prepaid cell phone advice

June 2, 2004 10:56 AM

Anyone have experience with pay-as-you-go cell phones in the US? Recommendations? [MI]

I promised my little brother I'd get him a cell phone for graduation. He's severely learning disabled (but socially functional) and has very little concept of the value of money. As such, he has no experience with bill-paying, so I'm hesitant to set him up with a phone with a monthly bill.

A phone card based service makes the most sense, I think, but I'm not familiar with the options. Anyone have advice on the best/easiest to use? He's in Chicago, so just about all the major services are possibilities.

posted by me3dia to Shopping (17 answers total)

I had wanted a pre-paid phone as well, because I just don't make that many calls from my cell phone and I thought it would be a great way to save money.
I looked into Virgin Mobile and thought initially that it sounded great.
However -- two caveats for me which were dealbreakers:
- changing rates (prices drop after the first 10 min/day -- well I don't make 10 min/day calls)
- account becomes inactive if not used or if certain amount of money not added to account over time

it was cheaper to keep sprint for me..
your situation's different, though -- good luck.
posted by j at 11:25 AM on June 2, 2004

My wife and I each have prepaid phones: She has Tracfone, and I have AT&T Free to go. Both systems allow you to prepay for as much as a year to keep it alive. You can set up auto-refill for different denominations for either service, and with AT&T you can monitor online how many minutes are left.

The one drawback to Tracfone is their phones are tied to the Tracfone service and from what I've read unlockable. With AT&T you can unlock phones and move them to/from other carriers and plans (see the thread in AskMe from a few days back about unlocking phones).
posted by SteveInMaine at 11:30 AM on June 2, 2004

If you have a cell phone, why not get another one on the same account? Your provider should be able to give you a Chicago area number. You'd get the bill, rather than your brother. Plus, with most providers these days, all calls between any phones that are on the same account are free.

So I'd contact your current provider and see what they can do.

Many providers offer nationwide free long-distance, so they really won't care what base city you're in. But check, since some plans seem to want to charge extra if the phone isn't used in it's "home base" a certain percentage.


(FYI: I have four phones on my account. They are for me, my sister, her husband, and my parents. It's cheaper than having individual accounts for each party, plus we get the benefit of cell-to-cell free calls. My parents spend half of the year 1500 miles away, and that has caused absolutely zero problems for my account).
posted by yesster at 11:33 AM on June 2, 2004

If you can trust your brother to control his phone usage, then yesster's idea is good. However, my entire family has individual plans because we all use our phones constantly and to combine our bills would end up costing a heck of a lot more.
posted by BlueTrain at 11:45 AM on June 2, 2004

We did this earlier. I still like AT&T Free2Go.
posted by mojohand at 11:49 AM on June 2, 2004

I have a Virgin pay-as-you-go phone. It's a good service. They use the Sprint PCS network so you can use Sprint's site to see how coverage is in your area. I never used my previous phones (through AT&T and later T-Mobile) enough to justify paying $30-$40 a month. When I crunched the numbers, the Virgin phone would always be cheaper for me. If you only use the phone for "emergencies" or hey-what-should-I-pick-up-at-the-supermarket calls, you won't be paying more than $20 every three months (the minimum to keep the account active). J is right that they deactivate if you don't keep the account up to date, but they send you *lots* of warnings via email and on the phone itself before that happens.
posted by bcwinters at 11:50 AM on June 2, 2004

Response by poster: Wow, I hadn't thought of that, yesster. But part of the reason for his wanting a phone is to gain some independence, so he may not be into it. I'll defintely talk to him about it.

SteveInMaine, have you been happy with AT&T's coverage?
posted by me3dia at 11:59 AM on June 2, 2004

me3dia - I understand your point - especially for a late-teenager, that independence bug can bite strong. Especially since your bill would show all of his calls. Fortunately for me, my family doesn't really have any privacy concerns regarding their calling history being available to me. Actually, I review the bill every month and usually tell everyone to use their phone more. We never use the 2000 minutes available. It seems that most of our calls are actually to each other, and they're unlimited/free.
posted by yesster at 12:08 PM on June 2, 2004

AT&T's coverage is decent enough where I live. In Maine this means it drops into roam if you're away from a major highway or city. But Chicago ain't Maine (my kingdom for a decent hot dog and pizza), so I can't vouch for coverage there.

