Pay as you go or land line?

September 21, 2005 5:17 PM

I want to hear your experiences with pay-as-you-go phones.

I don't have a phone in m new apartment and I'm trying to decide between a traditional land line or a go-phone. I don't really want to sign any contracts with cellphone companies and I don't have a huge budget, but I've wanted a cellphone a lot recently and it seems cheap and easy. My friends, however, tell me there's all these hidden fees: connection fees, regional fees, etc. Anyone have positive/negative stories to tell with different providers of go-phones? I'm in Seattle, too, if that helps.

posted by Slimemonster to Technology (25 answers total)

how much and when do you plan on calling people?

most cell phone companies (up in Vancouver, anyway) tend to have different daytime minutes versus evening ones on PAYG phones, so knowing when and how frequently you use the phone is important in making the decision (or in our case, helping you along)
posted by heeeraldo at 5:29 PM on September 21, 2005

I've had terrible customer service and coverage with Tracfone (so much so that I never even bother to turn it the thing on any more). My sister's experience with Virgin has been much better, except that hers doesn't work at all in Canada.
posted by Jeanne at 5:30 PM on September 21, 2005

I use Virgin Mobile. I rarely spend more than $13 a month. The plan is simple: buy a phone, buy some time.
posted by mischief at 5:31 PM on September 21, 2005

I use T-Mobile To Go's 1000 minutes for $100 deal and like it a lot. Long distance is free and there are no additional fees, just a straight up .10/min. My landline just gathers dust.
posted by prambutan at 5:36 PM on September 21, 2005

I'm quite happy with Virgin Mobile, which I've had for a little more than a year. Until a couple of months ago, I would guess I averaged around $10-15 a month. Since June I've been using it more, and so switched over to their monthly plan, which for $29.99 you get 150 evening/weekend minutes and 150 anytime minutes (more minutes can be purchased in increments of $10, the balance of which is credited back to you at the end of your billing month if you don't use them all). You can switch back-and-forth between the various plans as your needs change each month, and you can't beat not being stuck with a contract.
posted by scody at 5:51 PM on September 21, 2005

I'm also on Virgin Mobile (I have phones from them in the UK and US) and find them cheap and trouble-free. Most of the handsets available in the US are lesser-known brands such as Kyocera and Audiovox. I have had one of each and they are horrible, but there is a bare-bones Nokia available which looks similar to the one I have in the UK and find to be excellent (simple to use and 9 days between charges).

Virgin's basic plan is you pay 25c per minute for the first 10 minutes in any one day; after that it's 10c per minute. If you use the phone for more than a few minutes each day (I don't) you can pay a small monthly fee for cheaper calls, etc, but this is all on their website and they don't need me to shill for them.

I don't get a good signal in my apartment is the only bummer.
posted by nowonmai at 5:57 PM on September 21, 2005

Tracphone is aimed at low-income customers. So like other sub-prime businesses (mortgages, credit cards), they probably have more fees (late, activation, etc) and cut down on customer service costs.

Virgin and some of the other MVNOs (mobile virtual network operator) like ESPN, 7-11 and Disney see it as an opportunity to get some extra juice out of there marketing/sales channels or extend brand awareness. And they also aim more for the youth market rather than low income. I think some of these services use the customer service operations of the provider from whom they are buying network access (Spring, Cingular, etc). Sprint operates their own pre-paid service called Boost which, if the website is an indicator, is clearly aimed at teenagers and college kids.

So, what I'm try to say is don't use Tracphone.
posted by mullacc at 6:01 PM on September 21, 2005

Bah, s/there/their and s/Spring/Sprint
posted by mullacc at 6:02 PM on September 21, 2005

I used to have Virgin Mobile and loved them. I got on my husband's Verizon plan because it seemed like a good idea, but we're paying $100/month to use maybe a combined 45 minutes a month. We're about to cancel our contract and go back to Virgin, now that they've got web browsing for $1/24 hours and camera phones.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:08 PM on September 21, 2005

I have Virgin as well, and the only hidden fee I've noticed is that they charge sales tax on the top-up amount, and that doesn't go towards your balance. This is in CT; it may differ in other states.
posted by smackfu at 6:09 PM on September 21, 2005

I have to speak out and say that Tracfone (in spite of the stigma) has been fantastic. There is no catch, except that you have to buy a new card every 3 or 4 months or you lose the number, and you pay double-rate for roaming. There have been no surprises to my knowledge. Also you can easily sign up without signing away your privacy or your bank/credit card numbers; all they want is a point-of-contact phone number which you can just make up.

