My wife and I think it would be a good idea for her to have a cellular phone. We’ve resisted so far because she would make few calls on it – not enough to make the $40/month payment worth-while.
Yesterday in Target, we saw cellular phones you could purchase (prices varied, but about $100 for the phone) without a contract. The terms were that you’d pay for each call. If I remember correctly:
$0.25/minute up to 10 minutes.
$0.10/minute after those 10 minutes.
Something else about $0.10/minute after something or other.
So, by my back-of-the-envelope calcs, if she makes 40 or less calls/month that are 4 minutes each, she pays less than I do for my $40/mo. plan.
But it seems too good to be true. Maybe that’s because of the low demands expected upon the phone. Maybe it is relatvely inexpensive for few calls, and the providers are banking on you finding the phone to be indespensible and spending more than you would if you were on a contract.
Some of the details were lacking on the package. Was there an unstated minimum per month? How would you activate it and get a phone number? Would the phone number be transferable like other cellular number now are?
Somehow I think there’s a catch. Is there? I don’t know anyone who has used one of these phones.
Mrs. Blue Sky used to have a phone through Hargray. It was one of those “pay as you go” types. All you had to do was buy minutes every 90 days. You would never lose any minutes you didn’t use in any 90-day period. The downside was the range of the phone. You could call out to anyplace, but the places you could call from was limited.
I think these ones said they used Sprint’s PCS network. However, Sprint may treat them like second-class citizens, dropping them in favor of “true” Sprint customers.
We have one of those pay-as-you go cell phones from TracPhone. No problems with it as yet.
Basically, we buy a year’s service at a time for about $95. That comes with about 150-180 minutes. There are no additional charges unless you want to purchase more minutes to add to your phone.
Ours is basically an emergency-only phone, so the 15 minutes per month was plenty of time for us – we didn’t even use it all. Additional minutes-cards seem fairly reasonable to me, although I couldn’t quote you a price. It’s easy to add minutes or update for a year online.
I have a Verizon Free-Up phone. I believe they run about $50-70, but a friend of mine gave me her old one. Nice phone, Kyocera. I paid a $35 set up fee (probably comes with the purchase of a new phone, but I had to reprogram a used one.)
My $30 card breaks down to 30 cents a minute normally, 15 cents a minute M-F evenings 7PM-5AM, on weekends (Fri 7PM-Mon 5AM) and Holidays. At the time I signed up, I got 250 free weekend minutes (which I still haven’t used up). The $30 card is good for 60 days, and if you renew before your minutes run out or the 60 days expire, unused minutes carry over. The renewal cards come in a variety of denominations, from a $15 “spotter card” which is good for 30 days, to as high as you want to go, I suppose.
I didn’t set up the phone with many bells and whistles. I have voice mail, and text messaging capability. Text messages are 5 cents to send or receive. The only drawback AFAIC is that getting voicemails or retreiving messages from my cell uses minutes. I have asked people to use text messages whenever possible.
If you want to check it out, go here and click on “plans” then on “prepay plans”
This is not an endorsement, and there may or may not be better plans out there. I am not an agent of nor am I being compensated in any way by Verizon.
If it’s Verizon, I’ve got one of those phones and I love it. It sounds exactly like the fee structure of my plan. I don’t get reception inside the huge cement university hospital building I work in, but that’s my only beef. If I want to use the phone, I have to go find a window somewhere, which can be a trick. But since I have a regular phone at my desk, I only need the cell phone in the daytime for long-distance, which is rare.
The “hidden catch” is that you have to use the minutes within 90 days, or they go away. It hasn’t been a problem for me at all, and it’s spelled out pretty clearly in the service agreement. They have a website that I went to and it answered all my questions.
What I like the most about it is not having to worry about categories of minutes. If I need to make a call, I make the damn call. I don’t care what time it is. Getting a text message is free, sending one costs 5 or 10 cents. There’s no difference between local and long-distance, a minute is a minute is a minute. I have it set up with a credit card, so when I’m low on minutes I just call it up, enter my secret code, and more minutes appear. Very handy, and reassuring in case of a road-side problem. I have never been dropped, so I don’t feel like I’m being given lower quality service than regular Sprint customers.
