Anyone familiar with prepaid "Trac" type phones?

[Kenneth in Texas]

Might want to see if Virgin Mobile works where your at by going to their web site. I use them and get 400 minutes for $20 each month, I just call their 800# with a credit card and get my minutes each month. Phone are cheap too. Either way, Ive found none cheaper that works.

 

[Gunny]

You might want to check into a Verizon pre-paid. I've had Trac phones and ran into a lot of dead areas where the phone was useless. Someone told me that Straight Talk used Verizon towers, so I tried one of them, but even with that one I would run into places where I couldn't get or send a call (if the wife was with me, she'd use her regular Verizon phone and had no problems, so I dropped them.

Finally went with the $12.88 pre-paid Verizon version, it works anywhere that has Verizon service, and they do have the biggest coverage area. I buy my minutes online, $30 gets me three months and since I don't use the phone much at all, I never run out of minutes, I run out of time, but I have a phone if I need it for $10 a month.

They charge .99 per day that you use the phone, talking is .10 per minute, but if you're talking to another Verizon customer, the talking is free, but they still deduct the .99 on the first call of the day.

 

[Bird]

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.

My wife has a T-Mobile smart phone that our daughter provides on their family plan. And I have a Samsung flip phone AT&T GOPHONE. My calls are 10 cents a minute and instead of $100 for the year, I add $25 every 3 months (total cost of $27.57 each time). And of course if you refill before it expires, the minutes carry over. I currently have a balance of $358.52.:laughing: As you may guess, I don't use my cell phone very much.

 

[sal64]

i have a trac phone it works good for me i get the 1yr plan 800 minutes about $104. per yr. i just got my daughter this phone https://republicwireless.com/ $179 for the phone $10 dollars a mnth unlimited talk and text.

 

[Oaktree]

. 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.

Still do. I believe there is a card good for 1 year, but most are for 90 days.

I have very little need for a cellphone, but there are times one is handy and for extremely light users such as myself it's the way to go. I don't know who they use for a carrier here, but coverage seems to be OK. Just got the $15 flip phone...don't need aps, camera or the ablility to send text messages so it's fine.

 

[Scrambler82]

I used Trac Phone for a long while and yes in the northeast it worked well but sometimes a little scratchy, complaints only on the person I was talking to.
Here in Southern California the Trac Phone worked less than acceptable in all areas. I got calls but almost everyone couldn't hear me well.

I switched to AT&T and have just about perfect communications, really nice but my cost jumped 10 fold.