Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Communications The Almighty Buck

Reasonable Pre-Paid Cellphones in the US? 220

Posted by Cliff from the tired-of-long-term-carrier-abuse dept.
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?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Reasonable Pre-Paid Cellphones in the US? More

Reasonable Pre-Paid Cellphones in the US?

Comments Filter:

  • Why use pre-paid? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AndyMan! ( 31066 ) <chicagoandy&gmail,com> on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @07:19PM (#17138630)
    The cost savings of going on a month-to-month plan are tremendous.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hibiki_r ( 649814 )
      Sure, you save a lot of money if you use your phone 1-2 hours a day, but there's people that don't. Let's say you use a phone 3 hours a month. Most plans out there start at $30. $10 an hour is not what I call tremendous cost savings.

      European operators have cheap prepaid rates that are better fitted to the light phone user. Go find something like that in the US.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by networkBoy ( 774728 )
        I've tried.
        No luck. Best I've found was a flat rate at $40/month with unlimited anytime minutes to the three local area codes. To make up for it they rape you for LD and roaming. There was one silver lining: They don't support data, but the phone does and the network doesn't stop you from using it. Basically if you have problems you're on your own, but unmetered data is actually vastly more useful to me than voice.
        -nB

        • Re:Why use pre-paid? (Score:4, Informative)

          by nigelo ( 30096 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @09:37PM (#17140322)
          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.
          • I just looked at their Web site. Couldn't find any such plan. I also could find nowhere that they say when the prepaid minutes expire.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by desenz ( 687520 )
              Virgin Mobile calls it the "18 cent" anytime(all the time?) plan, or something to that effect. Its actually $20 every 3 months minimum, and I'm pretty sure the parent was correct about the time never expiring permanently... I don't have a link for any of this, but I work for radioshack, and we sell it. This was out of the brochure.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by nigelo ( 30096 )
              Yep, they currently offer an 18 cents/min plan.

              My plan is 25 c/min for the first 10 min/day, then 10 c/min for subsequent minutes. Text is 10 c/text. Minimum $20 every 3 months, reduced to $15 if you let them charge a CC. Unused monies carry-over provided one keeps paying $15... Each part of a minute counts as one minute.

              Actually, 18 c/min might suit me better - probably,I should switch. My calls are usually very short duration.

      • Sure, you save a lot of money if you use your phone 1-2 hours a day, but there's people that don't. Let's say you use a phone 3 hours a month.

        Three hours? Good grief. I doubt I use mine for more than about five minutes a month. I use my phone for photos, a little data, sending the occasional text message --- not very often --- but, above all, I use it to receive calls. (We don't have the bizarre USian concept of charging people to receive incoming calls.)

        I paid for the phone up-front; it cost me 40 UKP

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shakrai ( 717556 )

          (We don't have the bizarre USian concept of charging people to receive incoming calls.)

          No, they just charge people who call you more for the privilege of calling a mobile number, even though he could be sitting in the same building as you.

          In America the person calling you is billed based on where your cellular exchange is. It could be a local call or it could be on the other side of the country. This seems a little bit more fair -- why should I pay a surcharge to call somebody who lives next door to m

          • This seems a little bit more fair -- why should I pay a surcharge to call somebody who lives next door to me just because they have a cell phone?

            Because it uses more resources to call them over the cell phone network than it does over the POTS network?

            I mean, it's not as if this comes as a surprise to anyone. All mobile numbers have the 07 prefix, so you know you're going to be charged extra before you call the number. If you have a mobile phone and you don't want people to be charged extra, you can bu

      • Re:Why use pre-paid? (Score:5, Informative)

        by nxtw ( 866177 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @08:03PM (#17139266)
        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MsGeek ( 162936 )
          Another vote for T-Mobile. And you don't have to pay that $100 all at once, either...you can build up to it depending on how much you use. Then after you pay that first $100 you don't have to sweat the minutes expiring.

