My parents are still able to drive, go shopping, eat out, and so on. But, there have been a couple moments when the car broke down. Or, one was out, and the other didn't know why it was taking so long. I suggested they get a cell phone. The reply was that we don't have the money to support another monthly bill.
I've heard of phones where you buy the minutes in advance. Has anyone used such a phone, and which brand, where bought, etc? If it was twenty bucks or so, I'd buy the phone outright, and give it to them as a gift.
I have little need for a cell phone but have a Tracfone. Wife had bought it for her emergency use but gave it to me when son put her on his family plan which probably costs him $20 month.
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You can get into a years plan for $99 which includes minutes. Cost per minute might be as much as a quarter but if you use as little as I do, it is a bargain and when you renew, they roll the minutes over. I keep the phone in the car or carry it when out in the woods. Never keep it on for incoming calls and now have 1,200 minutes I don't know what to do with and need to renew in Oct. Still a very cheap insurance option.
You can buy a pay as you go phone at Wal Mart for around $30. As long as they don't use it much it will not cost too much. The phone card you buy to load minute onto the phone expires at some point after it is activated so if you buy 30 minutes and don't use all those minutes within that time frame they will expire.
We have a Tracfone that my wife carries. I have seen them on sale for less than $15.oo and you can buy minutes in any increment of 30 minutes at a time that last for 90 days before you have to add minutes. I add the minutes on line with a credit card. All you need is the serial number of the phone. I keep this in a text file so when needed, I copy and paste it to the order form on the net. Unused minutes are rolled over every 90 days. They email me special offers to buy extra time and notify me by Email a week or more prior to the expiration date of the current minutes that are left on the phone. We don't give the number out so as to not be bothered with calls. We carry it because of health reasons and to call AAA if required. It doesn't take pictures or any thing else that I'm aware of, but don't have any use for any other services either.
My personal opinion is that this is as simple as you need and no more complicated than need be.
Here's an even better way, IMO. Procure a used cellphone; one that you upgraded and tossed in a drawer. If you don't have any, maybe another friend or relative does. You need one that will take a SIM card and is or can be unlocked.
Now buy a pre-paid SIM card.
I've done this when travelling overseas to the UK and to China. Just walk into a local cell phone store and buy a prepaid SIM card with $20 worth of calls. Works great and much cheaper paying your domestic carriers International roaming rates.
I have a cell phone which costs me $11.40 per month. This low cost plan includes a certain amount of air time.
I carry it only for a possible emergency; to phone in from scene of an accident etc. or if I had a heart attack etc. It can be recharged and or used from my vehicle.
Since the monthly bill is paid on time (which is done by standing payment order, so it is ALWAYS paid as due) unused air time accumulates. I now have some $200+ of unused air time! And/or I can lend the phone to a visiting relative and tell them to call if they get lost etc.
Day air time with this plan cost 35 cents/min. Evening/night/ weekend air time costs 5 cents/min. But as mentioned I hardly ever use it. My son got the used phone quite cheap as a replacement last year when the cell phone company changed from analog to digital.
Recommend you look for some plan along the above lines. Understand that there are plans where you buy minutes and/or by means of a card.
I have a Jitterbug. That is a great phone for old farts like me who don't like talking on the phone. You can buy minutes a year at a time for about $100 or there are other cheaper per minute plans. It is a toll free call to and from anywhere in the CONUS (the numbers are WATS) there is all sorts of operator assistance, up to including one model that is "one button". The one I have is the regular phone but it has a big enough display that you can see it without your glasses and big buttons. It does speaker phone too. The best thing for me, you can update your directory online and it syncs with the phone the next time you turn it on. The operator will do it for you too if you don't want to fool with it.
We have phones with Virgin that run $5 a month each at $.18 a minute or about 27 minutes a month. Any un-used minutes carry over to the next month. We gave them a CC #'s and they "top up" the account for $15 every 90 days or before if you run out of minutes. We paid for our phones but received credit for the purchase price in minutes on the 1st month. The phones and service have been flawless for the last 2 years. Haven't checked lately so I'm not sure if this plan is still available.
