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Reasonable Pre-Paid Cellphones in the US?
MBCook asks: "I've been with my current cell provider for a few years, and never been terribly happy with them. They lock and cripple their phones, but their coverage has been decent. However, in the last month I have experienced having my phone telling me it had voice mail when it didn't for about 2 weeks (little icon was there, but calling in said 'No messages'). Then today (Dec. 4th) it notified me of a very important call I missed — on November 19th. Since my contract expires next month, I've been looking at pre-paid cell phones and their plans. I'm not a big talker, and it would take me a while to use up 100 minutes. All the pre-paid plans seem to like to expire your minutes relatively fast (30 days) unless you buy a large number like 1000, then you get 90 days. Add to that the daily access fees some of them want to charge you ($1 per day you use your phone) and I may as well be paying $40 a month to one of the big boys. Is there any way to get cheap pre-paid cell service in the US? I don't care about ring tones, and while I'd like to be able to get games I can survive without 'em. I can't be the only one in this boat, what have others found?"
It's not in their interests.
The cost savings of going on a month-to-month plan are tremendous.
I've got a tracfone. It's some nokia that was $19.99 just about anywhere (phones depend on where you live)...color screen, texting, etc... Minutes are $19.99 (roughly) for 60 (and you can find promo codes for more) and it lasts 60 days. Usually, if you buy online you can buy 30 more days for $5. It's great for low usage and has good coverage. I'm happy with them.
Ethernet (n): Device Used to Catch the Etherbunny
TracFone has good rates, and allows you to roll over your minutes from one card to the next. Unlike some other carriers, a $20 card gives you 60 minutes and 60 days of service; if you've not used all the minutes by that time and buy more activation, the minutes roll over with no trouble. BTW, I am not associated with them in any way except as a customer.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Take a look at virgin mobile. I used to have Verizon and paid almost $50 each month. With virgin I have the $0.18 per minute plan and pay only $20 per 90 days. The idea is that you have to pay at least $20 every 90 days to keep the service, and since I talk very rarely I haven't ever needed to pay more. What I really like about them is that you don't need to worry about payments, you can set it up to automatically charge your credit care either every 90 days, or when you have less than $5 left.
On the down-side, the service is worse than Verizon (actual reception that is). In places with strong signal it's fine, but at my house it's a bit worse, for example. This depends on your location though, so just take a look at their coverage map. I've been with them for almost 3 months now and am overall very happy.
I use Virgin Mobile. They have a plan where you pay $0.18 a minute, and thats it. The only requirement is that you add $20 to your account every 90 days. I think they have some better deals if you auto pay with a credit card, such as $15 every 90 days. If you run out of money, you just add more. Its good if use under 30 minutes or so every month, and really want to just have a phone to be on and with you. The phones are cheap too, $20 or so for the basic phone, which comes with $20 of credit! Some warnings, they run on Sprints network which can be pretty bad some places. They charge you for lots of other special features, text messages, ring tones, games, etc...
I used to use tracfone too. If you prepay for a year during a promotion, you can usually get about 250 minutes for 1 year worth of service, with no extra 'use' fees that you desribe. The only downside is that almost everywhere is roaming, which doubles the minutes that are ticked off. This didn't bother me, since at the time I only used it for emergencies (e.g., car breaks down) and when travelling, which was quite rare.
Cingular will sell you a $100 refill for their GoPhone. It expires after 12 months and gets you 800 minutes. If you renew before the 12 months are up they will roll over the minutes. It will work with their phones or with any unlocked GSM phone.
. . . is what I have. Buy a phone ($30 after rebates) and $100 of service, and the minutes are good for a year. One thing to watch out for is that most prepaid phones don't do any roaming at all. Check the prepaid coverage map, not just the regular coverage map.
My wife has T-mobile prepaid. If you buy 1000 minutes for $100 the time does not expire for a year. It has worked well for her.
If you time it right, you can get a over a hundred minutes that will last 90 days or longer. You just have to watch out for the specials.
They also have an annual card. For about $100-$125 you get 100+ minutes and 365 days. Not bad for an emergency phone.
Unless you buy lots of minutes they aren't cheap though, well over 10c/minute unless you stock up.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I used T-Mobile to Go for a couple years and only switched cause I am now on a T-Mo postpaid plan (I wanted Internet among other things). If you have an unlocked GSM mobile (or care to buy one on ebay) you can pick up a T-Mo to Go sim on ebay for $10-$20 which will include ~$25 bucks of airtime. The starter kits w/ a T-Mo branded phone and sim are pretty reasonable as well. When you activate it you can port your old number which is one thing some prepaids will not do. When you add $100 it will make that $100's minutes worth .10c a minute. AND as soon as you add $100 to your account they give you what they call 'gold rewards' and any amount added to the card after that will be good for 1 year.
Best prepaid deal out there imo.
Cingular bills you $50 a month regardless of whether you use your minutes.
After several years, the account balance on my phone is greater than the GDP of Saudi Arabia.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
Wow! I was thinking about getting my friend a pre-paid phone for christmas!
The best one I've found is this one: link
$18!!!