          Now if only the network that T-Mobile and Cingular share out here in SoCal wasn't so spotty the places I really need it to be reliable...Burbank, where my college is, and my undisclosed location in the San Fernando Valley. Both are under "dead zones." However, the rest of the LA area is prett

        • Experiences with T-Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @08:32PM (#17139676) Homepage
          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 [futurepower.org].

          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.

          • 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.

            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 c

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Shakrai ( 717556 )

              Don't even get me started on how WiFi was pushed into a small band shared with microwave ovens...

              Don't get me started on how they are pushing for the shutdown of analog TV and the replacement with digital just so they can auction off the spectrum. Or how they tried to force the broadcast flag on all of us.

              Seriously, if Congress is going to delegate that kind of power then I damn well better be able to vote for the people running the place. Oh, I can't? What do you mean they are just a bunch of unelec

          • 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.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Shakrai ( 717556 )

            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.

            Are you sure about that? GSM is the open protocol, which by default makes me respect it some more, but CDMA has several compelling advantages. Higher density of users per site, continuous transmission instead of time division (ever held a GSM phone near a speaker?) and in my experienc

        • What I especially like about T-mobile's prepaid plan is that there is no per-call or per-day charge, on top of the per-minute charge. A lot of other plans will charge an extra fee for every day that you use the phone, regardless of the # of minutes used.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nxtw ( 866177 )
            Well, most of these plans that have daily charges that come with some extra benefit (unlimited night/weekends and/or mobile to mobile), and some of the providers that implement them give you a choice (cingular and alltel U do). These plans will probably work out to be cheaper for some people's usage patterns. I find the alltel U plan particularly attractive, for a prepaid plan.
            • > These plans will probably work out to be cheaper for some people's usage patterns.

              Some, maybe. I assume the carriers have the plans setup the way they because it maximizes their profit.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by EvanED ( 569694 )
      As others have said, depends on your usage pattern. I have Cingular pay-as-you-go, and almost never use my phone. I spend about $15 a month. The cheapest non-prepaid monthly plan I saw when shopping around a couple months ago was $40 a month.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 )
      The cost savings of going on a month-to-month plan are tremendous.

      The cost savings for a prepaid plan can be much less then a month-to-month plan. Many people could easily save $100-200 per year with a prepaid plan.

      I have friends and family who are paying around $100 a year with their TracFone plan. This cost include a free phone and the taxes. That's a far better deal then the budget 300 minute/month plan-- these seem to average $30/month, with another $5-10 in taxes per month.

      Most people I know don't come

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by forged ( 206127 )
      You might want this when spending a couple of weeks on vacation in a foreign country. Prepaid is perfect for that.

      I got myself a prepaid SIM card when visiting India a couple of years ago, to place calls within the country, and it ended up costing me next to nothing. My roaming charges would have been through the roof had I used my regular number.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Duds ( 100634 ) *
      That's simply not true.

      The absolute cheapest contract phones are £15/mth in the UK.

      I don't spend £15 on pre-paid.
    • I'm with Virgin and have been for a few years so I'm still on their old system of PAYG in that any payments I add *never* expire. I only use a mobile for emergencies, the odd 'I'm on the train' calls etc so I spend maybe £15-20 a year tops on it. I only found out recently that Virgin top-ups actually expire now for newer customers so I'm staying put for now.
      Oh yes, I'd save a bundle going on to a contract. Not.

  • Tracfone. (Score:2, Informative)

    by MJanofsky ( 927999 )
    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.
  • TracFone [tracfone.com] 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )
      The Tracfone Nokias are a poor quality. First one failed after a few months and it took them 3 more months to replace it with the same model which also failed after a few months. I lost a bunch of minutes in the switchover. Customer service is clueless. Phones are terrible. Other than that, they're just fine.
      • The Tracfone Nokias are a poor quality.


        Maybe that's why they're selling Motorolas now instead of Nokias.