I certainly wouldn't expect good customer service if a problem arises, but the phones & service are so cheap they're practically disposable.

You DO have to be careful about buying Tracfone models in big cities, as they're designed to work on GSM networks, which means you might lose coverage out in the boonies, where TDMA/CDMA are common. I bought my phone in a small town; here, the Tracfones are TDMA, which is great as the cities recognize TDMA phones. Never had any problem with "no service", anywhere, and we've travelled all over Texas. I can't say the same when I used to be with AT&T.
posted by rolypolyman at 6:41 PM on September 21, 2005

Oh, and the other catch about Tracfone is that the rates SUCK if you do a lot of talking. Tracfone is good only for occasional use. If you're on the phone a lot, look at the other options people have posted above.
posted by rolypolyman at 6:49 PM on September 21, 2005

The problem with Virgin I've found is the "$20 every 90 days to keep your service working " bit.
Even if you have a balance, you still need to pay.
I use the phone so seldom, I can easily go 90 days without spending $20 at .25/minute.
So I end up with these ridiculous credits I'm never going to use.
posted by madajb at 7:06 PM on September 21, 2005

Pay as you go is great if you don't use the phone much, but if you make even a couple calls a day it gets to be more than the cheapest monthly plan. I picked up a Virgin phone a few months ago and am very satisfied. But I use it maybe twice a week.
posted by LarryC at 7:13 PM on September 21, 2005

For about a year I used the formerly AT&T GoPhone plan, and I'd have to say that it was actually a really good deal for me. I was in college at the time, had no real credit to speak of, and wanted a cellphone for the first time ever. The plan I had included free nights and weekends, and the data plan was .01/minute. After being absorbed into Cingular, I believe the data rate went up last April. I don't know about the plans, but the one I was on was something like 40 bucks a month for some amount of minutes that I can't remember with free nights and weekends (starting at 9 pm). I switched to T-Mobile when I graduated and moved because with my student loans I finally had a credit history to speak of and was able to get all sorts of fun things like credit cards and cellphone contracts.

My favorite part about AT&T was that they used SIM cards, so I could use any AT&T locked or unlocked cellphone. I'd say go for one of those. Makes switching phones a hell of a lot easier.
posted by angry modem at 7:15 PM on September 21, 2005

I used a Verizon pay-as-you-go plan for about 5 months. Calls were 10 cents a minute plus 25 cents for each call, with a $15 per month minimum. As long as you recharged your balance before it expired, though, your balance would carry over from month to month. The service was decent, though in some areas there was just no service and others had roaming only, which worked out to $1 a minute. You'll have to check the website, though, because I've heard that this plan has been replaced by a worse deal. I also had access to an old CDMA phone that worked with Verizon, so that probably pushed me towards this plan.
posted by komilnefopa at 7:23 PM on September 21, 2005

I use virgin mobile too, I'm pretty happy. I don't use the phone much at all maybe 45 minutes a month, so for me it's a pretty good deal. It's on the cingular network I think.
posted by I Foody at 7:33 PM on September 21, 2005

I used a Fido (western Canada) pay-as-you-go cel for a few years. I came to hate it. I'd buy $20 or so worth of air-time, but if I didn't use it up and buy another refill in the 30 days period, I lost the remaining balance. That sucked. I resented that "feature" greatly.
posted by Savannah at 7:46 PM on September 21, 2005

I've had tracfone for several years, and it's worked like a charm; however, I'm probably not the typical user. For around $90/year, I get a phone number/voicemail box in my home area code that's free to use and access, and enough minutes to make those emergency/quick travelling phone calls.

Certainly not something I'd consider a replacement for a land line, however.
posted by bemis at 8:06 PM on September 21, 2005

I use Rogers Pay as You Go in Toronto. The big benefits I see with these sort of plans is that you don't have to pay the $6.95 license fee, the balance rolls over, and most importantly, sms charges are not extra (unlike with most monthly plans). I love the service and the phone is great too.
posted by reformedjerk at 8:43 PM on September 21, 2005

I've been with Virgin Mobile for a while and couldn't be happier. My girlfriend and I use the line for emergencies and just for peace of mind in her 140,000 mile, 17 year old car. It basically works out to having a phone for $6.66 a month, since we never use up all the time. That's really the only downside. If you are an infrequent user, you still have to buy $20 worth of time every three months, even if you have a $100 backlog of credit. Still, try to find another cell phone for less than $10 a month.

