My Sprint contract is up, YIPEEEE! And I need to get one of the new phones

[ChunkyNicksChunkyMom]

where you just buy a card with minutes attached to it. I use the phone very infrequently and need tips on which phone is good, with minutes that do not expire. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Susan

#1 Nick 11-18-04
#2 ETA 05-22-06

[boogiemom]

I have a Tracfone. Nothing special but it works best in my area. I had Virgin Mobile before but it didn't work well at all in my immediate area. Be sure to ask the sales person if he/she knows which has best coverage in your area. Switching made a HUGE difference for me. My mother-in-law has Virgin Mobile and hers works great where she lives. Virgin Mobile is also cheaper, I believe.

Good Luck!

[lmariana]

I use Virgin Mobile and have no complaints. Their price is great and you always know what you're paying. They are $0.25/min for the first 10 minutes of any day, then $0.10/min after that. No daily fee, no connection cost, no taxes. We just bought new phones, since our last ones broke (stay away from the V5 Slider). I'm really happy with my new one, the Vox 8500. Hubby got the Vox 8610. Mine is smaller, but his has a color screen and musical ringtones.

In our area, they actually piggyback off the Sprint network, you'll even recognize the voicemail lady's voice. So for us, we found it to be the exact same coverage that we had with our Sprint phones.

Hope that helps!

Mariana
Mom to Gabe (8/03) and Atom (10/05)
www.heinzandmariana.com
http://www.geocities.com/kellysb/images/medals/purpleheart.jpg http://www.geocities.com/kellysb/images/medals/awardbar2-6wks.jpg

[annex]

I would highly recommend reading over the descriptions of the different prepaid plans on this site:

http://prepaiduswireless.com/

And this site:

http://www.cellguru.net/prepaid_compare.htm

A catch with a number of these plans is that you can't roam (i.e. phone won't connect if you're off the plan's network). If you think you might ever be in a more rural area and want it for emergency use, that's a real drawback.

I current use the CallPlus TDMA (with a AT&T Nokia bought new for $20 on ebay), no complaints. But I would also strongly consider Beyond Wireless since you don't have to worry about your minutes expiring every 90 days unless you add mkore.

Anne

[ChunkyNicksChunkyMom]

Anne, that is exactly what I need to see, thank you so very much!

Susan

#1 Nick 11-18-04
#2 ETA 05-22-06

[mskitty]

We found we needed a second phone a couple of times a month so we ended up getting a Virgin Mobile one (the cheapest one they had at Target at the time). Whoever is traveling out of town takes the good phone and the cheap phone usually stays here. You have to buy $15 every quarter. $50 to buy the phone plus $60 a year is pretty reasonable. It has crappy reception outside of the metro so it works best as a dial out phone. I feel it and our AAA Plus membership are cheap piece of mind since all of our vehicles are older.

All of the other ones we looked at had too many extra charges aka they just wanted you to buy a regular phone. The other advantage is that it has Tetris on it. It works great to amuse my hubby while he is waiting in the car while I run in to a store for a bit.

MsKitty

[KrisM]

I just got a Tracfone and it's been good so far. My mom's had one for years and has had good service all around. I wanted one that had roaming and a good network coverage. I also wanted one that displayed how many minutes I had left (I used to have AT&T prepaid that didn't do that). Finally, I want one that I only have to renew once/year. It's a bit more expensive that way, but remembering to renew every 30 or 45 or 90 days gets old after a while. I've had prepaid since 2000.

Anyway, I have a Motorola phone from Radio Shack that was $9.99. It has voice dialing, which I wanted. It seems really nice.