Tracfone vs. go phone??

Question

does anyone know which would be money better spent? i know that the model of tracfone that i would buy costs about $70, but does anyone know how much a go phone costs? also, which has the better deal when it comes to buying airtime?

Answer 1

It depends on which go phone you get, but they start at about $20 although you can get a $20 rebate through Dealking.com making it free, when you eventually get your $20 back. The cheapest phones are usually featureless remanufactured phones so you'll have to pay more for one that's brand new with all the bells and whistles. Tracfone is the same way, their phones start at $10 but they are featureless remanufactured/reconditioned/refurbished, etc. For $70, I'd expect the same caliber phone from either Tracfone or GoPhone

As for rate plans, GoPhone offers more flexibility in plans than TracFone. For GoPhone's traditional Pay As You Go, you get flat rates no matter what value airtime card you purchase. You can get 25 cents per minute anytime, or 10 cents per minute anytime with free mobile to mobile but they deduct $1 from your account every day. The advantage with getting higher value cards on GoPhone is the expiration dates. You get the lowest value card ($15), it's only good for 30 days and you have to use it up in that time or buy another card and they add onto each other. If you get the highest value card ($100) it's good for a whole year. If you hardly use any minutes at all, it's best to get that with the 25 cent plan and you have a phone for a little over $8/mo. All the cards in between those two are good for 90 days. For more information, see this link:
http://www.cingular.com/cell-phone-service//cell-phone-plans/pyg-cell-phone-plans.jsp

In addition to the traditional Pay As You Go plans, there are also plans which resemble montly contract plans, just minus the contract. They start at $30/mo and you get a bucket of anytime minutes and some plans even have free nights and weekends. Check them out at this link:
http://www.cingular.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-plans/pyp-cell-phone-plans.jsp

On TracFone, the amount of minutes you get depends on the value of the card you purchase. Their $100 card is just like Cingular GoPhone's on the flat rate 25c/min plan -- It lasts one year and has 250 minutes. All of TracFones other cards expire after 60 days rather than 90 or 30. TracFone cards are $20 for 60 minutes (33-1/3 cents per minute), $30 for 120 minutes (25 cents per minute), $50 for 250 minutes (20 cents per minute) and $80 for 400 minutes (also 20 cents per minute). Learn more at this link:
http://www.tracfone.com/rates.jsp?nextPage=rates.jsp&task=rates

It seems to me there are some cases where TracFone is on par with GoPhone, but for most I think the flexibility of GoPhones plans and card options along with their 90 day expiration on most cards that GoPhone is usually the better option. The facts are all here so take it all in and consider how you'd use the phone and that will help you decide which is best for you.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

With the new Tracfone Smartfone options, you are better off than the Go Phone. With certain phones the minutes triple or double in effect bring your per minute cost down to about 7 cents. I was able to purchase a smartfone for $10 with Android 4.4 OS this Black Friday and the plans were reasonable. I switched from Metro PCS since I am not a heavy phone user and Tracfone allowed me to streach out my dollars and still gave me Smart Phone functionality.
Since the phones also work over wifi, you could use the smartfone with wifi and not use any of your data allowance.