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
It seems that the prepaid, no contract deals are often marketed to customers who for whatever reason can't pass the carrier's credit checks. So, just as the "second chance" car financing and credit card companies, and the title loan outfits, the "cash 'til payday" shops and all the other companies who exploit students, people who have had bad luck, been suddenly unemployed and had to decide between food and bills, divorced, (and yes, actual deadbeats too) can charge their "customers" an interest rate straight out of Goodfellas because their clients have nowhere else to go, expect to be treated the same. You get reamed with prepaid. I wish it wasn't so, but it is.
Poke around for some good deals with Tracfone. If you don't use the phone alot, they have some good deals.
I found that that Prepaid plans from the major subscription services, such as Verizon, Sprint, etc. were all very deceptive and expensive.
Tracphone has saved
I have several friends and family members who use them. None of them use more then 30 minutes per month. Each of these people saved $150-400 dollars per year. This is a very good deal for them.
The cheapest subscription plans are around $30 a month, with another $5-10 in surcharges and taxes. That's over $400 per year--- and is still way too expensive for my tastes.
We started with a simple budget phone and 300 'units'. This cost something around $110, including tax. The minutes expire in one year, but they will roll over if you purchase 100 more units, which costs another $30.
At the end of the year, each person had around 50-200 minutes.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
MetroPCS is the way I'd like to see Cell Phones done everywhere in the future.
The most you'll pay is $45 (plus taxes) a month, and it's the only plan I've seen where you're not paying for minutes in your own area.
With one caveat though, you go out of your area, and you're paying $0.45 a minute, and their coverage area isn't that big.
Alternatively there's a Skype wifi phone now, which connects to your account online. The downside to that is that if you expect to phone people, and not just computers, you have to buy their service, which I believe is about $35 a month.
decent flip phone for 100 bucks 300 minutes with 60 days of services is 30 bucks http://www.net10.com/home_page.jsp
So, a couple of other people have already recommended virgin mobile. I used them as my first cellphone provider, and they worked great for me.
:)
Just wanted to relate a little story about dealing with their customer service. I set it up with my debit card to automatically withdraw, and near the end of one semester, I lost the phone. I ended up getting a monthly plan with another carrier, as it turned out to be cheaper. However, things were busy, and I didn't have the phone handy, so I never got around to looking up their customer service number and actually canceling the service.
Then I forgot about it. I think it went for 7 or 8 months before I noticed that I was still getting charged. So, I called up virgin and canceled. They asked why, told them that I lost the phone, and got another provider, because their plan was too expensive for how much I used the phone. No hard feelings, no awkward moments. Instead, the guy looked at the last time I made a call, and refunded all the money that had been automatically deducted since my last call.
Needless to say, I was totally floored. This is the best customer service I've ever had from a cellphone company. Which I guess is another way of saying "I'm glad these guys weren't trying to screw me out of every possible penny, too."
If they had a competitively priced monthly plan, I'd be with them. The only other downside besides price is that I got the feeling that I somehow wasn't really cool enough to be using the service. It was really spunky. I'm not..
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About six months ago, I got my wife (who barely uses any minutes) a T-Mobile pre-paid phone. $100 gets you 1000 minutes and they don't expire for the whole year. Your challenge becomes remembering to recharge, a year later! Here's the link:
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http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/default.aspx?p
Cingular has different prepaid plans. Some of them charge "daily access" or have a monthly charge, but they also have traditional per-minute plans like most prepaid services. If you don't like the plan you're on, Cingular gives you the choice to get another one without having to switch providers.
o rder/2001rank.html -
Verizon is the evil one; they've got one prepaid plan that has a daily access fee no matter what you do.
Saudi Arabia GDP: $ 310,200,000,000
According to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rank
$9 a month, plus $0.10 a minute
Free phone with two year contract, $50 PMITA start up fee
http://www.opexwireless.com/OnTheFlyMain.asp?
Some areas can get really cheap pre-paid old-tech these days. But without a location, I'll assume you want something that could be just about anyplace in the U.S.
If you need the best national coverage, it will end up costing you at least $8/month to keep alive a plan from. (That's CDMA or TDMA... Tracfone has a newer setup using GSM, but that will cost more money and much worse coverage.) Get a referral from someone before activating, you'll get free minutes and so will they. Starter kit with phone and a few minutes will cost you $20 on up. That's about the cheapest way to get started, but beware that you have to use their phone, and their phones only work with tracfone.
The cheapest national option I've found is if t-mobile has prepaid coverage where you need it (most metro areas, interstate highways, etc). The coverage map on is really good, but do not confuse the prepaid map with the post-paid contract map. Buy a starter kit for about $30-40 (walmart or after rebate, better if you watch slickdeals or fatwallet) or more depending on what phone you want (any t-mobile or unlocked GSM phone with U.S. frequency bands will work if you just buy a prepaid sim on e.g. e-bay), and buy a $100 refill (1000 minutes, use a coupon at e.g. staples or online discount reseller and get it for $80). Those minutes will last for a year, so under $9/month (plus the phone) for 1000 minutes total. It's a HUGE win in year two IFF you don't need minutes. A $10 card will keep your minutes alive for another year, or under $0.10 per month.