If you have questions, feel free to drop me an email.
I’m very happy with my Virgin Mobile phone. The main caveats in having a cell phone that you don’t use very much cost as little as possible are as follows:
How long do your minutes last? Some plans have your minutes “expire” at the end of some amount of time.
How often do are you expected to add more money to your account? Some plans call themselves “pay as you go”, but expect you to pay $$ to them every month in exchange for keeping your account current.
How much do they expect you to pay when you add more money to your account?
For Virgin mobile, minutes last forever, you have to pay $20 every three months, and your balance lasts forever.
My daughter has a TracPhone for emergencies, and it works pretty much as advertised. In fact, we got a rebate on the phone so we were set up basically for free.
Here are the downsides.
Our service is analog, not digital, so a lot of times the quality isn’t good.
The service area is much more limited than any of the major carriers around here, so we’re roaming a lot of the time. Roaming calls are charged at 4x the local area rate. Nights and weekends are charged at the same rate as daytime.
The last time I refilled the phone I paid about 45 cents per minute. Almost any plan is going to charge less per minute, so the phone really does have to be used only a few times per month for a few minutes per call, or else you’ll pay through the nose.
The plan in the OP is the Virgin one. It is on the Sprint network but digital-only – the phones don’t roam analog.
I have one of the Virgin ones. It fits my needs. While it is expensive per minute, I don’t use it enough to matter. I put $20 on every 3 months, which is the minimum. (So I currently have a $75 balance.)
I got it because it doesn’t require you to buy physical cards to replenish it. And a lot of the other plans are very expensive per minute if you buy their smallest cards (like the $20 ones).
Tracfone is the devil. They stole so many of my minutes, eventually stealing my phone number, that I refuse to do business with the, Their customer service is a joke. They already have your money so they couldn’t care less whether you’re happy or not.
I have been with Virginmobile since the beginning (about 2 years) and I could not be happier with them, I strongly reccomend them to folks in your situation (not much phone use), when I
Good, because I just bought one last week. I had Verizon, who I liked, but it was costing $40 a month. I was making 1-2 phone calls a month. I looked into the pay as you go plans for a while and Virgin seemed like the best deal, you only had to buy minutes every 90 days, better then the every 30 or 60 from other places, and you only had to buy $20 instead of $30 or so. I’ve had my phone for a week or so now and still haven’t used it!
Yup, that’s the one we decided on, also. It seems not only like the best deal, but the only deal that was comprehensible.
I mean, ferchristssake, if a guy with an engineering degree and part of an MBA can’t figure out how much it will cost to use yer freaking no-contract phone, your plan is too complicated! I’m taking to you, AT&T and T-Mobile!
We had a Tracfone and the first phone was analog and not very good. The digital phones are better and I got that one for $30.00. You can buy various amounts of minutes at Office Supply stores or at their website. The minutes are good for 90 days and then you must buy more to keep your number and save unused minutes. We had a couple of problems in the 18 months we used it. Can you add another line on your plan?
I have the Cingular KIC service. I pay 30 cents during the weekdays and 10 cents after 7:00 PM and on weekends. I got the phone in November and have only used 40 minutes. It’s worked well for me.
We have a TracFone that is used mainly by me, but also by my daughters when they are at school functions, etc. It’s a Nokia, and the service is through U.S. Cellular. The sound quality is suprisingly good. You have to “cash in” an airtime card every three months to keep your service active. Depending on how large an airtime card you purchase (they come in different denominations, from 40 to I think 200 minutes), your cost per minute can be as low as 20 or as high as 50 cents. They also have promotions in which you can gain “free” minutes. One downside I’ve encountered so far is that it costs you minutes to check voice mail. It has worked well for us as an occaisional use phone.