<p>I am doing research into prepaid phones for a relative. This relative’s needs are mostly to have a phone for emergencies and ‘can you pick up one more item at the grocery store’ type calls. She does not need a phone to chat with friends/family or to text. So, she only needs maybe 60 minutes a month at most.</p>
<p>Can anyone offer advice? What to look for? What to avoid?
Thanks in advance!</p>
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<p>We have had T-Mobile for many years now. The phone with activation & a few minutes is about $19.99 at BestBuy & other locations. You can buy a card for $100 that provides 1000 minutes that last an entire year. You can buy refills at $10, $25, $50 & $100 increments. When the year expires, you only need to top off the plan with at least another $10 card or more and the unused minutes roll over with the extra newly purchased minutes. It ends up for us being about $110 for 2 years–sometimes it lasts even longer and we get $120 for 3 years before we buy another $100 card & see how long that lasts.</p>
<p>Thank you!
This is exactly the kind of info I am looking for.
If anyone else has experience with a prepaid phone, I’d be happy to hear it. I’m especially interested in avoidable pitfalls.</p>
<p>We bought D2 a pre-paid TracPhone at Walmart (she lost the other, more expensive phone she had – then found it 2 days after getting the TracPhone… grrr).</p>
<p>Anyway, the TracPhone has worked well. They did the setup for us at the Walmart store, and we got some kind of deal where we actually get double the minutes we purchase when we buy more minutes. We can purchase minutes online, or buy a card at Walmart (probably sold other places, too).</p>
<p>The other thing we have done is add a relative to our Verizon family plan. That is cheap (about $10 a month), as long as they don’t need texting. We did this for my mom for Christmas last year, because we have tons more minutes than we actually use (smallest family plan is something like 700 minutes, and we are using less than 300 of those a month even with my mom on the plan). I think that is because we mostly talk to each other, and those minutes don’t count against the plan. :)</p>
<p>I have a Motorola RAZR (yes, 2003 technology) combines with the AT&T Prepaid plan which works out to 400 minutes/year for $100 (per year). There are cheaper plans but I’m pretty comfortable with the AT&T network and the service that they provide.</p>
<p>We like the TracPhone, also. It has decent coverage, and even works up at our remote cabin when we can’t get a Verizon signal. Each text counts for only 0.3 minutes of talking time, so it’s not too bad UNLESS you have a kid like mine, who burned through 2000 texts in six days (on his brother’s AT&T phone).</p>
<p>You can buy a simple phone from the Tracfon website from $20 to $120 depending the feature you want to have. Pretty simple. This is a no contract, pay as you go phone but have pretty good coverage.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, many of the tracfone models you can buy from their website come with “life time double minutes”, therefore the per minute cost comes down to $0.15. Text message is at 1/3 of the voice call.</p>
<p>I have a Virgin Mobile phone. I have to “top up” with at least $20 every 3 months. Sometimes there are specials where it’s less. Works fine for me.</p>
<p>inparent,
We tried to add this relative to our existing plan with T-mobile. We have been with this company for many years, however we are thinking about switching providers and this last concersation with them only helped to cement that decision.</p>
<p>We are currently 12 months into a 2 year locked in deal with t-mobile (we got new phones so we had to start over from being month to month). When my husband called last night to inquire about adding another line (which would be an additional $10 a month), we were told (by several t-mobile reps) that that new line would have a 24 month contract! They were simply inflexible on that point. Sigh. One hour on the phone to basically be told No. </p>
<p>So, this is why we are looking at a prepaid phone.</p>