What is the best PRE-PAID phone service out there?

Question

I have been a contract customer for 5 years & don't use my phone much anymore. I use about 100 minutes (MAX.) a month & I am not sure if I should stay with the $30 a month deal (300 minutes/free weekends) or if it'd be cheaper to go pre-paid.

Any advice is helpful. Thanks to those who give me nice answers! :)

P.S. My contract just ended, but am still paying monthly services

Answer 1

For such light use, you can definitely do much better than $30 a month by switching to prepaid. The prepaid offerings are quite competitive, and one of the nice features of prepaid is that the per-minute cost already includes the fees and surcharges that would normally be added on top of the quoted monthly cost of a postpaid plan. For example, a $40/month plan will usually incur an additional $10 in fees and surcharges. With a prepaid refill, I pay sales tax once on the refill, and that is it.

I will second the recommendation for T-Mobile prepaid. The $100 refill gets you 1000 minutes ($0.10/min) which will last for one year. It also gets you Gold Rewards status, after which subsequent refills will extend your account expiration to one year from the refill date regardless of the dollar amount of the refill.

Cingular is a decent option if you call another Cingular mobile user frequently. The standard prepaid plan is $0.25/min, which I would not recommend. The $0.10/min plan includes free mobile-to-mobile minutes, but you are charged $1 per day on any day that you make or receive a call.

Both Cingular and T-Mobile will roll over your unused minutes when you refill. According to a recent Consumer Reports issue, Cingular coverage tends to be slightly worse than T-Mobile so this is something else you may wish to keep in mind.

I have not used Verizon, but their INpulse prepaid might be worth looking into if you talk a lot since it offers free nights and weekends and M2M. For the level of usage you described, however, I would NOT recommend it since you are charged $0.99/day _every day_ regardless of your usage so you are essentially back to paying $30/month before the per-minute charges ($0.10/min). Also, the expiration period for refills with Verizon is shorter than with Cingular and T-Mobile. The biggest benefit of Verizon in my opinion is that generally speaking, they have the best coverage of the nationwide providers. On the other hand, their prepaid offering is rather expensive.

Tracfone, Virgin, and Boost have relatively high per-minute rates so I would not recommend any of them over T-Mobile.

Answer 2

I'm not sure you're from the United States or not, but a wonderful prepaid service is Verizon INpulse.

You get unlimited nights (from 9:01pm to 5:59am) and unlimited mobile to mobile (you can talk to anyone else that has Verizon for free, postpaid or prepaid, doesn't matter which one they have as long as they get their service from Verizon). It's 10 cents a minute to talk to someone if it isn't past 9pm or if they don't have Verizon. Also, they take 99 cents out of your account each day.

This is the prepaid service I have and I have to say it's great. I've had T-Mobile, Tracfone, and Virgin Mobile (all prepaid of course, I can't stand contracts) and Verizon INpulse is cheaper than all of them put together. I usually buy one $30 card once a month or a $15 card and I'm ready to go. With the unlimited nights and unlimited mobile to mobile, I use my phone way more than I used to use all those other prepaid phones I've had and also, I've never found a prepaid plan that offers both those unlimited features but Verizon INpulse.

Prepaid is good for people that don't use their phone all that much and that don't want to get caught up with some contract. Seeing as though you use about 100 minutes a month, INpulse is good for you, but that's just my opinion.

Answer 3

Verizon prepaid in case you realize quite some human beings on verizon. It expenditures ninety 9 cents an afternoon and .10/min or .25/min yet countless IN instant calling so whoever has verizon instant is free to search for suggestion from from each and every time. Virgin cellular sounds like very much yet their amenities hardly paintings everywhere close to me. Verizon works everywhere at&t, t-cellular and sprint do not paintings. good luck.

Answer 4

You should shop around to every company. Calculate the cost of their phones and how much 100 minutes would cost. Personally I use Cingular bacause I found it was the cheapest in my area, but your area may be different.

Answer 5

T-Mobile To Go........ Their phones are a little more, but their rates are the best, their coverage is good, and they expiration is good.

They also have gold rewards...