Prepaid Cell

[save$]

Hi,

I recently paid off a two year contract with T-Mobile (I paid more than I needed) and now I am on the market for a new phone. I dont use alot and am considering tracfone or "trac phone"
Can anyone talk good about these folks, dont want any complaints, only good stories...

Basically, I need someone to reassure me that it is a good idea!

[poundwise]

Originally Posted by save$

...dont want any complaints, only good stories...

Basically, I need someone to reassure me that it is a good idea!

What if its a bad idea? I mean, asking for opinions but only wanting to hear them if they are "good stories" seems a little odd.

FWIW, Tracfone is fine but I think Net10 is a better deal; simple plan with decent phones.

Virgin Mobile also offers some good options for pre-paid service. If you really don't use the phone much, you can set-up your account with Virgin to only "Top Up" as little as $15 as infrequently as every 90 days. Other plan types are available depending on how want to use the phone and how you want to pay.

[rduell]

Our whole family has Tracfones. I buy the yearly plan (around $130) for DH and I and we never come close to using all the units we have. If you're going to buy a Tracfone then I highly advise getting the $50 one. It has much better sound. I had the really cheap one first and I had to put it on loudspeaker and even then couldn't always hear well. I haven't had any problem with the $50 phone.

[Tree0164]

Net10 is a good plan. They are owned by Tracfone but their minutes are cheaper.

[savingmama]

I don't have experience witht the trac phone but I do have a prepaid cell phone. It is the TMobile to-go plan. I have had it for a year and love it. My husband found a deal last year on slickdeals.net that provided a free cell phone after mail in rebate, plus $35 worth of minutes.

The way the plan works is every three months you have to buy more minutes or you lose the minutes you have. The minimum is $10 for 30 minutes. If you pay more money, then it ends up being cheaper per minute. Also, you can pay $100 for 1000 minutes and your minutes don't expire for one year. I mainly just need access to a cell phone. I don't actually use it very often. I like having it with me so if my car broke down I could call AAA, and also when I am away from my kids I can still be reached. So I love that I can have that for only $3.33 a month.

[safari]

Originally Posted by savingmama

I don't have experience witht the trac phone but I do have a prepaid cell phone. It is the TMobile to-go plan. I have had it for a year and love it. My husband found a deal last year on slickdeals.net that provided a free cell phone after mail in rebate, plus $35 worth of minutes.

The way the plan works is every three months you have to buy more minutes or you lose the minutes you have. The minimum is $10 for 30 minutes. If you pay more money, then it ends up being cheaper per minute. Also, you can pay $100 for 1000 minutes and your minutes don't expire for one year. I mainly just need access to a cell phone. I don't actually use it very often. I like having it with me so if my car broke down I could call AAA, and also when I am away from my kids I can still be reached. So I love that I can have that for only $3.33 a month.

I have T-Mobile To-Go and I love it. I got it over a year ago, and I only paid $88 for a $100 refill card and they also gave me a free phone, which included another $10 refill card. Once you refill your phone with $100, you become a Gold Rewards member, which means your minutes cost less and they don't expire for a year. You never lose your Gold Rewards status, so when the minute are about to expire the following year, all you have to do is refill your phone with any amount, even $10, to have all your unused minutes roll over for a whole another year. When I first activated my phone, I had 1100 minutes, and a year later I still had over 800 minutes left. As you can see, I don't use my cell phone a lot, maybe once a week, so it's perfect for me. I recently refilled it with $10, so all my unused minutes are good for another year. By the way, the phone also includes free access to several major sites, like CNN, ABC, ESPN, so I can check news and real-time scores, and it doesn't cost me anything.

[save$]

Originally Posted by poundwise

What if its a bad idea? I mean, asking for opinions but only wanting to hear them if they are "good stories" seems a little odd.

FWIW, Tracfone is fine but I think Net10 is a better deal; simple plan with decent phones.

Virgin Mobile also offers some good options for pre-paid service. If you really don't use the phone much, you can set-up your account with Virgin to only "Top Up" as little as $15 as infrequently as every 90 days. Other plan types are available depending on how want to use the phone and how you want to pay.

Thank you.

[save$]

Thak you all for sharing your information, I will give them a try and give an update soon!

[safari]

T-Mobile is offering a Nokia 2610 pre-paid phone FREE after rebate ($79.99 - $49.99 instant discount - $30.00 mail-in rebate = $0). Usually pre-paid phones are never free, so this is a great deal. Here is the link.

