PrePaid Wireless/Cell Phones

[coyote]

What brands have you tried?
Which do you like?
Which suck?

 

[dragonflyreptiles]

The only one I have tried is the cricket go phone and it only had decent service if I went 6 miles or more from home and since I wanted it in case I was to break down taking my son to school 4.5 miles away it was useless and wound up me being out $100.

Closer to home, it would say it had service and then as soon as it started to ring the number I dialed it would drop the call. They switched out the phone for a different model and still the same thing.

My neighbor has a tracphone and it works fine even in my house so I may try it later when I have money again.

 

[reptilebreeder]

I don't know about the "off" brand services, but many of the major carriers now offer prepay phones. So I think your best bet is to find out which carrier is least problamatic in your area and then buy one of their phones. Most of the prices are similar, I think around 10 cents a minute (cheaper if you buy higher dollar refill cards). The major carriers will have different pros/cons in different areas. I use to have a certain carrier that everybody swore by, in this local area, but couldn't use the phone from my own home. Since I've gone landline free that was obviously a big con. Now have a different carrier, and have not had a single problem in 3 years (darn, I hope I'm not jinxing myself). I don't have the prepaid, it's regular service, but like I said you can go into a target and get prepaid from just about every major carrier, and some minor ones. There's also at least one that let's you "prepay" by signing up with a checking account, or credit card, that way you don't have to buy those cards every time you run out of minutes.

 

[Karen Hulvey]

My sister has a Tracphone. The only thing she has complained about is this: If she makes a call and the phone only rings, no one answers and there is no answering machine, the Tracphone subtracts one unit of her time. They don't call it minutes but call them units. Say you make 10 calls and 10 people aren't home. You just used 10 units/minutes and didn't talk to a human.

My regular cell service doesn't do this. My minutes start subtacting only if someone answers the phone. Dialed calls where no one answers does not count.

 

[coyote]

TracPhone has a very customer friendly web site. Still, I have read mostly negatives about them in general. I have been doing some research locally and we don't have lots of options. I did contact the one cellular business in town and what they described to me sounds pretty acceptable. I believe that they are a Cellular One representative. No daily fees, I buy the phone, pay an initial activation of $35 and then buy pre-pay increments to maintain an account. The increments are $25, $35, and $45. No contract, no re-activation of service required every 90 days. Her cheapest phone is $60. I don't want the cheapest phone anyway, and don't mind paying for it up front. So, I think this sounds pretty good. I only want the phone so that I can keep track of my son when he is out. It is not intended to be a subsititue for my regular "tethered" home phone service.

Thanks for the input everyone.