This feels like a really cool initiation of Mexico step that I wish we'd done sooner. [Laughter]
Hey there Tangerineys! What's up Tangerine Tagalongs. I'm Maddie,
and I'm Jordan, and we are Tangerine Travels. So today we are taking on a task
that we put off for quite a long time because it seemed, as sort of, would you
say? Like inconvenient? Something I just didn't want to do. Yeah, so we are talking
about getting a cell phone plan in Mexico. Up to this point, we've used TMobile
in Mexico because they give you up to 90 days, is it? We heard various things, 90 days, some
people said six months, some people said they have never had their service
canceled. But at least they give you 90 days to use your T-Mobile US plan in
Mexico before they shut off your service. Well recently, Jordan got a notice from
them saying we will shut your line off by this date if you don't come back to
the U.S. So here we are, walking to a Avenida Chapultepec right now to get some
lunch, and after that we are going to explore, we think Telcel is the one that
we're going to go for. Although there's other carriers that are a little bit
cheaper here in Mexico we heard Telcel is the best for Mexico, because they
have the best coverage, and they own all the infrastructure. Yeah so what it came
down to was we do want to continue our travels throughout Mexico, and although
many people said AT&T was the better cell phone provider in Mexico, we want to make
sure that we have the coverage that we need, even if we're in a small town or
going from place to place. At least that's the impression that I was getting
from you guys leaving comments. Thank you guys for the feedback, we always
appreciate your comments especially telling us about things like this. About
cell phone coverage in Mexico which we are very, very unfamiliar with. So we're
taking you along today as we figure this out, and yet again we're going into this
thinking how the heck are we going to to say in Spanish? But I'm very confident
there will be English speakers there. I am very confident this is going to be, a train wreck, a train wreck.
[Laughter] A typical Maddie trying to speak Spanish train wreck. [Laughter] But we're doing it anyway!
And coming up, we hope to share some of the costs of getting a cell phone in
Mexico, what the coverage is like. If you are like us and wondering what you should do
about Mexico cell phone service, continue watching this video. We'll do our best to
show you some of the cell phone plans in Mexico. T-Mobile in Mexico has been
really good to us. Their coverage has been great, in fact, most of the time, it has
been better than our coverage in the middle of Phoenix, at our
condo there. We've been very happy with it,
but we could have saved a lot of money by switching sooner. We just didn't want
to have to deal with it, and didn't want to have to get a new number. But, we did
figure out a way how we can keep our old number, and get a Mexican number, and
cheaper Mexican plan than what we're currently paying. Later in the video
we're gonna be telling you guys the process of how you can port your number
out for a very low cost, if you need to keep it like us. We have two-factor
authentication on a number of things, so that's pretty nice. It was kind of
an ordeal to get our numbers transferred but we did finally figure
that out, so stay tuned if you want to learn how to do that and keep your US
number. If you're doing kind of the same thing we are.
We're still learning Spanish. Do you speak English?
Just a little. Spanglish then? We want a cell phone plan for here in Mexico. But I don't know all of the options.
Plan or package? For the plan (Not sure what he says here)
We don't want a contract.
Then prepaid, a prepaid package.
There's another option, if you already have equipment.
Do you already have a cell phone?
Yes, we already have cell phones.
Prepaid is handled with two options. Do you want calling or only internet?
Maybe both, but probably we can call in WhatsApp.
This is only for internet.
More calls than internet. If you pay 200 pesos, you're gonna have 33 days for
Unlimited calls to Mexico, Canada, and USA. If we go back the the United States, it will work there?
Yes, you have six months to stay in the USA or Canada. There's no extra
charges there if we? No. And then you pay this ahead of time? Every month, or?
Every month you can pay this with credit or debit card. Okay.
Do we need a new SIM card every month? No. One time. One time.
And can we set that up today? The SIM cards? Two numbers? Yes. Are there options to choose our new numbers?
No, it's automatic in the system.
Gracias!
Oh yeah?
Very well, thanks a lot! May it go well for you.
Okay guys, we could hardly contain our excitement. We're back home now, but we
want to tell you all about what just happened. This feels like a really cool
initiation of Mexico step that I wish we'd done sooner. [Laughter] Yeah definitely. It was
a pretty simple process, easier than I thought it was going to be. Yeah I agree.
Basically, we didn't know what to expect when we went in there, but we just walked
in. To the right of us there was someone at a desk. We explained that we don't
really speak English that well and asked if there was, we don't speak Spanish that well.
