Kajeet Featured on Shine from Yahoo!
June 27, 2011
Shine, a website from Yahoo, recently showcased kajeet as favorite cell phone option for teens and tweens.
Among the features highlighted were kajeet’s kid-friendly phones (specifically our popular Samsung Seek), our GPS Phone Locator service, affordable plan prices and free, online parental controls. Check out what else the tech-savvy mom author had to say about kajeet here!
Thank Goodness for Unlimited Texting!
December 29, 2010
Look at how many text messages teenagers send out a day! It is hard to believe! Kids just really love to stay in touch with their friends at all times. While it is certainly an intimidating statistic when buying a cell phone service for your family, our unlimited text plans allows your kids to text to their heart’s content without the danger of out-of-control phone bills. Here is a quick look at our new family-friendly cell phone plans for kids:
- $14.99/month - Unlimited Texting & 60 Anytime Talk Minutes
- $19.99/month - Unlimited Texting, Picture Messages & 150 Anytime Talk Minutes
- $24.99/month - Unlimited Texting, Picture Messages, GPS Phone Locates & 300 Anytime Talk Minutes
- $50/month - Unlimited Texting, Picture Messages, GPS Phone Locates, and Talk minutes!
New Service Plans!
November 23, 2010
Now available – new and improved monthly rate plans!
We’ve listened to your feedback and have enhanced our service plans with the features you’ve told us would benefit you the most. And with a variety of price points to choose from, there’s surely a plan that meets the needs of every kid on kajeet.
Affordable and flexible, take a closer look at some of the enhancements we’ve made:
- $19.99 a month: Includes unlimited texting, unlimited picture messaging and 150 anytime minutes (don’t worry, parents – you can still manage picture messaging usage with FeatureManager, one of our free parental controls).
- $24.99 a month: Includes unlimited texting, unlimited picture messaging, unlimited GPS locates and 300 anytime minutes. Our best value! Your kids get the text and talk time they want; parents get the added assurance provided by our GPS Phone Locator.
- $50 a month: Includes unlimited texting, unlimited picture messaging, unlimited GPS locates and unlimited talk time. Perfect for the kid (or the parent!) who loves to talk and text.
Plus, all of our plans come with the free, unlimited parental controls that make kajeet the safest cell phone service for kids.
Check out our service plans page today to learn more. And let us know what you think!
A Cool New Feature
June 7, 2010
With kajeet, you can now send a text to a landline, where the text is converted to speech and read out loud to the recipient. If the recipient chooses, they can respond by voice to the original sender of the text. Very cool.
This could be particularly handy for sending quick messages to someone who is not proficient with texting, or who may be hearing impaired.
If you’d like to learn more, you can do that here.
Let us know what you think!
The Money Issue
April 9, 2010
by Daniel Neal
We take great pride at kajeet in having created the best, safest cell phone service for kids™. Normally, we point out that we have free, unlimited parental controls and monitoring, kid-appropriate content, 4 awards from parent organizations, our GPS Phone Locator service…that sort of thing.
But we’ve kept some other things in mind, too. The high cost of living. The high cost of cell phones. The high cost of having kids (I have 2).
The average cost of a contract-based cell phone service in the U.S. is more than $56.00/month. And data-intensive smartphones cost significantly more. That so-called extra “family plan” line you’re considering adding? Analysis done by iGR Research found that the average cost of a “family plan” line is over $44.00/month, and the additional cost of an extra line for a child is over $35.00/month when all costs are considered.
Oh, and with that “family plan,” you can’t turn off the bills when your child goes to camp for the summer… (yes, you can do that with a contract-free kajeet phone).
But money is tight. And the strain on American household budgets is why many people are turning to prepaid (or “contract-free”) cell phone services. You can find an article from ABC News about that trend here.
We’ve been hearing from parents about the need to spend less on cell phones for their children for a long time. So here’s how we’ve responded. Kajeet offers contract-free plans that have:
- No contract
- No activation fee
- No termination fee
- FREE unlimited parental controls and monitoring capability (I know, I already said that)
Allow me to crow a bit about my favorite kajeet contract-free plan: $14.99/month for unlimited text and 60 minutes of voice. This is what I bought for each of my own 2 kids (I also subscribe to our GPS Phone Locator for $9.99/month, but that’s optional).
Here’s what I get: affordable service, no surprises and very happy kids.
So long as I have the ability to keep them from texting at school and during bedtime (using my FREE parental controls!), they can text to their heart’s content. That’s what kids do. The 60 minutes of talk are more than enough for the few phone calls they make to tell me they’re ready to get picked up and for me to call and check in. They just don’t talk much. They text. And guess who texts a lot more now? Yup – Mr. Old School.
That $14.99/month plan strikes me as a pretty sweet deal. How sweet? It’s a savings of $240 per year per kid over that so-called “family plan” add-a-line.
Oh, and did I mention that we are keeping the phone costs down by offering refurbished phones that look and work great? Check out our selection of cell phones here.
And for those parents who just want to have a safety phone in their child’s backpack? We have a $4.99/month plan. You can see our other no-contract plans here.
