Best/Cheapest "Pay As You Go" Phones?

[AlexRuzhyo]

The family needs a cell phone or two for the sake of being a phone. We don't need anything fancy - it's just in case the car breaks down or if the kid needs picked up. We'd rather not have a contract or pay when we can't or when we don't need to.

I know of TracPhones from their commercials. Their phones are $15~20 a pop and their pay-as-you-go rate is 120min/90s days for $20 (@DblMinutes for life, an offer with buying a phone atm).

I'm wondering if there is a better deal out there, or if there is a reason I should overlook this service. All input is appreciated.

[Cooleko]

I saw a plan that is 2 dollars a day. So if you use it it is 2 dollars and then unlimited usage for the rest of the day.

If you only want this phone for emergencies I would go with that over 2 hours for $20

[AlexRuzhyo]

Interesting option. It would be good for the car but maybe not the kid. I'll have to weigh it out.

[camdyn]

u can get straight talk phones from walmart. its $30 a month for 1000 minutes and 1000 texts. or 45 for unlimited

[Valient]

Personally I've had experience with Tracfone and H2O Wireless. Tracfone works out to be $7 a month if you get the 1 year card + 1 year additional service for $150 every two years. With the double minutes for life on your phone and their regular promotions you can get 1000 "units" for that 2 years. 1 unit = 1 minute in your home network, aka in the USA. Texting depends on the phone. Like mine it's free to receive but costs .3 units to send. My parents both have Tracfones as well and it's costs them .25 units to send and receive. My only grip about Tracfone is they only sell you phones based on your zip code and their selection can be horrible. Their selection of GSM (AT&T) phones is better then their CDMA (Verizon) but neither is stellar.

Net10 is basically the same as Tracfone just with better phone selection and pricing works out the same as a double minutes for life Tracfone but costs a little more per month to maintain the phone number.

My mom hated her Tracfone because A) it's a crappy phone, B) the CDMA service in our area sucks and C) she wanted one that could work in Finland if she got a SIM card there. She saw at Best Buy selling SIM cards for $10 so she wanted to try it out. I got a used GSM unlocked phone poped in the card and now she gets great service for $10 every 90 days, so $3.33 a month. Only problem with it is if you forget to refuel it the money gets flushed. If you setup a reminder for yourself to refuel it every 90 days you can keep the cash on it forever, assuming you don't spend more than $10 worth every 90 days. Pricing you can find here https://www.h2owirelessnow.com/pageC...php?page=plans

My recommendation would be get a Tracfone for the car as that you can just set and forget, just make a note for yourself to recharge it once every 2 years. Look at SIM card plans for for the kid like H2O as they tend to have better pricing than even contract plans if you don't mind not having a big data plan. There is more than just H2O out there and as a plus you can get any unlocked phone you want, just have to pay the full price for the phone. Other wise get a Tracfone there too, works out to about $.08 a minute to talk and a bit of a crap shoot for text.

[Not Kuno]

T-Mobile has the best plans.

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx

If you drop a hundred bucks then you get:
$100 10¢/min. 1000 minutes

None of that "every time you use the phone you get charged" bullshit. Just call when you need to. Or that "unlimited for $__" bullshit. I rarely rarely use my piece of shit phone and this is the best plan. I pay next to nothing. Everything else is retardedly more expensive.