# Cheap Cell Phone Service?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheap-cell-phone-service/624934>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [June 12, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheap-cell-phone-service/624934 "2012-06-12T18:17:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2012, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheap-cell-phone-service/624934/21 "2012-06-16T21:55:34Z")

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Here in St. Louis I use a Verizon Pay-As-You-Go Plan. It’s $100 for 1150 minutes that last for a year. Texts are 10 cents.

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**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheap-cell-phone-service/624934/22 "2012-06-17T13:35:03Z")

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> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> With Tracfone, if you top it off every 90 days, do you lose what you bought before or does that allow your surplus to stay available as well?

It depends. Great answer, eh?

Some recharge methods keep the minutes, some don’t. The one we use (mentioned upthread) that adds 1 1/4 year for cheap, keeps them.

Check each of the options at their web site.

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**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2012, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheap-cell-phone-service/624934/23 "2012-06-17T14:29:07Z")

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Yes, tracfone is a reasonably good service. The coverage seems to be good and it is cheap – maybe $100.00/year if you only use it for “hey, I’m at the restaurant, where are you?” type phone calls. Downsides are that they spend a bit too much time trying to get you to buy more minutes (this just amounts to the occasional email or phone call), and I find that I usually have to wait a minute or two when I turn on the phone before it’s ready to make a call.

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