Okay, I have searched through here and was not able to find a thread on the pay as you go phones.... I am considering this for my oldest child, but do not know anything about them..... Do any of you use these? Do you like them, hate them? Pro's/Con's? How much do they cost? How do you purchase the minutes? Thanks for any help.....
My son had a go phone, you pay for your minutes before hand. Turned out it was alot cheaper to put him on my plan. Now he pays 10.00 a month instead of 50.00.
Sadly, we are under an awful contract that I do not want to extend by adding another phone. Where do you buy the initial minutes? Wherever you purchase the phone - such as best buy or wherever? The $50 was for how many minutes? Was that just for the minutes? Sorry for all the questions - I just have no clue how these work... Thanks for your patience...
For my son, I bought him a Trac Phone, and then when I was able to monitor his usage and see that he wasn't going to just blow the minutes texting, etc, then added him to my plan. But the pay as you go is a good first starter phone, in my thoughts. Bought at Dollar General and minutes can be bought just about anywhere. I bought more minutes online thru tracfone.com.
I have a trac phone. We bought it at Sam's Club not sure how much it was, 20 bucks maybe. I am not someone who uses a cell phone just have it for when I really need it. I like because you have the option of buying "TIME" instead of minutes. I think when you buy the phone cards you have to add more minutes every 60 days. Anything left over rolls from one month to the next. Since I don't really use all the minutes we add time instead. For instance my phone currently has 453 minutes and expires January 5th 2009. Half of those minutes are from 2007. You have to buy the time just like you do the minutes. You can go to there website I think it is tracfone.com My cell phone I had before that we paid $40 mth for 300 minutes when we canceled it I had 90 HOURS of rollover time.
I have Virgin Mobile. The plan I have is no longer offered it looks like, but looking at their website http://www.virginmobileusa.com/home.do it looks like you buy a certain number of minutes at least every 30 days, $20 for 200 minutes, $30 for 400 minutes, and $50 for 500 minutes. As long as you buy more minutes every 30 days (or sooner if you run out of minutes) the minutes you have will roll over to the next month. If you don't buy more they'll expire. There aren't any monthly charges or extra fees (except sales tax when you buy the minutes). You can buy minutes just about anywhere. I just go to their website and buy mine using my paypal account, but I've seen the minute cards for sale at Target and grocery stores etc. I know Target sells the phones, depending on what kind you want they'll typically run between $20-$100. On the website it looks like if you buy minutes at the same time, you can get a phone for free if you're a new customer. I've been happy with the service, reception seems comparable to other carriers.
depending on the amount of time you need a phone, a prepaid can be much cheaper, that is all we have in our family DW,DD,DS#2 all 3 have virgin mobile, you have to buy at least $20 every 90 days and uses about .20 cents per minute plus .05 per each text. for them they usually all have a balance at end of. at the first of the year, i switched to Boost mobile,(nextel prepaid) I like it because I loaded the opera browser and can check my email /browse the web for free, sure it is only a 1.5" screen but it works for us mail junkies. if i call, it is like 1-2 minutes, a couple times per week. kids have all bought their own and must pay for their own time if they want it, if they are tired of paying for it, they put it on the shelf until they decide they want to buy more time. works great for us.
I had Alltel pay as you go. It was great for us since we have such spotty reception where we live - we just used it when we were out & about. However, my husband was in the hospital for a long time, and I needed a cellphone while we were there since we couldn't make long distance calls from his room. Adding minutes as much as I had to really was expensive. So, I've now switched over to an all-inclusive plan with Alltel. All that said, I think that a pay as you go phone is great for kids! I highly recommend Alltel's prepaid stuff.
My wife and I both have TracFones. We pay $130 a year each for about 800 minutes. We don't talk enough to need all the monthly minutes that come with a $50/mo, or $60/mo, or $100/mo plan. I do not need to be that in touch with everybody. They can call my $27/mo home phone and leave a message. I even have that forwarded to our Tracfone if I think it might be that important to answer right then.
I think that the Pay-As-You-Go phones are a good idea for a teenager's first phone. It gives you a good idea of how well they will take care a real one. As for where you can buy them....Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and just about every gas station sells minutes.
it all depends on how you are going to use it and where, if you are going to use it very little then get something thats pay by the minute i.e. alltel .15cent per minute flat rate, if you want to use it as your primary phone then shop the prepaid monthly plans, there are alot of them out there, some are local some are national, there are the unlimiteds like boost unlimited(sprint phone,no walkie talkie yet) and cricket which has bad coverage from what ive heard, alltel has monthly deals too and the best coverage if you frequent the sticks
I had a Virgin Mobile pre-paid for kiddo. I was putting $20 on it about every 6 weeks, and she really doesn't use it much. I decided to add her to my Alltel plan for $10 a month. So far, so good.
We just added our kids to our plan and didn't start with pre-paid. If you aren't planning on using it much just be careful when you look at the pre-paid phones because sometimes you will lose minutes if you don't use them. Some pre-paid phones will give you more time to use your minutes than others will.
