Cell phone advice

[tvodrd]

I pay ~$17/mo for my landline, and 5 cents/min for long distance. (6 cents/min instate.) I could knock down things by ~$5 by going "measured rate" for local calls. Last time I checked, local line was good for ~15kBs internet. (I have $60/mo cable.)

Thing is I only make a couple local calls a month, and a LD every couple months! Today I tried to make a LD call to dat2zip and got a recording that my LD service was "out of service" or similar!

What sort of cellular plan can I switch to, and what handset that I can keep switched-off or base-stationed for the 5-6 incoming calls I get/month?? :shrug:

I just don't do that much landline communication from home, and a cell might be a better option? Help!

Larry

 

[Mike Painter]

I use Pioneer for long distance. If you pay online they don't charge anything for the basic rate and you can even get it a couple short calls.
If you use a cell a lot then you first need to find what works well in your area. Then find out what your friends use. Cell to Cell on the same system is free for a lot of companies.
Verison would have been my first choice for my second plan (AT&T sucks around here and customer service is a joke - They and Cingular who they merged with are both at the bottom.) I went with Sprint because of a great price.

If occasional use Tracphone seems to have the best pay as you go plan. It gets relatively cheap if you plan carefully and go with yearly contracts. I was paying about $10.00 a month with all the time I needed until The Girl Friend came along. She lived in San Diego at the time.

 

[K A]

One of the prepaid phones sounds like it will be best. But which one is the question. They all have different requirements/coverage/etc.

I started off with TracFone. You could buy a yearly card which keeps the phone active for 1 year (so you don't have to refill it month to month) and gave you like 150 "minutes" for about $100. The price of the phone and that card would probably put you around $150 (depending on the phone you get), but divided out across 12 months only puts it like $12.50/month. The next year would be lower since buying the phone would be a one time cost.

It worked fine for me at the time since I really only wanted it for emergencies or the quick phone call.

Remember Tracfone is just one option for prepaid phones. There are other carriers out there. Remember to read the fine print on all of them! Most of them require you add a new card every 30days or up to 90 days to keep the phone active if they don't have some kind of yearly option available.

 

[paulr]

Cheapest prepaid monthly plan I know of for very infrequent users is virgin mobile, you have to add $20 every 3 months or they disable the phone, but they keep the account active up to 2 months (i.e. as soon as you add $20 you can use the phone again and keep your old balance) after the 3 months run out. So in principle you could put in $20 every 5 months or $4/month. The per-minute charge is a bit steep, 25 cents/ minute starting from when you push "send" (rather than the usual starting when the other person answers) but no charge if nobody answers. Also you get free voice mail with the phone: you burn airtime if you check voicemail from the cell phone, but you can also check it from your landline. It's almost worth it just to have a spare voicemail number.

Virgin uses the Sprint network whose coverage is not always the greatest, and it is on 1800 mhz which means it doesn't reach into buildings as well as the 800mhz phones do.

What I want most of all is a handset that runs on AA cells instead of some (*&(&$(%(!#*$ proprietary lithium ion cell. There was a "concept phone" last year that ran on a single Eneloop but they never marketed it.

 

[Sigman]

L...PM sent.

 

[tvodrd]

Thanks guys!

PM replied, Sig. Paul, I am going to investigate your suggestion!

Larry