Ahem. Just so you know, the clueless person is me.
Now, for various reasons, I’d like to get my wife a cell phone. She’d use it only occasionally, for emergencies, or arranging to meet people last-minute, or if I need to get hold of her at an odd time, and so forth. Realistically, I’d estimate something like 0-20 minutes usage per month.
So I’m looking (I think) for a cell phone service that has minimal fixed monthly charges, and I’d accept relatively high up-front and/or per minute costs. Another site seems to suggest for people like me the services of Virgin Mobile. Scanning their site, it looks like I can pay $59 for a phone up front, and then 25 cents a minute after that, with no other monthly fees. That’s only like $5 a month or so; not bad.
So, um, anyone have experience with this? If I buy a phone and never use it, do I really not pay anything at all per month? They don’t have some weird thing where you can only make calls and not receive them, do they? Or any other difference from “regular” cellular service?
Any suggestions for other mobile phone services for my type of requirements? Or things to watch out for?
I was going to suggest Virgin, I have had a Virgin phone since late July or so and so far (I just now checked) I have used $57.40 in air time and when I was on vacation (central Texas) in September all of my friends were having reception trouble but my phone was coming in loud and clear, I love my Virgin phone!, feel free to ask me about it if you have any questions but the VMUSA website is very thorough, good luck.
If you are going with pre paid minutes I believe T-mobile and Cingular offer plans. (I’m in NYC and you’re in MI, so I’m not 100% sure if they are available up there).
I will say this, investigate the monthly plans as well, because you realize the convenience of them as soon as you get one. I started off with one for emergency purposes as well, but then used it more. (not that I’m a chatterbox, I just use it enough to justify a monthly plan).
I’ve used verizon wireless pay as you go, you can get prepaid cards at 7-11. Ive found it to be pretty good and I’m happy with it. The reception is great. And I can even make calls from Canada.
Here’s the best part about Virgin Mobile: They only make you put more money into your phone every 3 months, and you only have to put in $20 at a time. Plus, you can give them a credit card number, and get more minutes with the press of a button (as well as getting your current balance at a press of a button, etc). Unused balance never goes away.
So really, in your case, you’re looking at about $6.50 a month, which is about as cheap as you can hope to get.
My daughter keeps a TracFone with her at all times. A 60-minute card costs $17 at WalMart and is good for 2 months. Depending on what promotion is going on at the time, you can also get a good deal on the phone. I wound up with a free phone and a free month of service.
I am not very familiar with pre paid phones, but I have Nextel.
I had Verizon and they are a rip off. I had Voice stream now known as T mobile, and my coverage was horrible (but the rates were good).
With Nextel, I get a signal everywhere.
I have 1000 anytime minutes, there is never roaming, free long distance, unlimited nights and weekends, unlimited direct connect, and free voice mail and caller ID. It only costs me $54.99 a month. I love love love it…
I think all the used car salesmen had kids and put them to work as cell phone salespeople, at least in the US. I tried looking into a prepaid phone for the same reasons: I would only use it for work, and wouldn’t use it often: perhaps 2-3 times a month, but having it would save me lots of trouble.
The problem was, NOBODY wanted to sell me a prepaid phone: they’d insist on telling me about every monthly plan they had, and “how much cheaper it ends up being compared to a prepaid phone”… “Well, this phone is $70 on the prepaid plan, but you can get a rebate for an even sooper-kewler totally bitchin’ phone that does like everything dude for only $30-$40-$50 a month, and the phone is free!” It was like they practically refused. I got tired of looking and my mother bought me a prepaid one at Radio Shack for Christmas, through Verizon. It ended up coming with 220 minutes on it (she paid for $50 of minutes when she bought it), and in about three weeks I have used about twelve minutes.
The only bad thing about it is, the minutes expire: if you buy less than $30 of minutes, they expire in 30 days. If you buy between $30 and $60 of minutes, they expire in 60 days. So it’s a screw job, I don’t intend to buy any minutes for it ever, because I simply refuse to keep handing anybody money for a phone I will rarely ever use. -That was the exact reason I didn’t want a monthly plan.
I will probably try Virgin Mobile when the roughly 200 unused minutes expire. In a month.
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So, waitaminute, are you saying that they effectively have a “minimum usage fee” of $20/3 months? Or is this $20 in addition to airtime that you’re paying for? See, this is the kind of thing that I was wondering about but couldn’t, for the life of me, find any info about on their Website.
And here’s another dunb question: Do you get your very own phone number with these phones? It’s not like they have a main number, and every user gets an extension [so people calling in would need to cal (313) 123-4567…X01234], is it?
In order to keep your phone turned on Virgin requires (a minimum of) $20.00 be put in your account every 90 days, this IS the “airtime” charge and if you do not use it, it just sits in your account (as long as you remain current with them).
In the U.K. here, I have a cheap Pay As You Go Orange mobile phone. Usge is expensive, but minutes don’t expire, and this is ok, as it was the only way I could afford a cellphone, wishing one for urgent need but not meaning to use it much. Does nothing similar exist in the USA?
Oh, admittedly it is by no means the prettiest, dinkiest model on the market, but that was not a priority.
While it’s probably not an option for you, I bought AT&T’s nationwide network service and got rid of AT&T as a long distance carrier. Saved me some money that way.
zut, what unclviny said. But the minutes don’t expire, if you keep the phone current but don’t use it for 4 months, you have $40 worth of minutes on your account. Currently, there are a couple things you can use that money for besides airtime (I think they charge something like $1/ringtone for new ringtones downloaded off of the web site). But really, you end up calling somebody who’d normally be a long-distance call on your cell every once in a while to talk down your balance. (Or, in my case, I get sent somewhere on buisiness and use the balance to talk to my wife.)
I researched this pretty extensively last summer, and $20/90 days was BY FAR the best deal in my area, most of the other ‘pay as you go’ plans worked like DougC said, made you put in $20 every month, maybe even not let your balance rollover.
You guys have got me thinking about switching to Virgin now! I have Sprint already, so the coverage would be the same, but I pay $25 a month (with taxes), and usually don’t use half of my minutes.
Virgin is PCS only (a single mode phone) so you would have to look at your area map to see if the coverage was good enough for you, I think it is a HUGE upside that instead of roaming the call gets “dropped” (and no bill, EVER).
Tracphone (which uses the Verison network I think) has a promotion where you get a year’s service contract, a new phone & activation & half hour of time for $49 with free shipping. The years service thing means that you don’t have to keep buying minutes every 90 days or so like you have to do with some mobile phones.
Seven 11 stores might have the Tracphone deal instore. but it should be online too.
Anyway, before you buy, check your coverage, no phone is a deal if you don’t have coverage in your area.
ATT has free2go in 7 eleven stores. Phone is $99 has $100 in rebates. Unlimited free text messaging receiving, 10 cents to send one. Must renew every 45 days, but you get to keep your old minutes. $10 min. Phone comes with some minutes ( I think you get $10 & then $25) … if you bought $10 every 45 days, you would pay $80 per year about…not incluing free minutes.
I LOVE my Virgin phone- I got it at Media Play and I’ve used it a fair amount without using up a lot of money/minutes. It even has voicemail (free if you check it from a land line phone), free text messaging (which I love) and a few very useful tools built into it (a tip calulator/check splitter, a calculator, an alarm clock, a few games)
I highly recomend this for a “doesn’t talk much” option.