Help an ignorant newbie understand how to get a cell phone

Factual Questions
1

Not me, per se. (I’m the one walking around with quarters searching for the last pay phone in the city). Daughter, out of college, lives at home but is unemployed, decided to get a trac phone for emergencies. Well, what with texting and all, the need for minutes escalated, and it was decided to buy her a real cell and a plan.

So, off to Verizon. After spending an hour there, jumping through hoops, answering a lot of personal questions, I found the price going up and up and up as we stood there, credit card in hand, trying to close the deal. I do not understand all the double speak and gobbledy gook myself, but they eventually wanted her to sign up for a plan that would cost $80 a month which of course included insurance (because in case something happened to the phone she could not get a replacement and would be stuck paying on the plan, phoneless) , and they also wanted a $400 security deposit since she is unemployed. Oh, it went on for a while until I said, let’s research this a bit more.

I do understand trac phones. I know they don’t have bells, whistles, cameras, and interwebs, but you can call and text.

I do know something about a friends and family plan. However, we have few friends and family. I can’t call up my cousin who I see at weddings and funerals and say, hey, put my daughter on your plan?

Everyone in the whole world has a cell phone, including homeless people, people on welfare, immigrants who just moved here, and people in jail AFAIK. They can’t all be paying $80 a month, so there must be some other deal they are getting.

I think daughter ought to just buy a sh*tload of minutes a month to put on her trac phone until she gets a job and can buy a better phone, and she is agreeable to that.

What I’m asking is, what does one do, where does one go, to get a cell phone and plan that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. It’s not that the money is such a barrier, I know cells are part of modern life and we are prepared to pay, but $20 a week - is that the average? What did y’all do and are you happy with what you have?

Advice to the clueless, please.

2

I like Amazon’s wireless store. No dealing with sales people. All the time you want to browse and compare. Lots of options. It’s been many years since I’ve used it (I have an iPhone which I bought and have upgraded directly through Apple now), but in the past I found it to be very easy to deal with. (Disclosure: I used to work for Amazon.)

Edited to add: It’s also been years since I’ve had a voice-only plan, but $80/mo seems somewhat high to me unless she needs a ton of minutes and/or messages. Verizon isn’t known for being one of the cheapest carriers. I used to have T-Mobile and was very happy with them for both cost and service. If she has no job or credit history, I think it’s going to be pretty hard to avoid the deposit.

One thing I feel compelled to add into any conversation on this topic: someone is bound to come in here and say something like “T-Mobile’s coverage sucks, Verizon rulez!” And I have no problem believing that is true for them. The thing is, wireless coverage can literally change from block to block, let alone city to city. One person’s experience with coverage likely has very little bearing on what your experience will be. Despite the fact that Verizon is supposedly legendary for their awesome coverage, the times that I’ve had Verizon phones (through employers, and my wife had one at one time), there have been coverage holes in important places. This isn’t at all to say Verizon’s coverage is bad – just to say, it all depends on where you are. You need to decide on that stuff for yourself.

3

Why would anyone, especially someone who is unemployed, even CONSIDER a plan that costs 80 bucks a month?!?

My Tracfone has double min. for the life of the phone (I have had it for over 2 years) and I tell friends that I can’t talk for extended conversations on it, but it’s great for short calls (“I am running late, I will be there in 20 minutes”) and I usually only spend about 10 or 15 dollars worh of airtime per month…

ETA—mine has a camera that I never use, and I think I can connect to the internet with it but I would never have any use for that feature, as I am sure it would use up a lot of airtime.

If I remember correctly it was only about $30 (two years ago) so I am sure you can get a much nicer Tracfone these days for a very reasonable price.

4

My family has a family plan from Verizon and it costs us each about $30/mo. We split the total bill 5 ways.

We have 1000 minutes total, but only use about 700-800 a month.

When I say “use” I mean non-free minutes. Free minutes are nights and weekends (starting at 7 pm), any calls made to anyone else on Verizon, calls made to each other and calls made to any of the 10 numbers in our “My Circle” or whatever it is (10 numbers we’ve designated as free).

