Prepaid cel phones

[sammyd]

I was looking into getting a prepaid cel phone since we have decided that our land line is to be discontiued for a while.
Used to be just Trac Phone but now I see there are a few others like Virgin All-Tell and Net 10.
Anybody use any of these?
Comments good or bad?

[mscoffee]

Warning..... I had a tracfone, the first 2 years not a problem, then I upgraded to a newer model phone.

During the account transfer they lost my phone number said it had been sent back to Verizon my original provider I called Verizon and they said it hadn't been returned to them

And round we went

to make a long story short, the phone number I had for over 15 years just disappeared off the face of the fricken planet

[Wisconsin Ann]

We used a prepaid for a couple of years before we finally went to Alltel. (btw, did you know alltel was purchased by Verizon in February? ) Tracphone. Worked well enough for us. Biggest problem was that every single minute you use it you're paying for. Call comes in, you use up yourminutes. Call goes out, you use up your minutes.

I don't know if they have new policies or plans since then....but that was the only "con" for us. We don't use the phone much tho.

We crunched the numbers and we had begun adding in more minutes during the month (instead of our "we'll do 60minutes every month) and that took us to a price that was competitive with the normal cellphone plans. So...we took the plunge. But it was a great way to start the process...to see if it worked for us.

[stockdogtta]

I use a Go Phone-AT&T_...works great for me....I dont use the phone much, buy a $100 and last me 6 months.

[bill not in oh]

Rule of thumb - If you use a phone less than 40 minutes a month, prepaid is a good way to go. I have a T-Mobile prepaid and have excellent coverage. They have 3 prepaid plans, so you can choose a plan that fits your personal usage. Virgin Mobile has a good program, but check to make sure their coverage area covers your area.

[Windy in Kansas]

I have a T-Mobile to go phone and account. I think the phone cost in the neighborhood of $30 at purchase from a Target store last year.

I purchased a $100 minute card which provides for 12 months of service, 1,000 minutes, and a 15% increase of any additional minutes purchased as a reward for spending $100 with the company.

Calls are charged at a 10¢ per minute rate whether local or roaming. Have used the phone all over Kansas and there is only one area I can't get signal. Neither can anyone else----Whitewater, Kansas north of Wichita. Guess aliens rob it before it can get to phones.

I recently added a $25 card for an additional 90 days of service and instead of the 130 minutes I also got the 15% bonus minutes.

I called before making the purchase to learn if they even had signal/towers in my area. At the time they third party contracted with Alltel to provide continual roaming service. Worked great until sometime this winter when apparently they switched signal providers. I now get continually weaker signal strength and have had a couple of dropped calls. With the weaker signal the phone works harder trying to find a good signal so the battery doesn't stay charged as well as it did. When I'm in the Wichita area visiting there is strong signal and the battery lasts as it did prior to whatever change was made.

Bottom line, at this point I'm keeping the phone. $100 for 12 months of service is quite reasonable. At the end of 10 months I still had 480 minutes of call time remaining which I doubt most folks would have. Since that time I've had a lot of medical calls/business calls/and tech service calls which have really eaten into my remaining original 1,000 minutes. The minutes expire after one year and don't carry over.

The phone I purchased comes with a collar microphone and a corded ear piece for hands free talking. When I'm using the phone for computer tech support or needing to write things down while I talk I use it. Works just fine. The phone also has speaker phone capabilities.

Though I don't wish to incur additional expense the phone does have texting capabilities at greater per minute or other cost. It might be a monthly charge, I just don't remember.

Since the local cell phone companies are allowed a local monopoly I did have to get a phone number from outside of my local area. Therefore all calls to my phone from local sources are long distance to the caller. Not a problem since I rarely get phone calls that aren't from roaming cell phones at no additional service cost to them.

[Txsteader]

We chose Verizon prepaid. AT&T has the better plan ($100/12mths) but Verizon had better coverage for our area and we've been very satisfied with their service.

[HermitJohn]

BoostMobile is 10cents plus if you want it 35cents flat per day for unlimited data connection (I can tether it to my laptop) with no per minute charge. Or they sent me offer of $50 per month flat fee for unlimited everything. Its an emergency phone for me so wasnt interested in the $50 deal but be good for some people.

Cricket Mobile offers unlimited $40 per month phone calls deal. They also offer $40 per month mobile broadband connection in some areas.

[Katey]

If you are rural you really need to ask around as to who has the best reception. Many of the smaller prepaid companies, and some of the big guys, only rent bandwidth in the bigger markets.

[bergere]

My DH has a AT&T Go Phone... costs us $100.00 a year and if we don't use it all.. we can roll it over to the next year. We got a make of Motorolla(spell?) phone that works
very well in this area.
In fact.. if you don't have this model phone.. you will end up like the neighbors.. walking all over their property and down the road looking for enough bars to use their phone.

Hands down.. Land line is still cheaper than any monthly Cell phone plan. Only costs me $30.00 a month for unlimited local and long distance calls.

[paintlady]

My son bought me a Go phone before I got my cell. It had NO reception anywhere around here. You may want to check the coverage before buying one.

[Itilley]

We have Net10. We had been without a cell phone for about a year. We had a plan for 300 mins a month and if we used only about 30mins, still paying the high rate. One day dh who is disabled was in the truck and I was coming out of the house and I went down. I wasn't hurt but what if II has been. Dh was in the truck and he would need help to get out and he didn't have a phone. We decided to get this pay as you use phone. We bought a package deal with 300 mins to use. We can't complaign about it yet.

RenieB

[drakkensdottir]

We have virgin mobile phones. Had 'em before Katrina and they were one of the first ones to be back online. I pay about $7/month for service and pop a $20 card onto it and that lasts me 2 or 3 months -- but it's primarily an emergency phone for me. DH has a plan at $60/month for 400 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, and 1000 texts a month. One of the things we like is that we can adjust the plan each month if we expect our usage to go up or down. We very rarely find areas we have no service and have had excellent customer service from the company itself. Love our virgin mobiles.

~Drak

[sammyd]

Thanx for the replies.

It was decided that I would get the trac fone since they had one that automatically doubles your minutes for less than the minute doubler card cost.
And we have had a trac fone around before and the reception was decent in our area.

[momtaylor]

We just switched from an alltel prepaid to a contract. Worked well but we needed alot more time than I was willing to keep buying on a reg basis.
just FYI, Virgin has a prepaid plan where you are only charged the day use fee for days you actually use the phone. so if you only used it once a week, it would only charge off once a week. With Alltel prepaid, you pay the daily fee every day whether you use it or not.

[freegal]

We have TracFones and have been very satisfied with them. BUT, do not buy the refurbished phones. They don't work well or last very long.

[travis91]

Alltel is a great service.. they have this one thing were u can pick 2 features for 75 cents a day( if u use it or not) the features are unlimited alltel to alltel, unlimited favorite number calling, unlimited night and weekends( 9pm to 7am), or unlimited text messaging.. all other calls are 10cents a min

[Randy Rooster]

get a net 10. they are the same company as tracfone and the minutes are always cheaper with net 10, even with the doubled minutes from tracfone. Trust me- I have used both.

[foxtrapper]

Coverage is key. Around here, my old Nokia phone on the Trakfone service is the envy of many. I have a signal when most others do not.

Ask folks in your area about how their coverage is.

[Patt]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Thanx for the replies.

It was decided that I would get the trac fone since they had one that automatically doubles your minutes for less than the minute doubler card cost.
And we have had a trac fone around before and the reception was decent in our area.

We have had Tracfones for the whole family for several years now and I love them. We don't use our phones much at all either so we spend about $10-15 a month on cell phone minutes.