Finally – lest you wonder about our coverage and network reliability – kajeet uses the terrific Sprint National Digital Network.
Thanks.
kajeet Supports Debit Cards & Gift Cards
March 18, 2010
by Daniel Neal
Did you know that as of June 30, 2009, more people in the U.S. had Visa® Debit Cards (352 million) than Visa® Credit Cards (309 million)? (Source: Visa.com) And a recent survey cited by CBS said that 28 percent of consumers planned to increase their use of debit cards while decreasing the amount of purchases they make with their credit cards.
Gift cards have also become extremely popular – US consumers purchased 87 Billion dollars of gift cards last year! However, according to the Tower Group, many consumers are giving more general purpose prepaid gift (debit) cards rather than store-specific gift cards because of their greater utility – they can be used for the basics – gas & phone – as well as in a variety of stores.
Many kajeet customers use their credit cards to pay for their (contract-free!) kajeet plans – but are surprised to learn that debit cards, prepaid cards, and gift cards can also be used. We wanted to highlight this as debit cards can be popular with teens (many of whom pay for their own phone service) – and with those that don’t like to be tied down to things like contracts.
As always, if you have any questions at all, please call our Care Team at 1-866.4kajeet (1-866-452-5338), 9 am – 6 pm ET Mon.-Fri., and 9 am – 3 pm ET on Saturday.
kajeet Wins Gold Mom’s Choice Award!
March 11, 2010
by Carol Politi
kajeet has been awarded the Gold Mom’s Choice Award®! This award recognizes kajeet as among the best companies when it comes to providing family friendly products and services.
The Mom’s Choice Award helps families make informed purchasing decisions. The Mom’s Choice Awards organization has a team of judges evaluating each product that is made up of parents, educators, and media experts. They evaluate products based on factors including production quality, design, educational value, entertainment value, originality, appeal and cost.
kajeet has worked hard to provide a cell phone service with parental controls and other family friendly features, and we are thrilled to have received this recognition! Thanks to the entire kajeet team that has worked so hard to build our service – and to our customers that continue to provide the invaluable guidance and feedback we need as we evolve the service.
Discovery Girls Contest
February 12, 2010
by Carol Politi
Discovery Girls Magazine is running a great contest for mothers and daughters - with an opportunity to win a trip to New York City! (It actually includes two round trip airline tickets, hotel for a night, a photo shoot with your daughter – and a feature on the back cover of Discovery Girls magazine).
I love the entry requirements for this contest. From their site: “You and your mom must each tell us why your relationship is special. What do you do that’s different and extra-special to keep your relationship close and loving? Tell us your secret! We want details!”
Fun & a great opportunity to talk - and to have fun making a video – with your daughter.
In the meantime, if you are a mom of a tween girl, take a look at the Discovery Girls magazine and website – and their companion Discover Your Daughter site. These sites are dedicated to helping girls and their moms navigate through the tween and young teen years. Discover your Daughter has a great article on managing technology use called “Is Your Daughter Addicted To Technology”. This is a great read given the recent news from the Kaiser Family Foundation study that discussed kids media use (7 hours and 38 minutes a day on average!).
New Parent Dashboard!
February 2, 2010
by Carol Politi
Login to your kajeet account to see the all new Parent Dashboard!
We have revised the Account Details and Parental Controls pages to make it easier for you to manage your child’s account including monitoring Account Activity, purchasing and changing plans, and controlling the time, features, and spending for each phone on the account.
Please comment here to let us know what you think!
7 Hours and 38 Minutes of Media Per Day?
January 22, 2010
by Carol Politi
Wow. Even those of us focused on kids and media were surprised with the recent Kaiser Family Foundation Study on kids and media use. The study, called “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds“, indicates that kids spend more than 53 hours a week consuming media (counting a blend of TV, computers, gaming devices, cell phones, etc.). And that count does not include multitasking – which brings the media use count up to 10 hours and 45 minutes per day.
Much of the increase is driven by the accessibility of media on mobile devices – ipods and cell phones (though the increase in social media use is also a factor). Note that text messaging is not considered media use in this study – and that “7th-12th graders report spending an average of 1:35 a day sending or receiving texts”!
Clearly, media consumption is a fact of life. So what’s wrong with this picture?
1. Kids that are heavy media users report getting lower grades.
2. Kids that are heavy media users report being less personally content.
What’s the upside here? One bit of upside is that parents can have an impact! The study indicates that “When parents set limits, children spend less time with media. Those young people who say their parents have some rules about their media use are exposed to an average of nearly three hours (2:52) less media content per day than those who say they don’t have rules.”
Most parents get cell phones for their kids for safety reasons. But doing so can put more media – and another device with which to multi-task – in the hands of kids. kajeet customers can set limits – on both the type of content/service used on the cell phone and the time spent using the cell phone. This includes limiting access at night, during school, and during home work time. To set these up simply login at kajeet.com or call kajeet customer care (1-866-452-5338).
Please comment here to let us know what you think of the Kaiser Family Foundation study and how you manage media access and use in your household. We could all benefit from some good ideas!
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