      • The Nokia 5180i I received from Tracfone was an awesome phone. Featurewise it was fairly vanilla, but it was built like a tank and its multi-technology analog/digital reception made sure it would connect just about anywhere. I used it up in the Twin Cities and then down here in Atlanta for a little while, and it worked just fine.

        I also bought the yearly cards. Well worth it if you don't use the phone except for emergency stuff and maybe a few other calls per month.
    • 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

  • Virgin Mobile (Score:3, Informative)

    by VokinLoksar ( 1021515 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @07:23PM (#17138716)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by oni ( 41625 )
      Here's another great thing about Virgin: I only use the prepaid phone during the summer. I take it with me camping or whatever. So like right now it's winter and I'm not using it and I'm not going to renew it in 90 days. They will shut off the phone of course but get this, when I reactivate it in the summer by putting another $20 on it, all the minutes that were left over from last summer are still there!

      You can't beat that! I've had the phone for a couple of years and I actually have a lot of time buil

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by alienw ( 585907 )
      It's actually only $15 if you set it to auto-debit every 3 months from a credit card, and the balance never expires and there are no fixed fees. If you don't talk at all, your balance just keeps growing. They are a great provider, and really cheap if you don't talk a lot. I spend exactly 5 bucks a month with them, and I use the phone quite frequently (though not for very long). They also have much cheaper month-to-month plans and don't assfuck you with 65 cents/minute for overages (it's 18 cents billed
    • I fourth the Virgin Mobile recommendation. They use Sprint's network so use Sprint's coverage maps and reports to determine what coverage is like where you need to be.
    • I 5th that. I recently got two from VM, and it is VERY inexpensive, if you don't use it a lot.

    • Re:Virgin Mobile (Score:4, Informative)

      by aero2600-5 ( 797736 ) on Thursday December 07, 2006 @02:54AM (#17142524)
      I also highly recommend Virgin Mobile. I've never had a problem with them, and I've been with them for three years. At first, I rarely ever used my phone and had the $.25 a minute plan. It worked great and didn't cost that much. Later, I started to use my phone more often, and I switched to a plan that cost $.35 a day, and $.10 a minute. Not bad, considering this is all no contract. Now, I've started using my phone quite a bit, and I switched to one of their monthly plans. I get unlimited nights and weekends and 400 anytime minutes. I'm at work all day, so I hardly touch the anytime minutes. For $45, I get to talk all I want.

      It is true that the signal is weak in some rural areas, but I rarely have a problem with it.

      Another nice thing is that you can use a Virgin Mobile phone completely anonymously if you're a privacy nut/criminal. You can pay cash for the phone, register it online with any bogus name you want, and pay cash for the cards to add minutes, even if you have a monthly plan.

      I'm looking to get a new phone here in the next month or so, but that's not because of the service. My dog chewed up the phone. Broke the camera lens, the external display, and the battery is covered in teeth marks.

      Now that I think about it, I do remember that I had a problem last year. My phone was acting all sorts of crazy. Hanging up when I made calls as soon as the other end picked up and what not. I called their customer service to ask about it, and they asked me when the last time I had turned the phone off was. I honestly couldn't remember. It had been months, maybe a year. I turned the phone off, gave it a minute or two, and then turned it back on. It was fixed. The phones are quite reliable, and a six hour charge will usually last 4-5 days.

      And yes, you can get cute ringtones and games on the phone.

      Just my two cents..

      Aero
    • I'm happy with Virgin Mobile as well. For some reason I had some trouble registering my credit card with it, so right now it auto-tops up from my paypal account, costing an extra $1 each time. Ah well, it's no biggie. After 8 months with the service I already have a surplus of about $60 since I almost never talked. But when I signed up, the minute-to-minute plan was $0.25/min for first 10 minutes of the day, and $0.10/min thereafter. I just checked their website, and you're right that it's $0.18/min no
  • 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.

