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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?"
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
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.
. . . 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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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".)
Just FYI, it might be worth your time getting the phone itself from Europe. Just as it's often cheaper for us Brits to pay international shipping on computer hardware from the states, it looks like you guys would probably be better of getting an unlocked RAZR (to use your example) for ~$150 from the UK and putting a local SIM card in it.
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.
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 use pay as you go too - usually runs me $50 for three months, about the same as you. I live in a rural area (as is most of this state) so coverage is important.
That said, I use cingulair prepaid-as-u-go because I dont trust them anywhere near my credit card or bank account. Customer service is terrible. Put my elderly father on a terible plan that ran up a bill for hundreds of dollars. Refused to make accomodations, sent it to collections, and after settling with that agency they decided the wasn't good enough, reneged, sent it to ANOTHER agency and we still get the goddamn harrassing calls - every other day for six months now.
Rot in hell, cingulair. Those fuckers are parasites.
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'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.
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...