On Thursday afternoon my wife and I are heading out of town for a mini vacation and decided we needed a cell phone just in case. We will have the computer with Sprint EVDO and Skype, but having a cell phone for emergencies seemed like a good idea. For quite some time we’ve seen the Tracfone at the grocery stores and pondered if that would be a good idea. You know, those pay as you go phones. I mentioned in the Wirefly review that we were interested in trying these prepaid wireless phones out someday.

We were at Target yesterday and decided to buy the Motorola C139 for $14.99 and 200 units for $39.99 and a cigarette lighter battery charger which turns out we didn’t need. We’re taking that back over lunch today and buying a double minutes for the phone life card, which I’ll explain in more detail shortly.

The first step after unpacking everything is to add the battery to your new Tracfone and start charging with the enclosed AC adapter.

You receive a 20 units bonus for activating the phone through the tracphone.com website, which is where I headed. At first I tried registering as a new user but I should have chosen the option to activate a phone which takes you through a 9 step process which includes registering for the website. Part of the phone activation involves entering in your home zip code. The non-roaming area coverage across the lower United States looks decent:

After entering in the lengthy IMEI number and sim serial number through the website, both of which can be located through menu pushes (yes, while the phone is still charging), your phone will then be “owned” by you. Next you can add minutes or skip this part. I added minutes by scratching off a 15 digit numeric code on the 200 units card. I then waited for the units to show up on the phone.

And waited. The units are supposed to arrive on the phone within 15 minutes and if they don’t you need to call customer care (on some other phone of course) at 1-800-867-7183 to have them resent. Our order must have failed, see the screenshot at the top of this post, because the minutes never came.

Meanwhile, we checked the My Account area of Tracfone and saw that everything appeared “ok” including our new Tracfone phone number. We tried a test call and the phone rang. I figured hey, let’s sleep on waiting for the minutes to arrive.

This morning I checked the phone and it still said 0.0 units so I called the Tracfone Customer Care. The expected wait time was approximately 15 minutes. I put it on speakerphone listening to automated messages telling me every minute or so “how much we value your business” and did other work. You know if they value our business so much then why don’t they hire more operators?

Yesterday I had to call Sprint Customer Care too and they had me on hold for over 15 minutes only to transfer me to a different department which I had to wait on hold to talk to. And why at Sprint do they ask you to type in your phone number and then the first thing they ask for when they talk to you is what is your phone number? How is that customer care? What’s the point in typing in a phone number that the customer service rep never sees anyway?

It’s situations like these why I despise calling phone companies. They make billions and yet can’t figure out how to staff up to call center demand in the phone business. The ultimate irony.

Back to Tracfone which I keep wanting to spell with a ‘ph’ in it, the operator answered within 15 minutes and was very courteous and helpful. She had me enter in a long series of codes into the phone and immediately the missing 220 units showed up. Woohoo!

Why Tracfone, aren’t they too expensive?
If you frequently make and receive cell phone calls, buying into a Tracfone is not cost effective, but if you only use for vacations, emergencies and special events, this option begins to make more sense. Also important to keep in mind is that there are no monthly bills, no credit checks, no annual contracts (our existing Sprint contract is for two years) and no hidden surprise charges plus the pricey phone-related taxes are included in the cost of the prepaid cards. So if you have a month where you only use your phone for 10 minutes on an existing carrier contract your cost per minute becomes dramatically higher by comparison.

Considering we only used 100 minutes in the last six months with our Onstar account, the math begins to favor a Tracfone-like plan over simply buying another phone and adding to our Sprint bill. The smallest plan for Sprint would still cost more than a Tracfone plan.

Let’s consider a new Sprint plan at an average of $30/month over 6 months: $180 USD. Tracfone with the following (I rounded up the penny):

new phone: $15
the doubler card: $50
400 minutes (200 minute card + doubler): $40
30 minutes (extend additional 90 days): $10
= $155

next 6 months cost (no phone or doubler card needed)
= $50
Total: $205 USD for the year for 860 minutes of cell phone talk time versus Sprint: $360 USD.

If the cost of the additional Sprint line is $20/month it is still $240 USD versus Tracfone $205. And if you can make that Tracfone last 2 years the savings grows even larger. Only $100 for the second year versus another $360 for Sprint.

If you need more than 860 minutes of time over a year then the deal starts to switch in favor of the carrier contract which provides more minutes (not to mention the free weekends and evening time that you do not receive with the Tracfone). However if you need less than 860 minutes annually or don’t even have to refuel the tracfone year around (remember the doubler option is good for the life of the phone and does not require that the phone stay activated) the cost is even less.

Before readers who are also Sprint customers correct me, as of this writing the most inexpensive first line cost is $59.99 at Sprint for 550 minutes and each additional line (Family plan) is $9.99/month. You also get unlimited nights after 7pm and weekends.

But.

Keep in mind that this price does not include taxes and fees and the minutes are shared between the phones. That means the 550 minutes divided by two equals 225 minutes per phone per month and then you start getting into the overage charges which can be as high or higher than 30 cents per minute. We’re not even getting into the cost of extra features or the fact that if we go through a 6 month period without using the phone we lose all the monthly minutes. Two phones from most contract carriers even at the minimum plans is going to run around $100/month. You can get a half dozen Tracfones with 860 minutes each for the same cost.

And for those who don’t think the cell phone taxes add up, take a closer look at your next cell phone bill. In particular, see the comments from Hmm reader calling himself ‘taxed to death’ that was paying over $30 a month in taxes. The taxes alone are almost the cost of having two Tracfones!

How to keep the Tracfone cost down
200 minutes for $40 is 20 cents a minute. Text messages are 0.3 per send and receive, so that could add up, but there are a couple tricks to keep the costs down I’ve learned about unfortunately more after the fact since the Target salesperson didn’t know much about Tracfone. I’ll share with readers here so hopefully those interested won’t make the same mistake.

There is a lifetime of the phone double card (which I mentioned in the example above) you can buy for $49.99 which will double the minutes of any card you buy in the future for the life of the phone. This lowers the cost down to 10 cents a minute or less (200 minutes becomes 400 minutes for the same price) depending on the amount of minutes purchased in non-roaming areas. Like anything else if you buy a lot of minutes, you’ll get a better price per minute. The worst Tracfone deal is 30 minutes for $10. There’s that nasty 30 cents per minute rate.

There is another catch to these pay as you go phones: you must refuel the minutes before the expiration date or you will lose the existing minutes. For $100 you can get 800 minutes (8 cents a minute) with the double card option in place and have an expiration date of a year in the future. As long as you buy another card of any denomination before the 12 months is up, you can extend the expiration date and any leftover minutes will not be lost.

While it might seem like a hassle having to refuel minutes at intervals, the phone clearly displays the date you need to refuel by and how many times a month are you in the grocery store? Most our local grocery stores carry Tracfone prepaid cards in various denominations as well as additional phones. Tracfone claims to be America’s #1 Prepaid Wireless.

The Tracfone isn’t for everybody — certainly not for those who want to use more high tech phones like smart phones — or that plan on using a lot of minutes monthly. There are some Tracfones with camera and data capability, so they aren’t only cheap, generic phones just FYI. Traditional carriers would be selling similar phones under $100.

Also, I’m a bit disappointed that during the holiday their website was having problems. Especially since that is the time people would be most likely to desire their service. Ramp up, Tracfone, ramp up! Still, since you can add minutes on the phone itself after the initial activation, you can safely bypass the website.

Before completely dismissing the idea do the math as we have with how many minutes you’re actually using. If a savings exist, make the move and put the savings in your vacation or retirement account. Thank yourself later.

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