So really we all make calls totaling about 2500+ minutes a month (my SIL is a chatter), but are only charged for 700-800, and we pre-pay for 1000 so we’re covered. I think text messaging is free, or per minute or something. We’ve never had to pay extra for those.

NONE of us have data plans. This means, in a nutshell, none of us can connect to the Internet with our phone. It also means none of us can even have a smart phone with Verizon (like an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, etc). Verizon will not sell you a smart phone unless you sign up for a data plan which is $30/month. None of us miss it.

Anyhow, if you are maybe possibly considering getting a cell yourself, and getting one for the other parent as well, you guys can all get a bill that ends up being considerably less per-person than if you each had your own plan.

My parents were reluctant to get cell phones, like you are, but once I explained how long distance is free on a cell (er, included) they decided they liked being able to cut their landline long distance bill down to nothing, and it ended up saving them money overall.

For the record, Verizon doesn’t send us 3 bills. My dad gets a paper bill, and I get the same bill via email. Dad pays 2/5 (for him and Mom) via check, I pay 1/5 online and my brother pays 2/5 (him and Wife) online too. We share an online login. So each month, Verizon gets 3 payments towards our account.

This works fine for us because no one wants to be the one to fuck up the bill for everyone else by not paying, so it keeps everyone honest.

If you don’t want to start a family plan and get yourself 3 phones…I’ve just got this one bit of advice. Most cell companies have something akin to “My Circle” now where you can designate numbers that you call to be free. Also most allow unlimited calling to other people on their network. So if the salesperson decides your daughter needs 5000 minutes…she probably doesn’t. If she manages her “list” properly, takes advantage of free nights and weekends, and uses a carrier that most of her friends use…she’ll never ever get up to 5000 minutes. Maybe not even 1000.

Oh, and don’t buy a smart phone and data plan. Waste of money for someone on a budget for sure.

5

Our whole family used Tracfone for years. The texting is cheap-- each text only counts as 1/3 of a “minute”. And it worked great for emergency calls, or my usual text: “Just leaving work now–sorry! I’ll pick up ______ and grill tonight.”

BUUUUUUUUT, we found out the teenage daughter was buying extra Tracfone cards at Walgreen’s to add minutes, because she could NOT stop texting her BFFs every 3 minutes.
BTW, I have a friend that has a Tracfone, so when I call him, I talk for 57 seconds, during which time I find out how he is and plan a time when I can call him on his landline.

6

T-Mobile prepaid is $100/1000min and the minutes don’t expire for one year when you pre-pay $100 at a time.

You basically have to talk over 4000 minutes per year before this starts to compete with the “basic” $40/mo plans.

My wife and I both have smartphones, but we stick to Wi-Fi for data. We have used this plan for years.

7

I should add that Tracfone is great for travelers as well—I have used mine all over the USA and never had an issue with dropped calls or being out of range. There is no roaming mode on Tracfone, so all calls are the same cost in airtime.

If someone needs to talk all the time, Tracfone is probably not very cost efficient, but for people who already have a home phone, or for those who are OK without constantly being on a cell phone to somebody else, Tracfone makes it easy to have your own mobile phone 24/7/365 for under $150 per year, with just a small initial investment to get started…

8

If she hasn’t had a cell phone until now, then I kind of assume she can handle using it in short bursts. If she’s not employed, personally I would go with the cheapest option. The reason to go with the friends and family plan is if you have a number of family on the same carrier. My calls to Bro 2 don’t count against my main minutes because he also has Verizon.

I think you’re wise to suspect upselling. I still pay $45 a month for 700 main (business hours) minutes, but that’s a promotional deal I got about 9 years ago, which I still can’t beat, slightly. It does give you a benchmark, though for what is a raging deal. I pay per text message, because their bulk rates don’t work for me when I send and receive so few of them.

9

If you are going to want unlimited minutes/texting, there are prepaid plans at $48/month unlimited talk and text with PureTalk. Phones are extra. I think only sales tax is added on top of the $48, but you’d have to check.