  • T-Mobile (Score:2, Informative)

    by janneH ( 720747 )
    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

  • Going prepaid? Bend over. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by facelessnumber ( 613859 ) * <drew.pittman@ws> on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @07:31PM (#17138844) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dougmc ( 70836 )
        All we want is a cellphone for the car for emergencies
        If you can get away with having a phone that works for bonafide emergencies, any old cell phone will do -- you don't need service at all. By law, cell phone companies (in the US) have to permit calls to 911 from any phone, even if it doesn't have service.


        I don't think they'll appreciate a 911 call to ask if the wife wants catsup or ketchup, however :)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by nxtw ( 866177 )
      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, f

    • Re:Going with a monthly plan? Bend over. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Splork ( 13498 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @08:26PM (#17139604) Homepage
      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 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrDitto ( 962751 )
      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"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hazem ( 472289 )
      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 unli
  • 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,

  • Virgin Mobile's customer service (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tfinniga ( 555989 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @07:38PM (#17138936)
    So, a couple of other people have already recommended virgin mobile [virginmobileusa.com]. 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.. :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dpilot ( 134227 )
      We're on Virgin Mobile, as practically-never cellphone users. It runs $20 every 3 months to prepay minutes, so for $6-7 a month we have that bit of connection when we need it.

      As for "really cool enough," I once had to use their phone-tree service, and was taken back, a bit. There are phone-trees that sound mechanical like synthesized speech or reconstituted recorded phonyms, there are phone-trees that were dicated by a polite, bland voice. THIS phone-tree sounded like a marketing executive's concept of "rea
    • An added benefit of Virgin Mobile is that you can get a list of your calls and how much you were charged for each call. This is great for submitting expense reports when you're traveling on business. T-Mobile would be cheaper for me overall with their $100 for 1000 minutes for a year (Virgin Mobile is $15 every 90 days at $0.18 a minute for the lowest-use plan), but being able to submit expense reports is great for me.

  • T-Mobile (Score:3, Informative)

    by no_opinion ( 148098 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @07:40PM (#17138972)
    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:

    http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/default.aspx?pl ancategory=4 [t-mobile.com]

    • Tmobile's plan is great for those that don't talk a lot. If you spending more than $0.10 a minute for your cell phone, than this plan is for you.

      After the first year, if you use less than 1000 minutes, just keep getting $10 cards which last for 3 monhts and your unused minutes roll over to the new expiration. so, for a little used phone, it's only $40 per year.

      Newer phones also includes basic web stuff for free.

  • Tradeoffs (Score:2, Informative)

    by sylvandb ( 308927 )
    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 [tracfone.com]. (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

  • T-Mobile vs. Cingular (Score:4, Informative)

    by fossa ( 212602 ) <pat7.gmx@net> on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @07:45PM (#17139046) Journal

    When I shopped, I looked at Cingular and T-Mobile's prepaid plans. At least in my area, Cingular's two prepaid plans [cingular.com] 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 [t-mobile.com] 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).

    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fossa ( 212602 )

        Mod parent up :) As is stands, I was changing numbers anyway to get a local area code number. I should have payed more attention however; I can't remember exactly who told me that, but for some reason it's stuck in my head, and now I feel lied to.

  • MetroPCS [metropcs.com] 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.
  • 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

  • T-Mobile prepaid (Score:2, Interesting)

    by seeknowsage ( 1036580 )
    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
  • 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).
  • 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 d
  • $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.
  • 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 p
  • I actually can't complain about my STI Mobile [stimobile.com] 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 p
  • 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
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • ...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.
  • The "you have a voicemail" and "you don't have a voicemail" signal is not one that is continually sent on most carriers, in my experience. In other words, the phone gets a signal to tell it there is a voicemail, and the icon stays until it gets a signal that there are no more. It will ignore all new signals for voicemails until it gets the "no more messages" signal. Now what's weird, and I've encountered it on Sprint and their piggyback networks (Embarq, Boost, and many others use their network) along wi
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • 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
  • 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 spen
  • 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.
  • 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

Slashdot Top Deals

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

Close