Check out the best prepaid plan comparison I've seen.
sdb
P.S. Wife and I have t-mobile prepaid. Several members of my extended family have tracfone. I hate that t-mobile started charging for incoming SMS/MMS messages, but haven't found anything better enough to be worth switching or even to recommend instead.
When I shopped, I looked at Cingular and T-Mobile's prepaid plans. At least in my area, Cingular's two prepaid plans include a 10 cents per minute, 1 dollar per day plan (I agree, not very useful, though perhaps in some situations) and a 25 cent per minute plan without the daily fee. Minutes in $25-$75 chunks expire after 90 days, with $100 dollar chunks lasting a year.
T-Mobile's prepaid plan has a graduated pay scale as low as 10 cents per minute if you buy minutes in chunks of $100, and as high as 30 cents in chunks of $10. Expiration is 90 days at the $25-50 level. If you've bought enough minutes to be "gold" customer (1000 minutes I believe), then any chunk of minutes lasts a one year. The graduated pricing still applies but gets slightly cheaper with 10 cents still being the cheapest in $100 chunks ($50 buys at 11 cents per min; $25, 17 cents per).
I believe both Cingular and T-Mobile carry over unused minutes as long as you buy new minutes before the old ones expire. Note that number portability does not apply to prepaid accounts, at least T-Mobile told me I could not transfer my previous cell number.
I decided on T-Mobile, brought my unlocked GSM phone to a T-Mobile store, and had no troubles (though some kiosks did not carry prepaid plans; I had to go to my town's main store).
MetroPCS provides me with unlimited local, unlimited domestic long distance, resonable (prepaid) international rates, unlimited texting, and unlimited data. $55/month ($less if you drop some of the above features)
and best of all... NO CONTRACTS! sadly, this means that the phone is not subsidized either (although prepaid phones tend to not be anyway) so you're looking at $300 for a razr.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
ymmv - get rid of your home phone, go pure mobile.
Between the costs of the landline, local long distance, regular long distance, e911 fees, local taxes, etc... even if you went with something like Vonage, it's still more expensive to keep a landline and a mobile phone than to just use the mobile phone.
Add in something like a family share plan, and multiple households can go pure wireless and save even more.
Oh - it's also nice because they don't CHARGE you to keep your mobile phone unlisted.
jmtcw
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I can't stand talking on the phone and I detest the idea of signing a 2-year contract for a phone (much less any contract), but over a year ago I bought a T-Mobile prepaid cellphone. I absolutely could not be happier with it. When I put 1000 minutes on the phone for $100 (for a $0.10/minute rate), I was automatically moved into their "Gold Rewards" program, which gave me a year to use those 1000 minutes. However, as I've stated, I don't like talking on the phone. After a year, I still had over 600 minutes left on the phone. When I went to add more minutes, I discovered that I only had to add the minimum amount of minutes (I believe it was 10) in order to have all of my leftover minutes from the previous year rolled over into another year of service. Basically, so long as you spend over $100 on minutes and renew with the minimum amount of minutes at the end of each year, your service will continue. The downside of having a prepaid is that my cellphone isn't insured against loss, theft, etc. Moreover, if I lose it, I lose those minutes I added. Regardless, I'm very happy with the phone.
Should be "Going mobile? Bend over."
All cell phones in the US, regardless of provider, are set up to rape the consumer.
Going GSM means that the phone that you get isn't useless if the prepaid account gets terminated or you want to switch to postpaid.
It also means that you can buy your phone off eBay (if you'd like something fancy).
All we want is a cellphone for the car for emergencies or if someone is at the store and has a question.
I think pre-pay phones are just fine for that.
I love my Verizon coverage and quality...but their pre-pay plan seems to be an ass-rape.
Blar.
I use one from 7-11, speak-out or speak easy, something like that.
;)
Terribly high per minute but i use the phone almost zero so that wasn't important. Seems to do ok outside local, had no problems on trip to the beach. One of those plans does have the 365 day dating on refills which was what i wanted. $50 phone (less now) and $25 per year for an emergency phone worked fine.
We just replaced a couple of the company phones from a verizon plan with these also. Went from $300 a year to $75 even assuming the damn drivers lose the phone
Do you really get screwed? Only if you are attached to your cellphone, have bad credit, and can't find a decent prepaid plan (which might be difficult in some markets).
For those that use their cellphone sparingly, you'd be hard pressed to get a cellphone plan with contract for under $20-30 + tax per month without something like an employee/dealer discount. However, there are numerous prepaid phones that cost a minimum of $10 per month or less to keep the account active. Virgin Mobile's per-minute plan, for example, requires you to deposit $20 every 90 days, for $6.67/mo. Then, it's $0.18 per minute.
T-Mobile's prepaid rate varies based on how much you buy -- anywhere from $0.33 to $0.10/min.
Alltel's U Prepaid per-minute plan is always $0.15/min.
