Pre-paid cell phones

[dancerjodi]

I much prefer talking in person to on the phone. I do have a cell phone for auto emergencies or for the quick "hey, I'm going to be late" or "what time do you want to meet up" kind of calls. My Cingular contract is up next August, so I'm considering moving over to some kind of prepaid plan at that time to save money (even the lowest Cingular plan is costing me $40 a month to have a phone I rarely use).

Have any of you had good or bad experience with a prepaid phone plan? It seems that AT&T/Cingular wireless offers one with a $1 per day charge for using it and then charges $.10 a minute. There are perhaps better deals out there, but moving from a Cingular plan to a Cingular plan would perhaps be the most seamless. Given that I may use the phone only a couple of times a month I'd save a lot over a year by taking away that $40 monthly charge. I'm definitely not ready to get rid of my landline (currently we can't anyway, since its a part of our Verizon FIOS package) and given how rarely I use my cell, I think this would be a better way to save some money.

Comments

[halo.livejournal.com]

I was very happy with the prepaid TMobile phone that I had. There was no daily charge, it was just a debit system, which you could conveniently charge up online. And TMobile has vastly superior customer service to ATT/Cingular, if that matters to you.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Make sure you check how quickly the minutes expire. What I did with my US pre-pay phone (which is t-mobile) was pay a lot once ($100) and now my paid for minutes only expire after a year. Cingular was much faster than that.

It's particularly annoying because money on pre-pay phones don't expire at all over here.

[jeditrilobite.livejournal.com]

I had a prepaid, but I just found it to be really expensive for the amount of times that I used it - sounds like you don't use yours as much as I did, but I kept running short on minutes and they're expensive, although it sounds like you have a pretty good plan there.

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I've had a prepaid plan with Verizon for a few years now. Minimum amount that I can put on the account per month is $15. If I put on $30, the minutes expire in 2 months. I've never needed more than that, I use the phone very rarely. The minutes (and my phone number) will expire if I don't keep a positive balance, so I have to add $15/mo, but it will add to the current balance (though the expiry time won't extend). The per minute charge is pretty high, but I don't get hit with US roaming charges. My only beef with it is that it's for US use only, or at least I haven't figured out how to unlock it to use it in Canada or Puerto Rico.
They're good about text messaging, and voice reminding, when my balance is low, and I can refill online.
Verizon site.

[radegund-lj.livejournal.com]

I have a prepaid Cingular phone. It is not my primary phone and I do not use it all that much; it gets the most use when I am traveling and need to inform my sister that I'm stuck at O'Hare again or something like that. ;) The per-minute/per-text-message rate is not that great, but I put $25 into it every 90 days which I think is just fine for the amount of use I get out of it. As long as I am not late with the refills the funds in my account just add up. They do send me reminders, although they are sneaky and sound the alert about a month before my funds are actually due to expire. I have not had reception problems in my domestic travels so far (other than the usual places where nobody else has reception either); it didn't work when we were in the Caribbean but I didn't really expect it to.

[christmasjedi.livejournal.com]

I had a Tracphone for several years. It cost me $100 a year for continuous service and something like 500 minutes. The per minute cost was not very economical, but $100 a year was a whole lot less than $40 a month, and I never used up all my minutes. The most I ever used it was at Dragon*Con. It was really good about latching on to whatever network was available, so I never really had any coverage issues.

We only went to regular cell plans when I started school and would be out and on campus all day without a way to contact anyone. Fortunately though, we are sharing a family plan, so we're getting both lines for the price of one.

I don't know anything about new prepaid phones though, having not used one in 4 years.

[angelsong.livejournal.com]

Hello there! Just noticed that I'm back on your friends list after all this time? Nice to see you, though kind of surprised to be re-added out of the blue. ;-) hope you and Brian are doing well! Eric and are still out here in Seattle.

malaika

Hi!

[dancer.livejournal.com]

Yes, at one point I took off folks that I didn't end up seeing in real life, and recently went back to add people on that I had missed. I hope you don't mind! :)

[narnee.livejournal.com]

I use Kajeet. I would not recommend Kajeet for three reasons: 1) it really is for children and is not set up to be easy to use for adults (or frankly anyone who pays their own bill); 2) their customer service sucks; and 3) their network is nowhere near big enough to cope so there are regular 'network busy' messages, especially when trying to connect to AIM or using it when schools get out / during school vacations.

Kim has a Virgin Mobile and that seems to be much better. As far as she knows, there's no daily access charge. The rates vary depending on if you're on a top-up 'plan' or not, but that gives room for more or less use. It seems worth considering.

[arianasilver.livejournal.com]

I'm going to chime in here and agree with T-Mobile. We used them when we were doing prepaid and never had any issues. When I went to talk to them about plans, the sales rep actually pulled me aside and told me to go check the prices at Target, and I could come back and they'd help me activate my phone! I was able to get a nice flip phone with $25 in minutes for $49 at Target. Once you spend $100 in minutes (you could do that right off the bat if you want) you're "Gold Status" and your minutes don't expire for a year.

Re: Hi!

[angelsong.livejournal.com]

Of course I don't mind! I gotta warn you that I rarely update anymore, though I do read everyday. :-)

Glad to be back!

Not really applicable...

[sajuka.livejournal.com]

But I had GREAT prepaid cell phone service in Australia :) Lots of plan options, good coverage, good online and phone access for support...

Sorry, it's really the only experience I had with prepaid phones, but there was no question the Aussies (and probably most of Europe and the Pacific rim) are miles ahead of the US in this area...