Anyone familiar with prepaid "Trac" type phones?

[Toyboy]

So you buy the minutes cards at Walmart or whatever or do you have to call in somewhere? Do the minutes roll over to future months or just expire?

The minutes card has a scratch off on the back like some lottery tickets. Under the scratch off is a 10-12? digit code you enter into your phone. You get a text message reply that you've updated your minutes. Minutes roll over it's the days that will expire. Think of it as you have 90 days to use your minuted before you need to add another 90 days unless you add the 1 year service card.. Sometimes I burn a lot of minutes texting our grand kids ( that's how kids communicate there days). I have a triple min phone and wife has a dbl min phone. I always get the 200 + triple min card and wife does well w/60 + double min card.

 

[nybirdman]

We have had them for 4 years;work well in our area.I buy the one year plan and seldom run out of "minutes".Last one I purchased has Blu-tooth and Wi-Fi but is not an Android phone.They can be purchased for as little as $10.00.One year plan is about $100.00,cheap enough.

 

[reb]

I bought my tracfone at wally world and my wife's online from tracfone. The online price was lower. The wally world salesman told me that tracfone is really more expensive than other options if you use the phone regularly. For us it is the least expensive way to go because we use them only when away from home. We used another company for a couple of years, on a pay-as-you-go plan. We find the coverage better than the other because tracfone has no towers, but deals with other companies for service. The phone occasionally tells us we are roaming, but there is no additional charge. As I recall the tracfone website says our phones are not usable in our zip code, but they work fine.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

my wife uses AT&T GOPHONE which is similar. $100 refill is good for a year. I just bought a cheap smartphone for her to use with it so she could text easier.

 

[aczlan]

I have been happy with Page Plus cellular. You get a phone, cheap ones abound, and then register and buy minutes online. I currently get $25 worth of minutes that last for 3 or 4 months, cost is about 5 or 6 cents per minute. The value isn't lost after the months expire if you renew. They have different programs, and I think one of them would be your cheapest solution. Here, they use Verizon as the carrier. I used to use Virgin, but they cost too costly for me. I seldom use a cell phone, but when I do, I need it!

I also use Page Plus. We have 2 phones with the "$29.99 plan" (1200 minutes, 3000 texts and 500MB of data, good for one month). That is adequate for my smartphone and my wife's flip phone. It runs on the Verizon network, so we have decent coverage everywhere we have gone.
In the near future, we may switch to Puppy Wireless (also on the Verizon network), but I am waiting until they offer 4G so I can keep my phone.

Aaron Z

 

[flyerdan]

I've had a Tracfone exclusively for the past several years since the second, and final time a truck took out the landline. If you set up an account on their website, you can buy minutes/airtime online and it adds to the phone instantly, no entering numbers. They also offer deals when airtime renewal comes up, so you might save a bit on that as well. Minutes do roll over, and you can get up to two years airtime activation if you really hate to fiddle with the details. Granted, they aren't as cheap as some plans if you use it a lot, but if you view a phone as a necessary evil and you use it as such it can be a money saver. Bear in mind that it eats minutes whether you make or receive the call, so the meter is always running when in use.

 

[Ken]

Ken, They probably don't have any phone/data cables near your offered land.

When the telephone co. put in my phone and DSL they commented my back fence was the end of the line in distance DSl could be run without amplifiers .

Now can go to back of field where no houses for 2 miles and have 5 bars of signal it is a rolling hill top type of area.

ken

 

[Toyboy]

I have the LG 306g phone, and ebay finally has some of the hard to find soft/jelly cases for them if anyone that has this model is interested.

 

[Fossil Farm]

As said above, just go to their website TracFone Wireless | Prepaid Cell Phone | Pay As You Go | No Contract Cell Phone and you can buy a phone, add minutes, etc. You can get a better idea of how it works. Around here, it used the Verizon network. Had one in the year 2000. Wasn't a bad deal at the time when minutes were quite expensive with the regular carriers. At that time you had to buy "active" minutes every 3 months or so to keep the phone usable, that may have changed by now.

 

[MarkF48]

Wife and I both have TracFones bought at Walmart for about $10 and we each have one year plans. Where you purchase the phone may make a difference in the area code that is assigned to the number you get, so it may be best to try to get one in the area where the phone will be most used. There's a good forum regarding cell phones that has been helpful for a few questions I had. Below is a link to the one I had regarding phone area codes...
Zip Codes, Area Codes, and What You Get(?)