Plans like these are great if your usage is low. Beyond 100-300 minutes per month, it's time to consider a real plan or a flexible prepaid plan. Alltel's U Prepaid has a plan that charges $0.75/day regardless of usage, but allows you to pick 2 out of 4 of these: unlimited nights and weekends, unlimited favorite calling number, unlimited text messaigng, and unlimited mobile to mobile. (Or, you can pick three at $1/day or four at $1.25/day). Then, other calls are always $0.10/min.
For $22.50/mo, you can get unlimited nights and weekends and then daytime calls at $0.10/min. Not a bad deal if you call mainly one person, talk at night/on the weekends, or call other Alltel customers.
A clever person with that Alltel prepaid service could sign up for an unlimited VoIP account for under $30, set that VoIP account number as their favorite number, and effectively get themselves unlimited cellular calls (assuming said VoIP provider allows open access via SIP and "three-way calling".)
All cell phones in the US, regardless of provider, are set up to rape the consumer.
That's what it seems like to me, which is why I've avoided getting a mobile. Just can't bring myself to give money to any of those people.
What have I found? That the cellphone providers suck. Balls. Hairy goat balls.
I refuse to buy a cellphone. Which puts me in a tiny, tiny minority of 24 year olds.
Avoiding the suck of the cellphone companies is getting more difficult, though. Pay phones are becoming more scarce with each passing year. Many of them aren't being maintained anymore while simultaneously having their prices jacked up. Manhattan pay phones will put you back a dollar a pop. You'll lose two or three dollars first just finding one that works. Plus there is a non-trivial chance of picking an obscure tropical disease from those filthy NYC ear pieces.
The phone is cheap,but what about the plan and availability of refill cards?
Long-term that's what's gonna really bite you if you don't do your shopping right."Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I agree. Sad thing for the US, when freaking Europe has a healthier market, but it's true. Cell phone service in Europe is so much better than here it's not even in the same class. The only competition in this market in the US seems to be for who can come up with the most insulting commercials.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Per minute. If you don't need 500 minutes a month, it can work out cheaper than a contract.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
$100 gets you 1000 minutes that do not expire for a year. (less money gets you less minutes and they expire in 90 days). Very hard to beat that deal. The unfortunate thing is that they don't have any pre-paid mobile internet access. not sure if anyone does. sad. i'd pay the regular per-minute call rate for prepaid use of GPRS.
You must talk over four hours per month -every- month for a monthly plan to make sense at all. Cell phone companies are extreemly happy to push plans on everyone because most people don't use their phone that much or when they do they charge them 4x the prepaid rate for in overages.
determine your use case. purchase accordingly.
You didn't say where you live, but as a prepaid user I have migrated to the Alltel U prepaid. I am on the 15 cents pay-per-minute plan, with no expiration. The "catch" is that you have to use it at least once a month or they charge you $4 (yes, they don't cancel your account like some other providers, or cancel when you run out of money). So the cost of keeping the service alive is 15 cents a month. The phones you use are the exact same as the normal Alltel plans, so you can simply change to postpaid if you wish to use the same phone. I have the Nokia 6235i which they recently discontinued. I was able to unlock it using an aftermarket cable and use all the java apps I want. I believe the new Nokia 2865i should be also be able to be unlocked unless they changed it. Coverage should also be good since Alltel can roam on Verizon and Sprint.
I have phones with both service providers.
I think T-Mobile is a little cheaper overall if you go with the $100 plan mentioned before. Buy the $100 before your existing minutes expire though!
Virgin Mobile has been great and has awesome custom service. It's a little more prone to recharging though, as they will have some automatic features like recharging minutes when you get below five. They have great phones, right now the low end one is a nice clamshell.
One thing to be aware of is that T-Mobile has no pay-as-you go data plan, so if you have the RAZR none of the data stuff will work. Also pay as you go with T-Mobile does not work internationally, Virgin Mobile might.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I (and a couple of friends) have chosen to go with Virgin pre-paid, since we do not call a lot. My average 'bill' is about $15-20 a month. I do a lot of my social planning over chat and email, and the phone is basically used as a 'where are you' tool, or for last minute changes.
I have a couple of other friends that have kept older call plans that give them a decent amount of minutes for about $20 a month (one even has internet access for that price!), and I would gladly sign up for one of these plans, except that the carriers don't offer them any more. They have figured out that most people are gullible enough to pay the incredibly stupid rates that they charge now.
Check what wireless services the people in Asia and Europe are getting, and the prices that they pay for those services, and you can see that the US Telcos are ripping us off big-time.
I actually can't complain about my STI Mobile phone. The plan I use has a $.10/day service charge, $.12/min daytime, $.10/min night/weekend, and minutes DO NOT expire. You can get text/data options or more standard monthly plans from them too. Minutes are carried on the Sprint network, so coverage is pretty good most places.
I origionally got the phone(Samsung A660) because it was free after rebates on black friday a year or two ago, but have been pleasntly surprised by the service. Looks like now you can pay between $0 and $60 for a phone from them depending on what features you want.
T-Mobile has been good for us. We paid $100 in the beginning for 1,000 minutes, which are good for a year. We don't use that much, and we extended the remaining minutes for another year by buying more minutes. (We use two-way radios and other methods of communicating.)