We also don't speak English that well either.
But we don't speak Spanish that well, could someone help us out? And then he directed
us to station number two. That guy, he spoke a little bit of English, and we
spoke a little bit of Spanish. With that, it was pretty easy to get through
everything. Our phones work there but that's probably because both of our
phones were unlocked. And if you're not familiar with cell phone technology,
unlocked means it can be used with any carrier. Double check that because
otherwise you will have to buy another phone here. After that, he showed us some
options for plans. The guy explained that there was something called plans and
something called packets. It sounded like the plans were something that would be
under contract, that would require a little bit more paperwork, whereas the
packets or "Paquetes" you can just pay upfront. You buy a SIM card for 79
pesos a piece. Do we bought two SIM cards.
The paquete we ended up choosing was the 300 peso plan, which includes 1.5
gigs of data, unlimited text and minutes, unlimited WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter.
That's good for 30 days. So there's definitely other options you can choose
if you just want data, and you don't plan on
texting or calling anyone. We opted for the second one from the top as far as
the amount of data that we got. Just because we've usually been doing two
gigs with TMobile, so that seemed the right way to go. But he also let us know
that if we run out halfway through the month, or want to get more for any reason
you can re-up at any time. If you don't use it all by the end of the 30 days
though, that goes to waste. It does not rollover to the next month. And then
each month after the 30 days, it's pretty much done until you buy more, until you
buy another paquete (package). And you don't have to buy the paquete at Telcel.
You can buy it there, or you can buy it online from what we understand, or at
OXXO, which is a really common convenience store here if you're not
familiar with it. I think it's like thee, it's like the monopoly of convenience
stores. Yeah, he said you can pretty much buy it
anywhere. And it's pretty cool because you don't have to get the same plan
every month. If next month we decide 1.5 gigs of data it wasn't enough for us, we
can go for the 500 pesos plan which includes four gigs of data. It does look
like the most expensive option you can get is 500 pesos, which is still
significantly less than the 100 US dollars we were paying per month in the
US. And you guys, I can't even believe how easy this process was if you've ever
gotten a phone plan of any kind in the US, with all the showing your ID, and showing
paperwork, and signing your life away. It was nothing like that at all. Honestly,
this could not have been easier. No IDs required, no contract, no proof of address,
nothing. Anyone could literally walk in off the street and do that in less than
30 minutes maybe? Yeah, easily. And then the last thing that we're gonna be
talking about is porting your number in case you want to keep your number. There
is a service with Google, called Google Voice, that you can transfer your number
to Google so that you can continue to have all of your calls go to that number.
It seems like there are quite a number of broken links or missing pages
on Google regarding this right now, so we did find one after lots and lots of
searching that worked, and we will include that down below in the
description. I will say that the process of doing this
ten times more difficult than actually setting up a cell phone plan in Mexico
here. So if it's not working for you, I would recommend clearing your cache and
cookies, trying a new browser, trying it in an incognito window, or trying it on a
separate computer. Those were the things that we tried. And then a problem Jordan
ran into was that he had, at some point, marked the Google number that it was
calling to him as spam so that wasn't going through. If that is the case, you
have to go in your phone settings and unmark that as spam, and it should be
good so you can get that verification call. But yeah, that process of porting
our numbers out to Google Voice was by far the most difficult part of this
whole thing. So if you have any questions, leave them down in the comments and
we'll do our best to help you out with that, since it took probably like four
hours this morning just to get our numbers transferred over.
But it's pretty cool because you typically can't get a Mexico cell phone
plan and keep your number in the US or Canada or wherever else you are in the
world, but if you port your number to Google Voice, and that also applies to
WhatsApp as well, so if you port your number you can keep your same whatsapp
number. Just makes it really simply, and like us, if you have lots of accounts, and
banks, or social media sites associated with your old number, then you don't have
to worry about going through all of those, and going through the tedious
process of updating it. And one thing we forgot to mention is it is a one-time
fee of twenty dollars, twenty US dollars. Ah yes, $20. To port your number with Google. Alright guys,
I think that's about all the information we have to share with you about this
experience. If you found this valuable and appreciated this video, please make
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if you want to see more videos just like this about our experiences, and
adventures, and fun that we're having here in Mexico. If you have any comments or
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GONG THAT BELL, so you get notified every time we upload a new video about these
shenanigans in Mexico. We'll see you in the next one.