It’s time to noodle around a bit and check out new job opportunities. Not in panic mode or anything, but not really happy in the lateral transfer I took a few months ago.
So, I want a cell to use specifically for the job search. I’d like to keep it as simple as possible, with a pre-paid phone, but it has to have good voicemail capacity and fairly priced CONUS minutes. I don’t expect to be texting much, or calling overseas.
What do I need to know? Look for? Could my voicemail disappear if I run out of minutes? Is there an easy way to track how many are left?
Any advice on which are best and why - or what questions I should be asking - would be greatly appreciated.
Look into the prepaid phones. There are some pretty good deals out there. One thing to be aware of is that the money you have in your prepaid account will expire if you don’t recharge after a certain time. Each company is different. Usually it’s some period of time between 30 days to 1 year. If you run out of money, they don’t cancel your account right away. You’ll have some time to put more money in. They won’t delete your voicemails, but I’m not sure if you would be able to access them if you didn’t have money in your account.
You can usually check your minutes by dialing a special number, like 611 or something. You can also do it on the web.
I have T-Mobile prepaid. You put money in your account and each phone call/text costs $.10. The money expires after 30 days (I think). Once you’ve cumulatively put $100 into your account, your expiration period will be increased to one year. So one thing you could do is buy a phone, put $100 into your account, and you’ll have 1000 minutes to use over the year. Once you’ve reached this gold level, you can put any amount into your account and the expiration will be extended a year. You don’t have to continually put $100 into your account.
I only use my phone occasionally and this works great for me. I don’t want to have to be concerned about recharging my account every 30 days.
I have a prepaid from Verizon. I added $100 when I bought it, and it expires in a year. I can add $$ to get more minutes through the web site any time.
Every time it gets used, it gives me a message. “You have used 10 minutes. You have 920 minutes remaining. This call cost $0.20”.
It has voice mail. I turned off texting and it can’t accept pictures or vids or anything like that. It’s the basic Samsung dumb phone that Best Buy sells with the contract.
I’m not much of a phone user, I’ve used up around $5 of the $100 in 3 months.
Phone itself cost $40 I think.
I strongly advise against TracFone (or Straight Talk, they’re part of TF). The pricing structure is Byzantine, the phone was iffy, and the “customer service” was the worst I’ve ever endured. Six calls in three days to get VOICE MAIL working (this is NOT an optional frill to someone in job-hunt mode), with “techs” contradicting each other and observed facts (when they understood what was being said well enough to come up with a response that had anything to do with what I was saying), is just not acceptable IMO.
That’s funny, I have a Straight Talk phone and my two daughters have TracFones. Took about a minute each to set up voice mail. Pricing is pretty straightforward, too.
Husband has a TracFone - I just add minutes (he doesn’t text really) for him when it runs low for like ten bucks. Their pricing is straightforward for what we use it for - I get him minutes and add the ninety day add on for $5 bucks.
I have Virgin Mobile and love it - $25 per month and I get 300 minutes to talk, unlimited text and unlimited web. This particular plan is legacy though - new customers can get the same deal for $35 now. But I do text a lot. Since he doesn’t text, it made more sense to go cheaper. And he hardly uses his anyway - I use mine every day.
While I am not an american, we buy cheap prepaid phones every year when we vacation down there.
We have used Net10, TracFone and AT&T.
AT&T was by far the easiest to ge set up and going. We had three phones and were set up in under half an hour. They have a 2 dollar a day unlimited plan (unlimited voice and text including voicemail) that only takes the 2 dollars off on the days you use it. If you don’t plan to use it everyday, it’s a good one.
It also had the best coverage for where we were but we all know that varies.
So maybe Tracfone isn’t as horrible now as it was back then.
I’ll still stick with Virgin Mobile, though. My biggest gripe about them is website layout that doesn’t seem to follow normal design standards (and I refuse to use IE).
To clarify this, the 30-90 day expiration only applies when you have spent less than $100, and the cost per minute would be more than $0.10, unless you charge it with $100 right off the bat (which is what I did for my wife’s phone). After you spend $100, I think the cost per minute is still more than $0.10 (but discounted) unless depositing $100 at a time, but the minutes will still last 1 year.
If you already have a phone that takes a SIM card and don’t want to buy a new one, you can just buy a SIM card for $20, then charge it up with minutes after activating.
I will admit that talking to their auto voice dude Alex on their support line really annoys me - and the website does truly and really suck and blow (at the very same time!) But once I got my billing set up the right way, it’s not too bad.
Tracfones for me and my teenage daughter. Pretty happy with them, especially the cost. My phone was $10 (yes, it is a cheapy phone and I get made fun-of a lot), and minutes I buy are $20 for 60 min/90 days (you can buy more), but my phone is double-minutes-for-life so actually 120 minutes/90 days for $20. Lasts me close to the full three months so works out to about $7/month for air time. Mind that I am not a heavy cell phone user and do light amounts of texting. Coverage is fine for my purposes, and I clean out voice mail periodically.
Bringing my phone number from my old service did require a phone call to them, but within an hour I had my old number on my new phone, so at least the service I recieved was good, presently.
I’ve got Tracfone, put $100 (800 or 900 minutes, I really don’t remember) on it once a year and never run out of minutes – though I do use a cell phone way less than most normal people.
Voice mail was easy to set up, and has never overfilled.
Texting is a bit annoying because it’s a very basic phone, but I’m not a big texter either.
Another vote for both Tracfone and Google Voice. My tracfone (a cheapie), shows how many minutes I have and when I need to renew it. Google voice is good because it gives you more options to access your messages (computer, email). Also, when you toss that phone, you can have your calls redirected to another phone (or not).
It is true that tracfone service can be iffy, but I have had one for years and only rarely needed service.