OT-pay-as-you-go cell phone plans

[marie]

anyone have experience with a pay-as-you-go cell plan? we are trying to get my parents set up with one for christmas and i just don't know if it matters going with a major company like Verizon or Cingular or with something like Tracfone or Virgin Mobile.

TIA,

[LD92599]

I have Verizon Free Up and LOVE it! It saves me a ton of $$ because i rarely even use a cell phone...if you renew the phone before (ie: the day before, not day of!) expiration (usually 30-60 days, depending on how much $$ you load each time) then your minutes carry over. What I did was buy a higher value card the 1st time around then renew it every 60 days for $30.

FWIW..if you have any old cell phones lying around, you *might* be able to use one of those for this purpose so you don't need the added expense of a new phone as well (though they seem pretty cheap these days!).

HTH!

Laura
mom to William
3.5.2003

http://homepage.mac.com/ld14m

http://lilypie.com/baby2/030305/0/7/0/-5/.png[/url]

[jbowman]

DH has Virgin Mobile and it is the best--he rarely uses it (my cell is the "main" phone), so it saves a lot of $$$. I am considering getting a pay-as-you-go as well. It's nice not having another bill! DH just buys the phone cards at Target.

[KrisM]

I have the AT&T version. I've had it for 3 years and like it. I pay $100 for a year so that I don't have to call every 90 days. That was getting to be a pain. So, I get 665 minutes to use over the year. That is over 55 per month, which is plenty for me.

My mom has Tracfone and likes it. She also does the once/year deal for adding minutes so that she doesn't think about it. Her phone tells her how many minutes are left right on the display. Mine does not, but when I did the 90 renewals, I wished it did. She's had no issues with Tracfone at all.

If it's just for emergencies and occassional use, it's much, much cheaper to do pay-as-you go, I think.

[JElaineB]

I have had Tracfone for 2 years and really like it. The nice thing is you can purchase one year at a time and not have to think about buying airtime (unless you run out of minutes) for a full year. If you have any questions about it, let me know.

Jennifer
mom to Jacob 9/27/02