OP:
For us, best bet was, T-MOBILE, PREPAID. Bought phone at Costco. Get free accessories, ie. case, car charger.
Once you spend, $ 100, you become a gold member. As long as you buy some minutes, your unused minutes last ONE YEAR.
Minutes cost 10 cents.
I'm (and DW) using Virgin Mobile prepaid, which uses the Sprint network. Cost is $20/3 months (or $6.67/mo) to keep the account active, you can go another 1-2 months before you lose the phone number. For some reason, late in 2009 we got notification that we don't need to replenish our account until 2/2011. So we've had no payments all of 2010. It costs .18/min for calls, .15/text. We really do use these as "just in case"/emergency phones...so much so that my current balance is $78.64 with 41 bonus minutes. I bought my Samsung Slash at Walmart online for $19, goes on sale a lot. We've had service with them for over 5 years. Used to be .10/min for calls back then.
Actually it was better than this. Once you've spent $100 (which you can do with a one-shot purchase of 1000 minutes), *all* minutes you buy last one year, AND if you reload before the old minutes expire, all the old unused minutes roll over for another year along with it.For us, best bet was, T-MOBILE, PREPAID. Bought phone at Costco. Get free accessories, ie. case, car charger.
Once you spend, $ 100, you become a gold member. As long as you buy some minutes, your unused minutes last ONE YEAR.
Minutes cost 10 cents.
Me and my wife have Virgin.... but we are changing hers as the Sprint network is crap when you get out of a big city... I even lose service going between cities.. a phone that does not have service is pretty useless for emergencies...
............... if you do go Virgin, I do not think they have the .18cents plan anymore... but if you do have the plan you can make it $15/3 months with auto top up... just give them your CC number and they top up every three months....
Have a Verizon cell. $40/mo for 400 miinutes. This is the only one that has service where we live. DW is after me to get a second cell. What I want is cheap and good service out in the sticks.
Maybe you can't always get what you want...
Which cheap phone has the best service?
Free to canoe
I guess the key for us would be to set ourselves up with at least one cell phone for less than we currently spend on long-distance phone cards.The trick is to order the minimum minutes, and "supersize" your order with a year or air time and extra minutes, like this:
Actually it was better than this. Once you've spent $100 (which you can do with a one-shot purchase of 1000 minutes), *all* minutes you buy last one year, AND if you reload before the old minutes expire, all the old unused minutes roll over for another year along with it.
What is the cheapest cell-phone plan you have or know of?
Right now, I pay about $42 per month through Sprint. This plan includes unlimited texting. There's no data plan or Internet access.
Another nice feature of T-Mobile is that their phones use SIM cards. If you buy a new T-Mobile phone you can simply transfer the SIM card from your old phone to the new phone - no need to even activate the new phone. That way you keep your old number, Gold Rewards status, and unused minutes, all of which are stored digitally on the SIM card. T-Mobile has deals on new phones fairly frequently. A couple of weeks ago, they offered for $30 a nice Samsung flip phone (t139) with free shipping and included a $25 refill card, so basically the new phone cost me $5. My current minutes expire in December, so I will use the refill card then to roll them over for another year (plus get another 150 minutes).Nothing has changed. I had over 1700 minutes on my phone. I just added $10.00 worth of minutes to my Gold Rewards plan. All existing minutes rolled over and I'm good to go until 10/2/2011.
From the T-Mobile support page:
" T-Mobile Prepaid minutes expiration
T-Mobile Prepaid minutes begin to expire the day they are added to your account, not when they are purchased. For example, if you purchase a refill card on May 1st and add it to your account May 14th, the term of expiration begins on May 14th. Depending upon the refill amount you purchased and your Gold Rewards status, the expiration time for your T-Mobile Prepaid minutes will vary.
For non-Gold Rewards customers:
Unused minutes will expire as follows:
- $10 T-Mobile Prepaid card -- expires in 90 days
- $25 T-Mobile Prepaid card -- expires in 90 days
- $50 T-Mobile Prepaid card -- expires in 90 days
- $100 T-Mobile Prepaid card -- expires in 365 days
For Gold Rewards customers:
Unused minutes will expire one year from the date you last applied airtime to your account.
To help ensure that you never lose your unused minutes, T-Mobile will send you a text message when your account is within five days of expiring. That way, you will have plenty of time to refill your account and carry forward any unused minutes to your new expiration date."
I underlined the important information. It does not matter the amount of refill but when you refill. $10 carried all of my unused time forward for another year.
To help you, you need to lets us know how much you use the phone for voice (in minutes) and for number of texts.
If you don't use the phone much and just need voice and text. A pre-paid plan costs very little.