Reasonable Pre-Paid Cellphones in the US? 220
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?"
Why use pre-paid? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
(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
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Alltel's U Prepaid also has decent rates.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
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.
Auctioning off our airwaves. (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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
Spend as little as $10 to extend for another year. (Score:2)
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)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some, maybe. I assume the carriers have the plans setup the way they because it maximizes their profit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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)
The absolute cheapest contract phones are £15/mth in the UK.
I don't spend £15 on pre-paid.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yes, I'd save a bundle going on to a contract. Not.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm now back on VM and couldn't be happier. I want a basic phone and I got it for $20 - their Oyster. I do talk a lot, so I opted for their $45/month 400 7:00am-7:00pm minutes unlimited nights & weekends plan. It totals about $46.50 per month with fees. (Verizon had many more "fees" that pushed my $39.99/month closer to $48)
I'm paying about the
Tracfone. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
In contrast. I was with Sprint for about two months, but after my $50 plan came in at $92 after BEING RAPED BY THE TAXES for one month with FI
Re: (Score:2)
I buy the year long cards.
Unused minutes roll over as long as you keep it up to date... and every time I've bought the card I've also gotten some kind of promo which adds minutes. Right now you get 250 "units" for ~$100 and don't have to worry about "updating" your account for a year (the year is what you are really paying for... not the minutes).
So... having owned the phone for about four years, and using it all of ten minutes in those four years... I still have almost all of my
Try TracFone (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe that's why they're selling Motorolas now instead of Nokias.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Alltel (Score:2)
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)
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)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Virgin Mobile (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cingular GoPhone (Score:2)
T-Mobile To Go. . . (Score:2, Informative)
ALL re-charging lasts for a year. (Score:2)
T-Mobile (Score:2, Informative)
Check out T-Mobile to Go (Score:2, Informative)
Going prepaid? Bend over. (Score:5, Interesting)
Only if you talk alot! (Score:2)
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)
I don't think they'll appreciate a 911 call to ask if the wife wants catsup or ketchup, however
Re: (Score:2)
Sure you do.
You can test that the phone physically works just by trying to call any number. If you get a (voice) message that you don't have service, or get redirected to an operator, then you know the phone physically works and the local network can accomodate it.
As for actually making a 911 call, just wait until you see a car accident or something dangerous that needs fixing like debris in the road or something. You don'
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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)
determine your use case. purchase accordingly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now tell me how I'm getting "reamed with prepaid"?
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tracfone (Score:2)
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)
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)
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
Re: (Score:2)
T-Mobile (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/default.aspx?p
Re: (Score:2)
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)
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)
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).
Prepaid numbers are DEFINITELY portable (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Metro PCS (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are you looking for savings in the right place? (Score:2)
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)
Go GSM (T-Mobile or Cingular) (Score:2)
It also means that you can buy your phone off eBay (if you'd like something fancy).
we found (Score:2)
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
T-Mobile is a good deal (Score:2)
T-Mobile and Vigrin Mobile experience (Score:2)
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
STI Mobile (Score:2)
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
Had similar experience with Verizon (Score:2)
It fucking pisses me off that... (Score:2)
Cingular (Score:2)
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.
Before you go that far... (Score:2)
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.
One thing you can do... (Score:2)
Forget Prepaid (Score:2)
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.
Cingular GoPhone (Score:2)
$7/month with Virgin Mobile (Score:2)
OK, I billionth the Virgin Mobile recommendation (Score:2)
Boost (Score:2)
why dont you just go without (Score:2)
it's like me spen
Voicemail icon (Score:2)
If not planning on leaving your local area much... (Score:2)
If you require national coverage, I'd use a Go Phone (Cingular), $70 or so dollars
Obvoiusly false. (was Re:Avoid Cingular) (Score:2)
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/ranko rder/2001 [cia.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming that daily fee is $1/day, then you're paying about $30/mo even with no minutes actually used.
For that much, you can get a low-end post-paid cellular plan from most reasonable carriers (i.e., not Verizon), which will include at least a few hundred minutes of airtime.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 e
Don't buy for the phone, buy for the plan! (Score:2)
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.Re: (Score:2)
From VirginMobile, about $45US gets you unlimited nights/weekends, 1000 anytime, on a $30 phone. Not so much different.
Oh man I hear you... (Score:2)
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 g
Re: (Score:2)
going from Verizon Free(fuck?)Up to Net10 was like a breath of fresh air
10c/minute for domestic calling, and you can enable international LD for an extra 5c/minute
i get texting for 3c/outgoing and free incoming
best of all when i screwed up and didn't renew on time they let me keep my accrued minutes no hassle, just went to the site, reactivated and waited 30 minutes for the reactivation to go through (no reactivation time if you refill when you are supposed to)
another thing is if you do decid