Pre-paid Cell

[demoon]

Does anyone use a pre-paid cell service? If so, which one and why did you choose it. I am tired of the price and limitations of my current contract service and am considering all options.
Thanks for any opinions and information.

[fletch460]

Had Verizon pay as you go plan. Had to buy minutes, which you can get at any quick shop, wallys, practilly anywhere. Min.amount I think was $15. Liked it as I didnt use much.

[bob109]

Quote:

Originally Posted by demoon Does anyone use a pre-paid cell service? If so, which one and why did you choose it. I am tired of the price and limitations of my current contract service and am considering all options. Thanks for any opinions and information.

My children gave me a T-Mobil phone several years ago when I started Snow Birding. I love the fact there's no contract and monthly bill. I purchase the minutes whenever I want and usually maintain a balance of 1500 minutes. If your purchase any minutes during the year your balance rolls over for another year in addition to the minutes just purchased. There have been two occasions when I had no tower service, once in the middle of a Georgia State Forest and the other in Kitty Hawk N.C. Check out their WEB Site.

[Izzyblueye]

I used tracfone for 10 years and did not have a problem, liked the idea of no contract, and buying time when you needed it. Then because of sudden lack of signal in a resort I wintered in, I had to go to Verizon, 2 yr contract. I have lost money on it every month I have owned it. Going back to Tracfone.

[coffeeman]

We hardly ever used our ATT cell which was running us about $50 a month, had an issue with them over a payment so I dropped them. That was about 4 years ago, switched to Altel Prepaid which I set up on auto pay for $10.60 a month, still hardly use it. Last year picked up another so wife and I could communicate when on the road. The dollars rollover I have about $110 balance on mine , the rate is 15 cents a minute and we'll use it when traveling. We're getting the same use from our prepaid phone at $120 a year vs $600 and have rollover. I guess if we used it daily it may not be worth it. I may be gone a month and not use $45 off the balance so it works for me. The money saved goes in the gas tank.

[glarnold]

I use Boost Mobile. Ten cents a minute, txt, or pic.

Have had it for a few years. Very happy with it. Costs me about $4 a month. No contract, no obligation to purchase minutes monthly. When my balance gets down to $5, it automatically purchases another $10 for me.

Have had excellent reception (they piggy-back on Sprint's system).

G L Arnold
'01 Bounder 33R

(I also use a Virgin Mobile Mi-Fi hot spot for my wireless. Five devices, 3G service, and $40 a month for unlimited usage.)

[Theberrys]

We have Tracfone for mobil and it worked fine. Some campgrounds are out of the service area but it doesn't bother us at all. We got a second one and replaced our land line then got cable internat, much faster than DSL BTW, and fired the phone company completely. We were able to keep our phone number and bought one of these to connect our existing in house wireless phones. Amazon.com: Cobra PhoneLynx Bluetooth Cell to Home Phone Connection System (BT 215): Electronics were saving about $40 a month. Adding mins. is easy either over the phone or online. Our useage is pretty limited so it works out really well for us.

Dick

[WheelingIt]

Tracfone for us too! You can now get Tracfone's w/ triple-minutes for life. Pretty neat deal which ends up costing you well less than 10 cents/min if you buy the yearly card.

[LindaH]

We have a Net10 phone (owned by TracPhone). $.10 per minute. I've heard some good things about Wal Marts' StraightTalk, but don't know the details.

[demoon]

Thanks everyone. Think I have it narrowed down, or maybe actually decided. Will let you know how it works out.

[okmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by glarnold (I also use a Virgin Mobile Mi-Fi hot spot for my wireless. Five devices, 3G service, and $40 a month for unlimited usage.)

Have you been able to download movies or TV programs via this device? How is their coverage? I'm looking to dump my verison Mifi for something unlimited.

[RCtime]

Prepaid Cell Phone Cards | Prepaid National Cell Phones

here is the route I went.

No more monthly bills for me. It uses the Verizon network for great coverage. Very happy.

[SantaFe001]

I have used Tracfone for years. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when purchasing Tracfone: (1) you can call all over the world using minutes if you have a GSM model Tracfone (AT&T or T-Mobile) but not if you have a CDMA model (Verizon or Sprint). I call France a lot for very little money on my AT&T GSM Tracfone; (2) if you go online to order a Tracfone the site will ask for your zip and then you will be limited to the phones available for your zip code. Mine is AT&T which provides excellent service in my area and throughout the US. If you live in a zip that only provides T-Mobile you will find yourself limited while traveling. It gets complicated with Tracfone but if you do some Googling you will find the numbers on the side of the box (if you buy at Walmart for instance) that will tell you the cell provider.

[John H...]

I too have Tracfone, which is all I need and getting double minutes for the life of the LG phone I have now.

My only problem is once in a while I'll get a message when ready to answer a call that says "Check call restriction #34" and I'm not able to answer. Really aggrevating. I've called them about it, but couldn't get a helpful answer from them. Best they could do was tell me to take out the batery and reinstall it to reset the phone, but didn't seem to change anything. If I could find something similar that would work the same I would switch, but I do like not being tied down to a PLAN...