[mikewoodbooks]

I've got a Trac fone and my wife has Net ten. Costs generally work out to ten cents per minute with either one. But the Net has been a real pain to reload with minutes and my wife often has to hold forever with Net ten customer service to get credited for minutes she's purchased. So I give a slight edge to the Trac fone. We both got are phones for free when we signed up.
The thing is, either way you'll come out way ahead over standard planes with T-mobile, sprint, nextel or whoever. First of all, since the minutes are prepaid there's no taxes and umpteen other fees lumped onto a monthly bill. In fact, you have no monthly bill at all. I usually purchase minutes about once a year and that's it. Your remaining minutes are displayed on your cell phone so you always know how many you have.
Secondly, you can't find any standard plans for less than about $40/month with T-mobile or whoever by the time you add in taxes and fees. Even on a month of heavy talking I never spend more than $20 with my Trac fone.
Finally, don't talk so much! What could possibly be so important that anyone needs to talk for hundreds of minutes (several hours) a month on their cell phone. I primarily use mine for emergencies, or occasionally to check in with my wife. Endless talking is just another way to increase your expenses.

[mikewoodbooks]

Just an update on Net Ten. My wife's service suddenly stopped yesterday, even though she has 500 minutes available. She called customer nonservice, and they said that she had tried to make an overseas call with her phone so they stopped the service. Also they said she had been multiplying her minutes (even though there is no change showing on the "minutes remaining"). Of course these charges are ludicrous. After many frustating phone calls back to Net Ten and the usual hang ups by Net Ten, they said they would give her a new SIM card to fix the probably, and, oh by the way, your old phone number will be no good and you'll have to get a new phone number. Well, thanks a lot for that. As you can imagine, my wife was extremely frustrated and pissed off. But, her complaints are basically falling on deaf ears. We figured the best thing at this point is to finish out the remaining minutes with the new number and then change cell phone companies.

[kristinmarie]

i am actually thinking about doing that when my t-mobile contract is up too. we have 2 phones so the smallest plan we could get with them is i think 700 minutes for 2 phone lines, and we really only use about 200 of that, so i think it's silly to keep spending $100 a month on minutes that we don't even use. let me know how it works for you!

[Broken Arrow]

I recently picked up a Tracfone. The online deal allowed me to get roughly $0.08 per minute. Even without deals, I'm looking at basically $10 per month. Good enough for someone who rarely uses the phone.

[Coleroo]

I like tracfone because there are a lot of good deals out there to get it cheap.

I have two tracfones, but don't really use them and don't keep minutes on them unless there's a short term need for it (it's really easy to reactivate).

When I purchased my tracfones, I found a deal online that let me get 2 tracfones (colored and a nice style) with 400 minutes for only $19.95.

There are codes on FatWallet.com that will let you double your minutes upon loading as well.

My mom has 2 tracfones that she uses a lot. She loves them.

The tracfones we have come with games (yay!). Text messaging is only 1/3 of a unit per message. Voice mail comes with it as well - and the great thing is that people leaving voice messages do NOT use up your minutes. So if you want a cheap voice mail service for business purposes, that's the way to go.

My only complaint about tracfone is that we have to dial 1 + (area code) for every number - even local. Not sure why. It get annoying sometimes though.

Over all I like tracfone and would recommend it if nothing more than for how easy it is to get double free minutes. I'm not sure about any other service.

[Coleroo]

oh, btw, you can also have an existing number transfered to a tracfone. My parents just did away with their home line and transferred the number to a tracfone...and that's going to save them a LOT. They wanted to keep the number, and tracfone was the cheapest way to go.

[SnoopyCool]

I have a Tracfone and I like it. I don't like contracts, so it works for me.

[Broken Arrow]

Originally Posted by Coleroo

Voice mail comes with it as well - and the great thing is that people leaving voice messages do NOT use up your minutes.

Oh, now that's nice! FYI, AT&T's GoPhone is roughly $0.25 per minutes (the plan I use) and checking the voice mail costs the same as any other calls!

[Coleroo]

Originally Posted by Broken Arrow

Oh, now that's nice! FYI, AT&T's GoPhone is roughly $0.25 per minutes (the plan I use) and checking the voice mail costs the same as any other calls!

oh.. calling in from the tracfone to check voicemail does cost minutes.

However, if someone leaves you a voice mail - and then you dial in from another phone (which is what I do with my phones), you are not charged any minutes. So you can have free voicemail like that...no minutes used when people leave messages, and no minutes used when you check from another phone.

[Broken Arrow]

Oh! I see. Well, it's still a good tip! I could probably check my voice mail using my work phone. So, thank you for sharing.

[starkitty78]

Has anyone had any luck with Verizion Prepaid? I was just looking at the plans for it, but I'm not really liking the daily access fee.

I have a Ready Mobile Prepaid phone, but I haven't used it in about a year. Anyone use that?