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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?"
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.
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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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).
They exist. After you spend $100 on T-Mobile USA Prepaid, minutes expire after one year regardless of your refill price. So, the first year will cost $100 ($8.33/mo) and you'll get 1000 minutes total for the year. If you need more, they'll last for a year. For $20 you'll only get 35 minutes, but for $100 you'll get another 1000 minutes. But after that first year, if you hardly ever used your phone, you could get away with $1.67/mo.
Alltel's U Prepaid also has decent rates.
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've been using a pre-paid virginmobileusa.comm phone for years.
It costs $15 every three months, minimum (that is, you have to pay $15 every three months, regardless).
Needless to say, I seldom use it, but it's there when I need it, and the money never expires.
Can't beat $5 a month.
Hope it helps.
*Still* negative function...