You can get a Tracfone for $15, but it comes with only 10 minutes.
Tracfone uses the AT&T system, so your coverage area should be the same.
I use a prepaid phone from Alltel (now Verizon Wireless) because it works well here and AT&T doesn't. I got a phone with a camera. Sometimes it's nice to have a camera with you. With many Motorola phones you can get software to transfer the pictures directly to your computer, rather than having to email them (25 cents each).
BTW, my spell checker thinks "Tracfone" should be "Racoon".
The best quality and least expensive prepaid service is PagePlus. As low as $2.50/month, and the minutes cost from 6 cents to 12 cents (actually a bit less since refills are sold at a discount). You need to add a minimum of $10 every four months.
PagePlus uses Verizon's network which means it has excellent coverage. If you have Verizon service in your area, it's great. You can roam onto non-Verizon networks for an extra charge so it works almost everywhere (this is _not_ the case with some prepaid services such as Virgin, which do not allow roaming off their native network (Sprint for Virgin)). Most people wanting an emergency phone would like it to work outside urban areas.
If you buy from PagePlus directly, they offer a few refurbished phones for low prices. Or you can use any phone that was previously used on Verizon, so you should be able to pick one up on craigslist for a low price, or for free from friends or relatives.
The best web site for information is "
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". When selecting a prepaid plan pay careful attention to the minimum monthly cost (how often you must add money, and how much you need to add). Avoid Tracfone, Virgin, Verizon InPulse, AT&T GoPhone, Boost, Jitterbug, Net10, and Only1 Mobile. Basically, for an emergency phone, look for plans where you're on the Verizon or AT&T network, and the minimum cost is under $3/month.
T-Mobile can be a really good deal, _if_ you have decent T-Mobile coverage in your area. Order a phone and $100 of airtime, and subsequent airtime purchases are good for 365 days. So you could add $10 and it would keep the phone on for a year, at a net cost of $0.83/month (less because you can get airtime at a discount).
Last week PagePlus also started offering unlimited voice, unlimited texts, and 20MB/data per month for $39.95 (actual discounted cost is about $34 a month). This is an amazingly good deal.
Remember that with prepaid there are no free phones. You buy phones on your own. But the savings can more than make up for it.
Avoid Virgin Mobile at all costs. The problem is that you can only use Sprint's network. There is no roaming at all, even at extra cost. Sprint's network is very limited, especially outside urban areas.
Not really, you can activate a CDMA phone that was previously on Verizon, on PagePlus for about $6.
T-Mobile will sell you a SIM card for an unlocked (or T-Mobile) GSM phone for about $6 as well.
Yes, this is the best way to go when spending time in one country. For multiple countries there are SIM cards with higher per minute costs, but that work in most GSM countries.
BTW, it isn't always as simple as "walking into a store and buying a card." I used to buy SIM cards in Taiwan that way, then the government decided that criminals were using those cards, and now allows the cards only to be sold at the carrier's own stores, with a lot of hassle (two forms of ID so bring your driver's license as well as passport.
If you are low income (retired?) they will send you a free phone and about 50 minutes/month... FREE! My only guess is that they make money on all the people who go over the minutes and buy more at 15 or 20 cents a minute.
My wife and I rarely use cellphones but we each have a pre-paid card from Cingular, now AT&T. The phones were about $40 a few years ago and it costs $100 prepaid per year. Any day that you use it, there's a $1.00 connect fee for the whole day plus $0.10 per minute talk time. You can re-charge the dollars any time if you use them up before the year is out.
If you sign up for another year at $100, you roll over any unused amount. My wife has about $270 in credit and I have about $180. So essentially it costs $8.33 per month per phone for emergencies. The problem is that due to low usage, we have trouble remembering to keep them charged.
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