It is extremely offensive that phone companies think they can take away things for which you have paid, without giving anything in return by expiring the minutes. That is one of the many, many consequences of having a corrupt government.
T-Mobile has proven to be dis-organized and adversarial, but not nearly as adversarial as the other companies. There is a lot of really, really stupid game-playing. (Companies don't allow people to work in marketing now unless they have had a brainectomy.)
Here is a T-Mobile example: "Good news! You asked to hear your remaining time in minutes, and now you can..." That message, which has been playing for a year, refers to the fact that T-Mobile uses fake dollars, that are equivalent to as many minutes as T-Mobile says. The customer is not allowed to know the formula to calculate minutes per dollar, except that $100 is 1,000 minutes. (Really, not kidding.)
T-Mobile will unlock your phone free after three months, so you can use it on a different network. That service may be tied to the idea of the customer traveling to another country.
T-Mobile uses the GSM cellular protocol, which is the best, by far, and is used throughout Europe and most of the world. If you plan to travel to other countries, you will need a quad-band phone like the Motorola Razr V3.
T-Mobile has international service with is very, very expensive, so you always want to get a SIM card from a GSM service provider in the country you are visiting.
I got Net10 because of the same reason. The phone I got was from target for 49.99 and it came with 300 bonus minutes. There is no daily access fee and when you buy a 300 minute card, you stay active for 60 days, and your minutes roll over. I did have an issue the first month of service (phone just died), but they sent me a new one and credited me an additional 300 minutes. I've had less dropped calls then I ever did with Cingular, TMobile or Sprint. The down side is that you get charged minutes for every call you make, even to customer service or voice mail.
Personally, I spend about AUS$40 a month on a plan that gives me huge amounts of calls and SMSs.
After a $100 purchase of minutes, ALL re-charging lasts for a year. So, for example, $110 could last for two years.
I have t-mobile prepaid. Thus far, it has cost me $15 per month to have it, and that amount will continue to decrease until I have to add more to it, which will probably be in march. After adding $50 in march, the cost will average back up to $15.29 per month. What contract phone offers a plan for only $15 per month?
As many others have said, it depends on how much you use your phone.
Eh?
I have perfect credit and a good job. I could get any cell phone plan I want. What do I use? I have a TracFone for which I pay an average of about $10/month. Got any contract plans for that rate?
I guess a plan is good if you live with a phone glued to your ear all the time. I tend to use mine about 20 to 30 minutes a month, ussually 1 or 2 minutes at a time. I don't need or want a plan. I don't even really want a cell phone - but it's useful on occasion.
This is absolutely false. Wireless Local Number Portability applies to ALL cell phones. If the customer service rep tell you they can't do it, ask to speak with their manager. They generally don't like doing it because (if you decide to go from post-paid to pre-paid and don't use your phone that much) odds are they'll be generating less profit from you, but if you insist on doing it, they are required to do so.
I too would get message reminders like that but when I went to voicemail, there would not be any new messages in the inbox. There would, however, be old messages (30 days+) that were going to be purged. Verizon was sending me the voice mail reminder to let me know that they were going to purge the old messages if I didn't do something with them. The alert displayed on the phone would only read "One new voice message" and was not at all specific. Might that be what is happening with your account? If you had an old message in there that had been flagged as "important", that may also explain the "important" flag on the message.
TODO: Insert witty sig
I don't even want one anymore, but the wife wants something minimal for short 'I'm on my way home' calls and the like.
I hate even having to carry the damn thing. Looks gay on my belt, don't want it in my pocket, and I'm always dropping it.
The US Markets are ignoring people like us...perhaps they will figure it out? Will Austerity come back in style?!
I also want a cat with no power windows or locks and no HIDs or Nav or any other lame shit I'd just upgrade with superior after-market gear anyway.
Those are getting harder to find as well...unless you want to go with the very cheapest/smallest models.
Blar.
I've had worse experiences with landlines. And cable TV for that matter. At least no one company has a monopoly on cell phones, even though none of them are at all concerned about customer service. Maybe if cellphone providers make just a little effort to please their existing customers they wouldn't have to spend so much on advertising.
we have shitty cell providers in the U.S. due to lack of a healthy marketplace. I just got back from Asia, and even homeless people have cell phones because it's cheaper than a landline. (Not because I was out in the boonies where landlines don't make sense, but in major cities like Hong Kong).
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
For years my wife and I have used TracFone. It is very simple and easy to use. You can get the phones from www.tracfone.com or many retailers (K-Mart, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc.). You activate the phone at the website and buy minutes there also. I have always gotten the 1 year card, which gives you 1 year of service and 250 minutes (often you get more "bonus" minutes) for about $100. If you don't use all the minutes they "roll over" when you buy another card. If you get low on minutes during the year you buy another card sooner than 1 year.
They also offer a service called Net10 (www.net10.com) which is basically the same thing as TracFone except you get 1 year and 1500 minutes for $150. The last time I needed to renew I decided to switch to Net10. It was worth the extra $50 to get so many minutes (for me, at least) that I never have to think about it during the year.
