I have long chosen to eschew cell phones due to the fact that the costs just don’t justify what would be my very occasional usage. But situations certainly pop up from time to time where I think “Yes, I wish I had a cell phone right now.”
Lately I have been looking at Virgin Mobile’s “top-up” pay-by-the-minute plan that advertises a $0.18 a minute flate rate. This would be perfect for me, again, seeing that I would only use it occasionally. (I am aware that you must use at least $20 every 90 days, but that is a bargain compared to $40+ every month whether I use it or not)
I just want to hear from anyone who has tried this service.
Are there hidden fees, as cell phone companies are prone to charge? Are there caveats in the fine print I am missing, or is it really a straight $0.18/minute all the time with no other fees? (upon further investigation it seems that at least sales tax applies. So how much does this plan really end up costing?)
How is the service overall? Good reception/coverage or not?
Is there any other company which offers a similar plan that would fit my style of usage as mentioned above?
I use that exact plan. I haven’t seen any hidden fees or anything, it’s been fairly straight forward, though I will admit to rarely looking at my balance. I just add the 20 bucks every three months and never have a problem.
I’ve found the service to be good, no problems here in the LA area. Only other place I’ve used it is Detroit and had no problems there either.
I’ve been using Virgin for a couple of years now. I’m satisfied with the service.
No hidden fees, just sales tax on the ‘top-up’.
I believe they use the Sprint PCS network.
Not that I’ve seen.
I would like to have a nicer phone, but don’t want to sign a contract or spend $2-300 for a new phone, so I’ll be sticking with VM for now. It’s been reliable enough to be my primary phone (no land line).
Not that I’ve found yet, but I have no use or need for bells and whistles. It’s .05 a text message, if you consider that hidden.
Pretty good here on the front range. On my recent road trip to Ohio, I found that I still had a signal most of the time near the highway, but if I got too far off and I wasn’t in a city, I lost reception.
I looked at a couple others - can’t remember who. When I went to buy the phone, Radio Shack tried to push me into a regular Cingular plan, so I just went to Safeway instead.
Had it for a couple of years. No problems except that the phone itself is REALLY cheap and the battery now doesn’t hold a charge very long (IOW I need to buy a new phone–but then, they are really cheap).
No hidden fees that I can tell.
Good reception at home and in my travels–in many cases better than my SO’s who has Qwest. (This was true in SoCal and parts of Ariz. as well as parts of Colo.)
I think there are, but I can’t remember their names.
Actually, technically, you must spend at least $20 every 90 days. It keeps accruing. I bought a VM phone last winter and currently have $80 in accrued time available; that means if I get stuck in a snow drift and need to stay on the phone so searchers can find me, I have about 13 hours of time. Hopefully I’ll have my cigarette lighter charger cable with me because, as noted above, the batteries don’t last long.
The other way of looking at it is that if I lose the phone tomorrow, I’ll have paid about $90 for ten minutes of phone calls, or $9 a minute. :eek: That’s some expensive emergency phone.
I’ve been using them for a couple of years now, and the phones are based on the Sprint network, which means you can forget about it working in Kansas (ironically, where Sprint is based). The marketing glurge is annoying, but it’s not constant, thankfully. Check the location map (if you can) for the nearest cell tower. They have a range of about 2.5 miles, and I’m about 2.4 miles from the nearest Sprint tower, which means my phone doesn’t work to well in the house.
recently i went into my local virgin mobile store to ask about texting to america. i was first told, if you have any questions you can ring our call centre. no im in store, you deal with it. so he said ok if you wanna text anywhere in the US type in 00111 then the number. i tried with no luck, so i went rang the call centre. after 10 minutes of presing buttons and being put on hold i get a call centre in malaysia.
still no help so i went online and did a google search and found the right way to text to the US. went back to store and spoke to the guy and he said, we dont have any call centres here now, its the way it is. what kind of bullshit answer is that
I’ve had a Virgin Mobile phone for several years that I only rarely turn on. It’s for emergencies or calls I need to make when I’m not at home. I put 20 bucks on every 90 days and my balance just keeps adding up. I’ve got over $200 in my account now. I think the max you can have is $400. I’m considering buying a smart phone with my balance and just selling it at a loss to get some of my money back. (I read you can do that.) I don’t text and I’m not a phone chatter, so it works for me. Coverage is good along the interstates, but there’s no coverage at all in Montana and some big swaths of the west. But for my purposes, at about 7 bucks a month for an emergency phone, ya can’t beat that.
I think Virgin Mobile in the States uses CDMA. In Canada it’s part of Bell and uses GSM, though Bell also has a legacy CDMA network. In most other places, it uses GSM.
This is what I use. It is $20 every three months (plus state tax. So, $22 every three months? But that’s still minor). And the $20 does “roll over.” You have to add an additional $20, but the remainder of the first $20 doesn’t disappear into the ether. When I do have heavy cell use, I add an extra $20, and the 3 month restarts from that point. I think I usually average about $100/year on my cell phone.
From what I understand, it runs on the Sprint network - service is fairly good near major and minor metropolitan areas. I had no service when I went to Alaska - even downtown Juneau, there was nothing. Out in more rural areas, it can get spotty. There is no service or even an option for service with increased fees on the other side of the border. But for general day-to-day use, it’s pretty good.
I think tracphone might have something similar? I’m not sure.
The biggest problem is that the phone itself is horrible. My old phone got crushed somehow a few weeks ago and so I had to buy a new phone. Right now, they’re only offering one phone for this plan - LG Flare and while I don’t expect much for $15 - the UI for this phone is really awful. It works well enough though and meets my telephone needs.
My mom has one, and she likes it. She told me yesterday that she’s glad I got it for her (she only uses it to call the bus line, a cab, or emergencies).
Not sure about the US plans, mom buys a $100 card once a year which is good for the whole year and since she doesn’t use it much it pretty much lasts her the whole time.
My daughter got one when she was in college and I keep the account active (a good thing, since my employer decided to stop paying for cell phones). She made few calls, and was in Namibia for two years, so we have almost $200 in credits.
There have been no hidden fees. You pay by the minute and by the text message. Service has been fine, but we’ve only used it in cities. Their coverage is worldwide: My daughter could text that phone from Namibia, but not my Verizon phone.
Wal-Mart sells cheap cell phone that have no data plan; you buy the minutes as needed. I can’t vouch for them, but that’s the system in a lot of other countries (in addition, you only pay for outgoing calls, so you can receive calls without purchasing minutes).