Also keep in mind that AT&T recently sold their wireless business to Cingular, so at some point the networks will be combined, if they haven't been already.
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:43 PM on June 2, 2004

so at some point the networks will be combined, if they haven't been already.

Late this Fall, early Winter, at the earliest (SEC still hasn't cleared it and, if I'm not mistaken, no money has changed hands as of yet). I left AT&T two weeks ago, after using their service for 4 years and 3 lines. Pennsylvania GSM coverage was spotty, at best, and their merger with Cingular only worries me. No behemoth mergers go well initially. I'll probably go back to them in a couple of years, after they straighten themselves out. AT&T is ranked dead last in customer service and because all new lines are GSM, I won't trust them again for a while.
posted by BlueTrain at 12:56 PM on June 2, 2004

FWIW, currently AT&T has free roaming on the Cingular network, at least on the nationwide plan I have. They're promoting it as if they've upgraded their network, but then go on to explain that you're not to worry if you see another provider's name on your display.
posted by whatnotever at 1:00 PM on June 2, 2004

I looked into Virgin Mobile and thought initially that it sounded great.
However -- two caveats for me which were dealbreakers:
- changing rates (prices drop after the first 10 min/day -- well I don't make 10 min/day calls)
- account becomes inactive if not used or if certain amount of money not added to account over time

Both true. On the other hand, the other prepaid companies have rates that vary for other reasons (peak call times, roaming, etc.; which don't apply on Virgin, by the way). So one way or another there's going to be some variability. Similarly, all the companies require you to buy more minutes periodically to keep the account open, though each differ in how long you're allowed to go between refills. If these conditions are truly dealbreakers, it sounds like prepaid cell phone isn't the right approach for your needs.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 1:59 PM on June 2, 2004

If you're interested in the AT7T network but not the service (if that makes any sense), check out callplusglobal. I buy it from Pharos and have been pretty pleased with it ... except when they dropped their rates the day after I bought my refill. Such is life.

Pharos also sells a lot of different plans/providers. If you can look past the oldschool design it's a fairly useful site.
posted by codger at 2:12 PM on June 2, 2004

More here from my own cell phone query in April. I wound up going with Virgin Mobile -- I used it quite a bit the first couple of days I had it because I was out-of-town coordinating get-togethers with friends, and have only used it for a couple of minutes since then to call my mechanic from the road and to coordinate babysitting logistics with my sister. So for my purposes, it's been great -- I've spent maybe 10 bucks total in the past 3 or 4 weeks (on top of the cost of the phone).

With Virgin, you "top-up" your account as you go -- you either buy a phone card at places like Target, Best Buy, 7-11, etc., or you can program in a credit/debit card and do it automatically through the phone. The latter option might be a useful option for your brother, me3dia.
posted by scody at 2:25 PM on June 2, 2004

I use t-mobile prepaid, because I have bad credit, and because I'm still fairly new to NYC and nobody calls me (people in other cities email or IM). It's ok. Might not be a bad idea to get your brother set up that way first and see how he does. You could always get a regular plan later to go with the same phone.
posted by bingo at 2:40 PM on June 2, 2004

I've been using Tracfone for a little while now. The phone is sort of clunky, and not nearly as pretty as some of the newer phones on the market. A friend of mine sneered when he heard I bought into tracfone, but the truth of it is that even with buying the phone ($49.99) and the purchase of 40 call units, I'm still only a third of the way to covering his expensive phone's cost, let alone his high monthly package fee. The only drawback is that I don't use it constantly like he does, and I only use it when no other phone is available.
posted by crunchland at 5:04 PM on June 2, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks, all. I'll be discussing the options with him this weekend.
posted by me3dia at 10:09 AM on June 3, 2004