Note that TracFone/Net10 actually use other carriers to provide their service. In my area they use Cingular. I can use all of the regular Cingular services like text messages, email to/from my phone, etc.
Over the 5 or so years that I have used TracFone I have looked at other pre-paid services and never found one that came even close to the value of TracFone (or Net10).
Not incredibly spectacular, but the prices are predictable and fairly low.
You buy the phone. ($70 up)
25 cents per minute.
$25 for 100 minutes, expires only if you haven't filled it in 90 days.
Ends up costing me about $10-15/month.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Population density certainly has a lot to do with a carrier's ability to charge more or less in certain areas. For instance, the United Kingdom and Japan serve about 250 mobile phones per square kilometer, while the Unites States only serves 23 (CIA World Factbook). In effect, a provider needs to cover more than ten times the area in the United States to reach the same number of users in the United Kingdom or Japan.
Tracfone (I am a customer) provides a 1-year card with 200 minutes for $100 (or a 1-year card with 400 minutes for $130). Additional minutes are 10c each (if the $130 card is bought for the year).
Coverage is great, and you'd never know it was a prepaid.
...you might want to try just rebooting your phone.
I had the same kind of experience once, and rebooting the phone (turn off, then on; remove/reinsert battery if necessary) cleared it up. In fact, you may wish to make a practice of rebooting it on some kind of regular basis (say, weekly) just to avoid this kind of thing.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Dave at http://www.cellguru.net/ has an excellant chart comparing prepay plans. Alas, most eat your time every 30/60 days. But some less so than others...
Yes, I hate how those bastards at the FCC auctioned off the radio spectrum. Radio waves go through everyone's airspace, so we should all be allowed to share it fairly.
If the radio spectrum was properly allocated, we could just use a home based transceiver instead of a cell phone when we are within range of the house (probably several km). It could switch to cell mode when out of range--assuming you want a cell carrier in the first place. Imagine essentially free phone calls near home.
Don't even get me started on how WiFi was pushed into a small band shared with microwave ovens...
hey yo. i saw your comment in the pre-paid phones thread, and noted the *wanted* ad for an omnibook800. i have a fully-operational omnibook800ct, with the docking station and external cd drive, all in fantastic condition. everything fires up and runs, i take it out of its travel bag once a year or so and check it out. it's not doing much right now, so if you've got a fairly reasonable offer i'm sure it can be yours instead of mine. if you live anywhere in reasonable proximity to north-central MA, we could arrange a meet and save an assload on shipping, i'm sure.
Anyway, on most of these carriers the signal comes when, after listening to all your voicemails, the voice says "There are no more messages." And it's, for some reason, transmitted over the voice connection. So if you hang up before you hear that message, the icon won't go away and the phone won't tell you when you get messages anymore.
However, what you can do when this happens is either:
- Enter your voicemail system and leave yourself a message. Most voicemail systems allow this. Hang up, go back to your voicemail, delete it, and then listen to the "there are no more messages" voice and it should go away.
- If your voicemail system won't let you leave yourself a message, you can use a friend's phone or your home phone to call it and leave yourself a message.
If this doesn't work, your phone is probably screwed up. Either way, I really don't think changing carriers will help you, and the headache of learning where you can and can't get service with your new carrier probably won't be worth it. Also, prepaid is terrible for the money. Most providers have a $20 or $30 plan that includes 200-300+ minutes. I'd recommend just looking at what's available and downgrading your plan, and only switching if there's no plan that fits your financial needs.Where the hell is the $19.95/month 1000 minutes everything included in a month to month contract plan? Why are we paying $39-$59 a month and being locked in 2 years at a time for plans in this day and age? When I started using cell phones 15 years ago I was positive that by now Cell phones would be like $9.95 a month by now. How naive I was.
Whatever pre-paid you use just make sure and steer clear of Verizon pre-paid. Every pitfall for pre-paid contracts can be found with their plans.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I'm happy with my Cingular GoPhone. It costs $25 every 90 days, and unused minutes roll over. It's 25 cents a minute, which might bother me if I made a lot of calls. My usage is light so it isn't important and I have a ton of rollover minutes. All in all, it's much cheaper than the Verizon plan that I used to have.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Take a look at STI Mobile http://stimobile.com./
Their basic plan is ten cents per day and twelve cents per minute primetime, ten cents per minute non-primetime.
Your minutes do not expire, but you do have to make or receive at least one phone call every 60 days to keep your account/minutes/phone number.
However, once a few friends have your cell #, making or receiving at least one call every 60 days isn't going to be that big a deal.
So a cell phone for 36.50/year + usage. Minimum usage would be 7 calls per year, evenly spread out, at 12 cents per minute is $0.84, so minimum $37.34 total for a cell phone for a whole year.
Another comment about T-Mobile, adding to the parent post:
If, after a year, you have not used all your minutes, you can spend as little as $10 to extend those minutes for another year, and get minutes added to the total.