10

T-Mobile has a 500 anytime minutes + unlimited text plan for $39.99 a month around here with no commitments (month to month). Pre-paid on T-Mobile can be even cheaper, depending on how much you text.

Edit: Also MetroPCS has a $40 all unlimited plan, but I have no experience with them so I can’t recommend/disrecommend.

11

AT&T Go Phone is what I have. Prepay minutes and use them. Simple

Originally the phone was from was Cingular. Cingular became AT&T

One tip. Don’t buy 15 or $20 of minutes. They expire too quick. I buy $100 of minutes and they are good for a year. I don’t make a lot of calls that last more than 5 minutes. I never text.

12

If you decide to go with a major carrier and sign a contract (usually 6 months to 2 years) instead of going with a TRAC or other pay as you go phone, your best bet is to go to the carriers website, sprint, verizon, at&t etc and purchase thru the site. You usually get better discounts by purchasing online and the benefit of entering into a contract is that the cost for the actual phones are greatly reduced. I recently entered into a new 2 yr contract with sprint and was able to get a new smartphone for absolutely free that retailed for over $400 if purchased with no contract. The cheapest monthly plans that most carriers offer is usually for a 500 minute per month plan (not including the free nights and weekends and mobile to mobile etc) which usually includes unlimited texting as well. These plans cost in the range of $30 to $60 per month. Some carriers may include unlimited data as well, but a lot are now charging extra for data plans.

I currently pay $29.99 per month for a 500 min plan with unlimited text and unlimited data thru sprint, but i have had that plan for 3 years and might be tough to find it currently especially with the unlimited data included.

13

Walmart (or you can order online) has Straight Talk prepaid phones that are a pretty good deal. $30 gets 1000 minutes/1000 texts/30 MB of data a month, and $45 gets all those unlimited for a month. They piggy back off of Verizon’s wireless network, so generally has the best coverage in the country -though of course that can vary here or there.

14

And if you do stick with Tracfone, always google “Tracfone codes”. There are a lot of “Buy 120 mins, get 60 free” deals.

15

Actually you can do the 100 dollars in dribs and drabs; my kids have prepaid T-Mobile phones and it took 6+ months but both kids are at “gold” level. I think they’re set up to give you more “minutes” per dollar, the more you reload at a time (though I don’t see how that works, since you have a dollar balance vs a minute balance).

But a prepaid phone is a good choice for someone without much spending money especially if you’ll be a moderate user vs. someone who has to text every minute of every day.

Re the OP: We pay about 80 dollars a month for two Verizon phones. Admittedly this is a family-share plan with 2 phones, and we get a discount, but 80/month for a single phone sounds steeper than necessary.

16

My wife, my daughter and I are on the Verizon family plan, which was fairly cheap. My daughter got unlimited texting, my wife and I rarely texted. Since our other daughter, her husband, and most of my wife’s friends are also on Verizon, we get ttwenty page bills which don’t result in any extra charges. I went for a Droid when I renewed, they had two cheaper reasonably smart phones (email and browser, no apps) and now we are paying for data plans, but it is worth it.

However, for you I think a prepaid phone might be better. My only experience with them is when we helped a friend of my daughter’s from Russia to get one. Since he was only staying three months he didn’t want a contract. Basically his deal was that if he stopped paying they turned off the service. He had to show a credit card, but no security deposit. He got a cheap phone, and most of the cost of that was rebated after the first month. He also got an unlimited overseas calling plan for $5 a month which let him call his mother in Moscow.

17

Well, that’s a wealth of information. Thank you, everyone. I will show this to my daughter, who’s researching a cheapie cell phone herself. I think our mistake last Sunday was going to the wrong Verizon store, we should have gone to a different Verizon outlet that had what we were looking for.

18

LetsTalk.com offers a ton of reviews of phones, carriers, and plans, and it has comparison tools to help a shopper identify and settle upon the particular options that are most useful. It has been a benefit to me in the past in choosing a new phone.

19

Be aware that the Tracfone will not work outside of the US. That includes Canada and Mexico.

20

I think PagePlus is the best bargain going. I spend about $3 per month. It uses the Verizon network; very reliable.