Due to a snafu alluded to in a post in another forum, I will be without cell phone calling service through at least Weds (Aug 18) and-- snafus being what they are–probably longer. I don’t have a land line. Living alone as I do, I would have no way of getting in touch with anyone quickly, in case of an emergency. Yeah, it’s only a few days, but shit happens. Especially to me.
I think the temporary solution is to get a burner phone. Everything I know about them I learned from watching police/crime shows. I did a little googling, and would like some help wading through the vast amount of information.
Do I understand correctly that I buy the physical phone AND also buy a month’s service? I had hoped to spend no more than $50-ish for the whole shebang. Is that reasonable?
Just getting a temporary SIM card and putting it into my current smartphone is not a solution, because it’s a broken thing inside the phone that is preventing it from making phone calls. (I can still get and send emails on the smartphone, but not texts.)
OTOH my SIM card is fine–do I get a burner phone and put MY SIM card in it? Would that be the thing to do? I’m currently with AT&T, so would I have to get a burner phone from AT&T so the SIM card will work in that phone?
Maybe just get a plain cheap vanilla no-frills prepaid phone, since it is only for a week or so? I don’t need to be able to do everything on the temporary phone that I do on my smartphone. Mainly I just want it for phone calls, emergency and otherwise, preferably otherwise.
I’ll need to do this today, and stores open in about four hours. Who else is up at the (butt) crack of dawn with me?
thats pretty much the defination of a burner phone … cheap and disposable and unless the quality is better it wont last long its self … around here they used to sell phones with a numbered card back in the per minute days at the 7/11
I’ve never had a burner so I can’t help you there, but regarding your sim card, I assume you’re mentioning that hoping to keep your same number. If the burner takes a sim, great.
But check with AT&T, you may be able to temporarily forward all your calls to whatever number the burner has. Outgoing calls will still have it’s number, but at least you’ll be able to receive calls/texts that were intended for it.
I have used burner phones exclusively for about 15 years. Mine have all been Tracfones.
IIRC you can get a free phone from time to time. Their site shows a flip phone for $5.
Mine has an “emergency call” button at the bottom, so if you’re out of minutes etc. I think you can still call. I’m not sure you could make such a call if you’d never activated it and used some minutes etc. Maybe that’s 9-1-1 only?
Tracfone lets you bring your own phone, in certain cases, so perhaps the number could be transferred.
If your sim card works fine, why would you need to buy a month’s service? You just buy a phone at a local discount store, making sure the phone is unlocked and accepts sims the same size as yours.
I recognize the term. Earlier, people occasionally made a joke of it, like I must be doing something requiring secrecy. And I often had fairly cheap ones because I still had a landline with answering machine, didn’t want to be bothered receiving calls while I was at work, etc.
As time has gone by, I’ve upgraded to nicer phones but still nothing like what Mrs. L has (iPhones). I text and call but never do things like enter a post to SDMB on it. I’m typing this on my computer’s nice big keyboard. OTOH Mrs. L spends over $100 per month for phone IIRC; my cost is something like $25.
Upon reflection, I probably don’t want to use my SIM card in the temporary phone. When the part comes into the repair place, the guy is going to want my phone back, and although in an ideal universe, he should be able to fix the thing while I wait, it’s reasonable to assume something else will go wrong and he’ll have to keep it overnight or longer.
My current smartphone is physically not working WRT phone calls. I wonder if I can bring my previous smartphone to Tracfone and they can put a SIM card in it so it can make phone calls? I was using this phone up until 2018 so it still has most contacts, etc.
I will need to go to the Tracfone place-- can’t call them-- or anyone!
I don’t care so much about using my phone number. I just want to be able to call/text people.
Tracfone has a transfer wizard. I used it when I upgraded Tracfones. But if you’re coming from a non-Tracfone, maybe it won’t work. Do you have Android?
Basically you upload your data to the cloud then from there it goes into the new phone. I wonder about capacity. For instance, if you have 64 Gb of music on your current phone and you buy a cheap Tracfone with 4 Gb of storage space, that dog won’t hunt. But maybe you could transfer select things and wait on the rest.
The “Tracfone place” is a large variety of stores. “Big box” stores. Drugstores. Grocery stores. Family Dollar/Dollar General-type stores. Larger convince stores. Many, many stores have a small kiosk with “burner” phones and usage cards. You buy one, activate it over the internet.
But none of those places will allow her to " bring my previous smartphone to Tracfone and they can put a SIM card in it so it can make phone calls". You can buy a Tracfone anywhere, but the person working the counter at the gas station isn’t a Tracfone tech.
Having said that, moving your sim card from one phone to the other isn’t a big deal. Honestly, the hardest part is finding it if you drop it. It’s like looking for a contact lens.
Actually, on some phones, the hardest part is finding it. On my previous phone, the volume up/down button was the sim card tray as well.
According to the FCC, all phones sold on the US must be able to dial 911 in an emergency, whether you have service or not. So if all you want a phone for is in case of emergency, you wouldn’t even have to activate it for 911 service.
UPDATE: My current carrier is AT&T. I’ve been to the AT&T store and to Best Buy. According to Google there is a dedicated “Tracfone store” in San Antonio, but I drove around and couldn’t find it.
The upshot is that my previous phone is a BlackBerry Classic, but it used the now-obsolete (but much beloved and missed) BlackBerry Operating System. The guys at both the AT&T store and Best Buy determined that a new SIM card wouldn’t work in my BlackBerry Classic (old phone). My current phone is a BlackBerry Key2 and uses Android. But that phone is no longer relevant to my burner phone shopping process.
As I see it, I’m going to need to buy a virgin phone with none of my contacts/data in it and at least a month’s worth of calling plan. I don’t care which carrier. I also don’t care about keeping my phone number temporarily at this point.
AT&T had prepaid phones but the cheapest was ~$70 and that was before any calling plan.
I said I really don’t need a smartphone; all I want to be able to do is call and text. The basic flip phone that could call and do texting was $20, only $10 cheaper than the smartphone. The one-month calling plan for each was $20. I know I said I was willing to pay $50 for the whole works, but do I really need to spend that much?
The phone you linked to shows a price of $40. What do you mean “+$25 card”? Does that mean you spent a total of $65?
Where can I find these cheap Tracfones in person? I still want to get one today.
From what I can tell, Tracfone’s business model is a bit unusual. If you buy minutes from Tracfone or Wally or Best Buy, the cost is going to be the same. Nobody discounts or undercuts on price. If there are cheap cell phones available, they’re probably available in multiple places. But Tracfone may also have reconditioned ones for less. I swear though, I once saw a $0 Tracfone. You’d be buying minutes etc. to pay for it, ultimately.
There’s also Net10 and Straight Talk, I guess, but I can’t speak to how good those are.
Years ago, when I got my first one, the word was that Tracfone didn’t own any cell towers. Rather, they rented from existing companies and that basically meant you had coverage just about everywhere. Once Mrs. L couldn’t get any service with her nice iPhone, so I handed her my cheap Tracfone and sure enough, she could make the call. I think now they’re on Verizon or AT&T, however, depending on where you buy it.
