Comments on: Comparing prepaid wireless to carrier contracts, dollars, cents and sense

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:59:38 +0000

James see the “Why Tracfone, aren’t they too expensive?” section in the post. I went into significant detail about how it saves money for certain uses. Tracfones won’t save money for every person. It depends on the amount of usage.

By: James

James — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:09:33 +0000

I forgot to add I got the phone a Camera phone FREE with all the extras.

By: James

James — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I can’t see how you save money with Tracfone I use to use the service and they are expensive. I now have AT&T with roll over minutes for $32.29 a month. The plan is for 500 minutes a month, includes roaming.
You will spend much more for the Tracfone service in comparison to AT&T also AT&T is a credit referemce where Tracfone is not.

By: Liz r.

Liz r. — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:42:45 +0000

For minutes to be 8 cents, you would need to get 1200 minutes for $100.

By: Jimmy James

Jimmy James — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 13:58:00 +0000

The single best thing about Tracfone is that you have limited minutes. It makes you think about what you want to say before saying it.

By: Tracfone Unregistered SIM errors » Make You Go Hmm

Tracfone Unregistered SIM errors » Make You Go Hmm — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:26:24 +0000

[…] in the last week my wife’s new Tracfone has displayed the error: Unregistered SIM as shown to the right. In this mode no calls can be […]

By: dawn

dawn — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 22:30:30 +0000

I bought a 19.99 (refurbished) tracfone on line with 2 x 60 minute cards(free) with promo codes, (which you can find on momsview.com,) and such, I have got around 400 minutes and have still spent only the 19.99 so far. Use those promo codes. right now you can get an additional 90 minutes (if the code isn’t expired. check out momsview.com)

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:13:32 +0000

2500+ text messages in one month?! Yowsa. And here we thought our 17 year old teen son’s 1250 text messages was bad, Marc. They really love those text messages, don’t they?

By: Marc Orchant

Marc Orchant — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:53:34 +0000

Very thorough write-up TDavid. One more “correction” maybe it’s a clarification) on the Sprint side of your comparison and an observation to go along with it. Sprint now offers the cheapest overage option I’ve seen (I think it’s called Fair & Flexible). If you go over your plan minutes, it costs $5 for an additional 100 minutes. Not bad. The thought I wanted to share was that, in my experience, looking at a bucket of shared minutes from an equal division perspective isn’t how things work in the real world. I have my wife and two kids (23 and 15) on a shared plan with Sprint and here’s how I have things set up for a total monthly cost of around $103.

My wife has a simple little Samsung flip phone (no camera, no data, no SMS) that is over 2 years old so no contract lock-in left and hers is the primary number in the shared plan.

My daughter, 23, has a newer but equally simple Samsung flip phone with unlimited SMS ($5) because she averages well over 2500 text messages a month!

My son has my old Treo 650 with all-you-can-eat data, Sprint Vision (for sending pictures and MMS messages) and 100 SMS messages.

The bucket is 850 minutes for the three to share. They’ve gone over once in two years which cost $5. All of their calls to each other are free and weeknights and weekends are free (and start at 7 pm). The free calls mean that the average of 1800 minutes of voice they actually use each month plus three lines plus unlimited SMS (on one line) and data (on another) costs about $100 a month.

I’m pretty happy with the way this has worked out. In another month the Treo commitment is fulfilled so the only contract lock remaining is on my daughter’s phone (another 10 months I think).

Your essential point is completely sound though. If you only use a cell phone sparingly and occasionally, the prepaid phones are a great alternative. Thanks for the great writeup!

By: FranciscoIV

FranciscoIV — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:10:08 +0000

I had my Wife and 2 daughters on TracFones for years. I love them as they really keep cell phone costs within whatever budget I set. If they use up their minutes THEY can buy more, I only buy them a certain amount… Also you don’t loose your minutes if your phone goes inactive, you get them back when you reactivate (did that a few times).

You can also have them email you reminders of when you need to refuel to not go inactive.

We just switched my oldest daughter to MetroPCS as they have great coverage in South Florida and she is headed to college. It’s a one price gets you unlimited minutes plus plan with no contract or credit checks. Just pay the monthly fee. I got her the super duper plan and it’s working out to about $60 a month, but for her it’s perfect since she is a texting, talking fiend who also now surfs the web and does email on her phone. The only drawback is they do not discount the phones very much. You’ll pay from $60 to $300 for a phone, hers ended up costing $180 for a pretty nice Kyocera Strobe that does everything including music.