We moved my father-in-law from RW to Tello when it was time for us to cut over to the RW 5.0 plan back in March 2022. We had three phones on our account. Two phones (my wife’s and mine) were okay and were flipped over to the 5.0 plan – the third phone was like the odd man out (sorry, Pop), so we tried Tello, and have been very happy with the service. My wife and I have stayed with RW, because T-Mobile (Tello’s network) does not always play well in Nebraska where some family lives. We were able to get a hand-me-down smart phone from one of my kids for my FIL. The migration to Tello was without issue; the complication was him getting used to a phone with a bunch of bells and whistles which he didn’t want or need. (he was going on 93 years old at the time). He sometimes inadvertently would shut it off by mistake, then complain that the phone wasn’t working (insert eye-roll here).
A couple of weeks ago he dropped it on a hard surface, and since then complained that the sound wasn’t right when he was on a call. So we looked at the flip phone which Tello offers on its website, but settled on one from Amazon which claimed compatibility with Tello (“Easyfone Prime A-1 Pro”). It had what he needed, and included a little plastic charging cradle, which for the little extra cost was worth it - the simpler the better for him. Also the buttons on the phone had larger numbers, since it was being marketed to seniors).
Cut-over to the new phone was flawless and fast. We moved the SIM card from the old phone to the new one, started it up, and the Tello network recognized the new phone just about immediately, without having to tweak anything. We just had to add a handful of contacts. No big deal, since he only has maybe a dozen contacts (mostly doctors).
His Tello plan is unlimited talk and text with .5MB data for under $11/month total (including all fees). (He doesn’t text, thankfully. I’m not crazy about having to teach him the concept of txting with a flip phone’s keypad). We are still training him to not just press buttons randomly - he still managed to shut it off one night last week, then complained the next day that it didn’t charge, etc etc). I think we have that straightened out - it was fully charged, just shut down. Now it’s a matter of getting him used to making calls from his contacts, how to shut it down and start it up, how to dial someone who isn’t in his contact list, how to silence the phone, etc.
So far he seems very happy with it - phone size, call quality, ease of charging, ease of answering and ending calls, etc. It does not do WIFI, which is just fine for his needs, and has some rudimentary web apps which he does not use.
The Tello website for his account is pretty simple to understand. I can’t speak to Tello support – we have never needed to use it, which probably speaks volumes to the ease of setup of their service.