I was a Tracfone user and had no complaints about their plans or pricing. Buying a one-year-expiration card (nominally 150 minutes, plus routine bonuses) gave me plenty of minutes for my needs. I dropped them only because the carrier they use in my area couldn't get a signal through to my new workplace: it was in a dead zone.
I've since switched to Alltel's pre-paid plan, and it's been working out fine for me. I miss Tracfone's on-phone read-out of how much credit is left before I have to buy more, but other than that, I'm quite happy with Alltel: they give me 2-5 bars in all of the places I usually spend my time, and they don't cost me much money.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You get "reamed" with pre-paid only if you're stupid enough to go with that kind of plan when you really need one of those fixed-rate hundreds-of-minutes-per-month plans. In fact, I spend less than $10/month on mobile phone service using pre-paid plans, which is far cheaper than the least expensive monthly-rate plan available. If I used the silly little thing more than I do, I might be better off buying on-air minutes in bulk... but I don't. I know it's old-fashioned, but I call most of my friends when I'm at home (easier to hear and be heard), and I keep in touch with others by e-mail. I simply don't spend a lot of time on the air, which makes a pre-paid plan a great money-saver.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Net10.com is always 10 - Local, Long Distance or Roaming, 24x7, you pay to receive and make phone calls. Text Messaging = 5 (Tx/Rx).
Minimum cost is $40 phone with 300 minutes/60 days of service. Month cost is $15/150 minutes. Need to buy a refil of at least $30/300 minutes every 60 days. Also have 6/12 mo. plans.
Pros: clear and simple rules, phone shows minutes and expiration date. Fully anonymous (you need to register phone at net10.com, but they don't ask your name/address/SSN). Recharge from phone in minutes. Roaming and long distance are same price as local calls. Good for emergency phone.
Cons: phone selection is limited. in my area phone is cingular and have limited coverage. never used their support, reports over the Internet are not good.
I have no affiliation with net10, except as a customer.
I rarely used my cellphone. Virgin Mobile pre-paid is perfect. Requires you to spend $20 every 90 days...less than $7/month! However you don't lose your money if it isn't used (unused minutes roll over), it automatically refills if you want, and the service uses Sprint's network.
You're either uninformed or a moron. I use my cellphone maybe 5 minutes a week. With Virgin Mobile's pre-paid plan, I pay $20 every 90 days. That comes out to $7/month. I keep my unused minutes, my account is automatically refilled, and Virgin Mobile operates on Sprint's network.
Now tell me how I'm getting "reamed with prepaid"?
MOD PARENT UP. Population density is also why U.S. carriers did not want to adopt GSM back in the early 90s. Because GSM is a time-multiplexed technology, the maximum size of a cell has a fairly small limit. Cells can be bigger with CDMA to support very small population densities (and of course they can be tiny for New York City).
I would add only one minor drawback. I don't want to give them my debit card, so I "top up" every three months. For some reason, their web site doesn't allow me to set a reminder for them to email me a week or so before I need to top up. So, even though I have a cash balance, my phone gets temporarily shut off if I don't add $20 every 90 days. Needless to say, I'm at a usage level where I don't use that much, so my cost is also $20 ... every ninety-__one__ days. Still much preferable to going over the minute limit on my old "emergency use" plan, which I would do every 18 months or so. I've finally learned (hey, I'm not an idiot ... wait ...) to set myself a reminder so that I buy the top up cards early enough to avoid temporary shut-off.
I have pretty good credit but I hate cellphone contracts. I'm paying the same on Virgin Mobile as I did with Verizon - and my unlimited nights and weekends start at 7:00 pm instead of 9:00.
The phone was only $20 and is great - few frills, makes great calls. If it breaks, I go get another one. With Verizon, as my phone was breaking, I was facing either another $200 up front for a phone or bondage through another stinking 2 year contract. No thanks.
Flat rate cellular is on the way (you know $45/month unlimited) minutes is coming... companies like Cricket and MetroPCS are already doing it. It won't be long until the mainstream companies are forced to do the same.
A lot of plans on prepaids do indeed suck, but if you shop around, you can do pretty well.
I use boostmobile, from nextel. Then phones are OK, you can get them for $50 if they are on sale, the minutes expire after 90 days and I can get the minutes in sizes I like. Incoming text emails and text only sms are free. outgoing messages of any sort will cost and minutes during peak hours are a little pricey at 20 cents a minute but for what I do it works well and there is no monthly fee.
i know that in this day in age most feel that cell phones are essential but i personaly just find them annoying and over priced. people got along just fine (and i still do) using pay phones and the phones at whatever location they might be at. as a full time college student who pays his own bills i shake my head in disgust every time i hear a fellow student complaining about being broke and yet paying 40 dollars a month for something they dont need (especially since most have a land lines).
it's like me spending tons of money on micro brew (which i do) and then complaining about not having cash (which i dont).
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I use T-Moblie. Their 1000 minute plan lasts a year, and when you go to renew, as long as you get ~100 (IIRC) all the minutes you haven't used get extended for another year. Since I used less than 200 minutes last year, this puts my cost at around $25 a year for cell service. Good deal, and I haven't had any problems with service. Amusingly enough, my reception has actually been much better with T-Mobile than it was with AT&T/Cingluar or Sprint.