If you are cheap like me, you can save even more money by waiting for Topup card sales at Target, which happen at least once a year. They recently had a 2/$30 deal on their $20 Virgin Topup cards, so we stocked up with a year's worth. Now we're only paying $5 a month.
posted by MegoSteve at 8:44 PM on September 21, 2005

Virgin Mobile is great if you don't use your phone much. My wife just switched from a $45/month Verizon plan to a $15 every 90 days. Much cheaper -- even if she never uses her minutes.
posted by grateful at 6:39 AM on September 22, 2005

I have a Verizon pay-as-you-go plan. I'm quite happy with it. I am, however, not a talky person. I use the phone rarely, to finalize plans, make private calls after ducking out of the office, etc., and mostly I just carry it around for emergencies. Every month or so I put $20 or $40 in it and that seems to hold me for 4 to 8 weeks, depending.

The phone is no-frills, which is fine for me, and the service is excellent--far better than T-Mobile, which my husband uses and is planning to get rid of ASAP.
posted by scratch at 6:41 AM on September 22, 2005

My mother uses Telus's PAYGo plan and really likes it. As long as she buys $10 a month in airtime credits, she has rollover of the minutes unused from previous months. She just has them automatically top up her card as required. Thus, she currently has a $109 credit on her account, because she doesn't use the phone much at all. But she eats into that considerably when she goes on vacation, uses it more and uses it for roaming and long distance.

I just bought a cell phone this week, and checked all of the plans available to me for something similar, and ending up settling on Telus's as well. I almost opted for Virgin, which had *very* nice terms because they only require a $15 top-up every 120 days to get roll-over, which works out to less than $4 a month to have the cell phone. But they don't offer automatic top-up and I didn't want to lose roll over because I forgot to do something I only have to do every four months.

Thinks to watch for when you're considering your plan:

What is the upfront cost of the phone? PAYGo plans don't come with free phones, and some providers I looked at didn't have any phones that cost less than $150 available.

Do you get any initial starter value with your new package? I ended up with Telus at least partly because the $75 in starter value included in the cost of the $150 phone made it one of the cheapest starter packages available (other than the Telus $100 phone, which was way too ugly and badly designed to consider).

Is their an activation fee? Not only do Bell and Rogers not comp you any credit for signing up with their PAYGo plan, they had set-up fees to make it worse.

What is the effective monthly rate of just having the phone and not using it much vs. the cost of actually using it a fair bit. $10 a month is common in Canada to keep your rollover minutes, with Virgin down at $4. But if you think you'll use it for more than emergencies, you may be looking at actually paying more than the minimum, and then the rates you get per minute, which range from 15 cents to 40 cents really start to matter.

When are you going to use your phone? If you're going to use your phone a fair bit, but mostly evenings and weekends, you can sometimes add a monthly option for unlimited evenings and weekends for $10 or so. That gets you what amounts to a contract level service package for $20 a month, all without a contract.

Do you care about other features? Most offer basic voice mail with your package. SMS is quite variable (often free incoming, but never free outgoing that I noticed). A lot of these little features can be added for a few dollars here and a few dollars there that can really add up to a lot. If you're finding yourself wanting all these details, it may end up being cheaper to get a low end plan that includes them.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:29 AM on September 22, 2005

I'll chime in with the 'not unhappy' opinion of the others for TracFone. The few times i've had to call customer service was really no hassle other than a very strong hispanic accent on the other end of the line (they said they were in miami) all the reps i talked to were very polite and seemed competent. I'm in Milwaukee but travel around quite a bit and as others have said have had no surprises with coverage. I picked TF 2 years ago simply because they were the only place that would let me pay for a year of service and not have to think about it. I probably use about 30-60 minutes a month and the phone has never cost me more than about $150 a year. if you're just looking for cheap, you might want to check into TracFone's new service net10 which has very similar policies as TF but a flat rate of 10c a minute.
One drawback with TracFone is that because they don't own any of their own infrastructure, you're stuck with whomever they've made a deal with in your area. based on my number i'm actually using Cingular/ AT&T's network and get good service from Chicago to the Twin Cities on my Motorola V60i. If you just can't decide, they also have a 30 day money back guarantee so you can see if the phone is awful or worst case have a 911 only handset to toss in the car for $20.
good luck on the hunt.
posted by skatz at 5:59 PM on September 22, 2005