinions are my own.)

If you are in the market for a new phone service or are looking to lower your monthly rates, I definitely recommend checking out Reach Mobile. As I’ll explore in this post, it may or may not be a good fit for you.

looking at new phone to give honest Reach Mobile review

How Reach Mobile Works

To get started with Reach Mobile (or to check and see how much it would cost to switch to Reach Mobile):

  1. Go here and choose how many lines you want to have on your plan. (The price per line goes down with a multiple-line group plan.)
  2. Then, choose the plan you’d like to use. You will automatically get 50% off your first three months by signing up through my link here. This discount should show for you at the checkout page.
  3. Next, fill in your information to create an account and go through the checkout process. Note: Reach is one of the few post-paid services that doesn’t require a credit check. Upon activating your plan, you will be charged on a monthly basis on the 7th of every month (your first month is pro-rated accordingly).* You will also be charged a one-time shipping fee of $3 for them to send your SIM card and welcome kit in the mail. If you activate your plan within 7 days of receiving your SIM, the shipping fee will be refunded.
  4. You will receive a welcome kit with your SIM card and instructions on setting up the phone service within 3-7 business days.
  5. Once you have received your welcome kit, just follow the simple instructions to set up your phone. (You will already need to have your own phone. If you don’t have one, Reach Mobile does offer unlocked, contract-free phones on their site.) Activating through the Reach app should take you about 15 minutes and then you are good to go!
  6. If you want to cancel your Reach Mobile phone plan at any time, you can do so without any penalties or extra charges. You will just pay through the end of the month you cancelled in. There is no contract and there are no hidden fees.

*Important note: As it states on their website: “At the time of activation, a temporary hold will be placed on your credit card for the total value of the plan purchased.” Reach explained to me that they do this in lieu of a credit check to ensure payment can be made successfully.

How Much Does Reach Mobile Cost?

Depending upon the number of phone lines and the service you choose, Reach Mobile will be anywhere from $30/month for the Basic Plan up to $65/month for the Unlimited Plan for one phone. Each line comes with unlimited talk and text.

If you add more than one phone to your plan, the rates lower per phone. However, all data (except for the All-in Unlimited Plan) is shared — so if you choose the Basic Plan and you have two lines, you will be sharing the 3GB between the two lines.

Reach Mobile cell phone plans
cell phone plan options

One cool feature that Reach Mobile told me about when I chatted with their customer service was that you’ll only be charged for the data plan you use. So if you sign up for the People’s Choice 12GB plan ($55/month), but you only use 8GB that month, you’ll just be billed for the Moderate 8GB Plan ($40/month).

In addition, if you sign up through my link (or use coupon code MSM503 at checkout), you’ll get 50% off the first three months. This would be a great way to try out the service very inexpensively and if it’s not for you, you can cancel at the end of the three months.

phone charging

What is the Service Like?

According to Reviews.org: “Reach Mobile is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which means it piggybacks on another network to provide coverage. In this case, Reach Mobile uses Verizon’s network, which just so happens to be the best in the country. 

But there is a catch with Reach Mobile’s coverage. Since Reach is an MVNO, it can be deprioritized on the Verizon network. You might notice your data speeds and signal bars drop out of the blue, especially when you’re in a congested area. That’s because the Verizon network deprioritizes Reach Mobile users in favor of its own users.

Think of it like a big pizza pie. If you’re feeding a group of people with a single large pepperoni, there are only so many slices to go around. It makes sense that the folks who paid more for the pizza (Verizon users) should get the most slices, as opposed to the folks who paid much less for the pizza (Reach users).”

Reach Mobile Gives Back

One of the things I love about Reach Mobile is their commitment to giving back. According to their website, “Reach contributes connectivity to Get a plan, Give a plan on behalf of every data plan, every month.”

They go on to say on their site: “When you purchase a data plan with us, we donate the value of 10% of your data plan to a shared pool, which is used to fund and provide connectivity to recipients around the world. Connections given through Get a plan, Give a plan are allocated to individuals associated with our three nonprofit partners in the US, India, and Nigeria. Every time you purchase a data plan with Reach Mobile, you’re providing connectivity to someone that desperately needs it.”

You can log into your account and see how much connectivity you have provided to others through your monthly data plan payments.

welcome letter from Reach Mobile

Pros and Cons for Reach Mobile

I’ll be honest, I am always skeptical when it comes to products and services that promise to be “The best” of anything. Reach Mobile makes a claim on their site that they are “The best mobile network. Period.”

I took it as a personal challenge to find some things that would debunk that claim. Because even though they paid me for my time to try out their phone service and write a review, I told them very clearly that my followers are my first priority, so I’d be writing a completely honest review of Reach Mobile review — complete with both pros and cons and my very real and truthful thoughts on their company.

But, I actually struggled to find things to say that were downsides of the company. In fact, I even went incognito and reached out to their customer service and role-played a sort of difficult customer persona and they were nothing but super kind and helpful to me.

I had to laugh when the only one-star review on the Android store was that it wasn’t compatible with their phone and the only two-star review was that it was a little pricier than other no-contract phone plans.

SIM card from Reach Mobile

Pros

It’s less expensive than most phone plans. While Reach Mobile is a little more expensive than some of the other no-contract phone plans (especially if you have a pay-as-you-go plan), it’s a lot less expensive than many of the mainstream phone carriers. It’s definitely worth checking whether you would save by switching to Reach Mobile.

They have great 24/7 customer service. I was extremely impressed with their customer service. They offer 24/7 live chat and a customer service line you can call. They were prompt, pleasant, and patient — all a big plus in my book!

There are no contracts and no hidden fees. Reach Mobile is a no-contract (and no-credit check) mobile service without any hidden fees. They are very upfront about what you’ll pay and you pay on a month-to-month basis. You can cancel at any time and you’ll only pay for the month you cancelled in and then you’re done! Also, their contract-free devices don’t bind you to their service – you are free to leave if you choose to do so.

They have a referral program! For every email address that you share on their referral program section of their website, you’ll earn $1 in Reach credit; and for every friend that signs up and activates, you’ll each get $50 in Reach credit, which is applied automatically on the second billing cycle. (Don’t worry, they can thank you later!)

instructions on how to use SIM card

Cons

You have to provide your own phone. This could be a benefit; this could be a drawback, depending upon your situation. If your phone breaks or gets lost or stolen, you can’t go back to your phone company for any recourse for it. (We have insurance on our phones, so if they break or get lost, they will replace them for a much smaller fee than it would cost to buy a new phone.)

They don’t have local stores. Everything is done online or over the phone. So if you’re the kind of person who wants to be able to go in-store to talk with someone about your phone or phone plan, you won’t be able to do so.

If you have a shared plan, you have shared data. If you don’t use your phone for online streaming or video, this might not be a problem at all. However, for someone like me — who does Facebook Live, IG stories, IG lives, watches lots of IG stories and some videos on my phone, and uses my phone for tethering for Wifi on my computer — if I were on their shared data plans, I would be running out of data most months if I were sharing data with others. Note: If you use all your data before the month is up, you will be throttled to 2G without incurring any overage charges. You can purchase additional high-speed data for $5 for 0.5GB of data.

So there you have it! My very honest review of Reach Mobile. If you’ve used it before or use it currently, I’d love to hear about your experience with it!