My funky old phone uses the same icon for voice mail and text messages. I never use text messaging, and was stumped recently when I kept seeing the icon and not having any voice mail. I finally got smart and looked at the text message list and found an IM spam that had been sitting there for a week. Deleted it and no more icon.
No sig? Sigh...
Look into Cricket (look up Cricket Communications on the web) if it is in you area. They offer an unlimited dialing plan for calling anyone in your local area + like 500 long distance minutes a month (you can buy more if you run out) and unlimited incoming calls - all for around $50 a month. The catch is, however, if you leave your local Cricket dialing area, the phone becomes unusable (until you re-enter your local area).
If you require national coverage, I'd use a Go Phone (Cingular), $70 or so dollars a month give you 650 minutes a month a good amount of features. If you run out of minutes, it simply does not allow more calls unless you pump some extra minutes into it (or wait 'til the next monthly billing period). No contract, so after a month, if you don't like, cancel it.
Here's the blurb from tracfone's site:
Definitely the best thing going in the US for prepaid. If you use annual plan cards, you can get your rollover to last two years (takes buying two cards) - now that's a long time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I don't use my phone much... so Tracfone makes a lot of sense.
There are no monthly fees, but you do have to buy some minutes each year to keep your number.
If you pay their full rate, it comes out to about a dollar a minute... but it's not hard to combine their special offers to get down to about 20 cents a minute... remember though, no monthly fee, so it ends up being _way_ cheaper for someone like me that only uses about 300 minutes a year.
My parents and grandparents actually use tracfone as a keep-in-care emergency phone too.
Enjoy...
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
I paid $100 for 1000 minutes last March, and I still have $30 left. I bought a used GSM Treo 600 on eBay and could have bought my SIM card there at a discount as well (I bought a currently unused phone at Wal-Mart for $30 before I figured that out). The really neat part is that there is no credit check, no SSN disclosure, no privacy issues at all! They don't care who I am! All they care about is that I paid cash and I'm getting service. My only complaint is that they block the GPRS hi-speed internet connection to my color graphical browser at their own firewall, or I'd have mobile internet as well. I'd be happy to pay for GPRS IP on a metered basis as well, but they haven't figured that out yet.
Out where my parents live, not all networks provide reliable coverage. Verizon seems to be the best in that regards. Unfortunately, they're bad in terms of their pre-paid plans. I am hoping there is a pre-paid brand that resells Verizon service at more reasonable terms. If anyone can tell me which pre-paid brands use which physical networks, it would be most helpful.
If you're using less than 240 minutes monthly, then yeah, you definitely have no business on a monthly contract. If I were to do prepay, my bill would be over $100 for this last cycle. Instead, it's about $45 inclusive of taxes and junk fees.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Hi, you were the first among many /. recommendations for tracphone. Verizon wireless phones are the only ones that get any signal where I live, can you tell me if tracphone works with the verizon network?
I tried to email them via their website http://www.tracfone.com/contact.jsp?task=contact but clicking on send results in a server error on their side.
thanks in advance.
Also, if there is a referal bonus, I'd hook you up.
Do what I did:
- Drop all cell, pager, and extras.
- local land-line phone service to home from local phone company. No long distance, no extras. Only add on was 1-800 calling allowed. Cost is less than $10/month.
- $25 calling card from WalMart.
I made the changes in 2000. Here we are at the end of 2006 and I still have most of the minutes on my second calling card. It took only about one month to adjust to my new situation, but I've had no trouble using office phones, public phone booths, and borrowing phones (to use with my calling card of course).
I've saved a kajillion dollars and only get called by people who *really* have to talk to me.
I don't like automatics.
Blar.
Yeah, Virgin Mobile is really reaming me a $5/month. Even with employee discounts here at Verizon, I can't get anything close to such a good deal. Unless you're a woman or a salesman, you shouldn't have need for too many minutes a month.
I've used T-Mobile's prepaid service for two and a half years, averaging about 150 minutes per month. I'm elated with it. As others have mentioned, once you reach $100 worth of refills, you become a Gold Rewards customer. In addition to minutes that persist for a year, they give you 15% more minutes with each refill. Text messages are $0.05 or $0.10 per message sent or received (I think). Voicemail works the same as their contract plans. If you call from a landline, you can check it for free.
As important to me as cost savings is anonymity. I fabricated a name and paid cash when I bought the phone. T-Mobile knows nothing about me.
Given that so many other providers are more expensive, I'm a bit surprised T-Mobile has yet to follow suit. I'll continue using it until they do.
I also use Gizmo Project with an analog telephone adapter at home for the majority of my outgoing calls. Those calls cost a penny a minute.
From what I am reading, the prepaid cell phone market really sucks in the US.
I live in Europe and I have a prepaid cell phone *number* (I can change the device with any other on the market, any time I want) and when I buy pre-paid credits (which can be used either as talk or SMS), it re-news my connection for one year. This means that even if my credits end, I can keep the number (and recieve calls) for one year after the date thar I last added credits.