Trac Phone

[stash]

A friend told me the other day that he and his wife each got a new trac phoneI have heard of trac phones before but really never paid any attention to them. He and his wife swear by the trac phone. They say there is no contract, it uses AT&T towers, have a signal everywhere they did when they were with AT&T, no monthly fee and more. Kind of sounds to good to be true. I would appreciate any info anyone has that uses a trac phone. Thanks

[Unicorn Rancher]

I have used TracFone in the past. It's an established MVNO and has arrangements with the big US carriers, not just AT&T. Whose network you get depends on the phone you buy.

It sounds like your friend is on a prepaid per-minute plan which is quite economical for low usage. There are even more frugal options in the MVNO space, but not off the shelf at Target & Walmart. For light users, TracFone service can be had for less than $100/year, which is cheap enough for many.

[stash]

Thanks UR - From your info, trac phone is not for me mainly based on low phone usage.

[2farnorth]

My wife and I have used Trac Fones for more than 10 years. We use them as telephone only and we aren't heavy users. My wife and I each get a $19.xx 60 min update every 90 days. (minimum required). With our current phones we get "double" minutes with each purchase. My wife has built up over 500 minutes now and I stay well over 100 available. You can buy the time cards at most chain stores or buy them on line with a credit card. There are other plans available but I have not looked into them.

Texting is okay on them, but I don't use that feature very much.

Web access is available but I don't use it.

Using the camera and getting the pics downloaded to a computer requires them to be sent via email or text which of course uses units/minutes on the system. The direct download capability has been disabled on their phones.

Their phones are usually available at "Dollar" stores at very reasonable prices.

Account service used to be great but the company got purchased a couple of years ago and getting them to answer at their 800 number has been spotty since then. Once they answer you still get good service. Normally the only time I call is if I get a new phone and need the number/minutes transferred to it.

edit: I have used it all over the east coast and south. The only place I had signal problems was in northern Maine. It went to "roaming" north of Bangor and there were a few areas of no signal.

[Oldgringo]

Mrs. Oldgringo has a Trac Phone and I'm on Straight Talk. These phones serve our purposes and are used in both locations and everywhere in between....for half of what we use to pay Verizon every month.

[Abraham]

My wife and I use a pre-paid phone from Walmart using Verizon service.

I pay $100.00 a year and that comes with a lot of minutes.

If the minutes aren't used they are rolled over in the next year.

Since I got the phone for use in case of emergencies, I almost never use it, so I've a ton of minutes.

If you're one who has a cell phone surgically attached your ear, this approach isn't for you, but if you're a normal human being it's a great way to have a rather low cost bit of emergency insurance...

[TomsTXCHL]

We had a couple of tracfones for years, Motorola V170s iirc which are very nice little flip-phones, but with useable keys and legible displays (we are "seasoned citizens"). It seems to me that ours were on AT&T and that this owed to our primary location i.e. home area.

I would always buy a year's worth of coverage and when I did that they would offer a 2nd year at a discount. They raised prices last time I did this but still the cost was <$8/mo for two years including more minutes than we could ever use.

We liked our tracfones and can recommend them, but since we spent the big bucks and went with iPhones, these have improved the quality of our lives immensely (wildly more value than just as a cellular telephone).

[Steamboat]

I know of a couple of folks that use them and have had no issues.

[stash]

Thanks for all the input. The reason I don't think tracphone will work for us is that we do not have a hard line. I am hardly on the phone but my wife is another story.To her credit she is not a chatty person but she is involved with the little library where we live and that takes up a lot of time on the phone. So, minutes could be a problem with tracphone.

[SQLGeek]

One thing I would suggest that is a low cost option for phone service is to check out Ooma. They are a Voice Over IP phone service that uses your existing high speed internet. Once you buy the equipment, all you have to pay month to month are the taxes. We did this to keep a low cost land line and after the equipment, we only pay around $4 a month. The service is excellent and we've never had an outage. Plus the nationwide calling is unlimited. The equipment runs as low as $90 if you buy refurbished.

Their site is http://www.ooma.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

[nightmare]

VOIP can be a good option if you have a solid internet connection and a backup plan for power failure, assuming you don't need the mobility of a cell phone.

The pay as you go plans are good for light usage. There are also prepaid monthly unlimited plans better for moderate and heavy users. For example, these companies all have unlimited talk & text plans for $30/month, more or less.
H2O Wireless (AT&T network)
Lycamobile (T-Mobile network)
Red Pocket (AT&T network)

They vary on the amount of data and international calls included, if those are important to you. They also have other plans if you don't need unlimited talk & text. H2O has a 5¢/min plan and uses the AT&T network. If you get good T-Mobile coverage, Lycamoble has a a 2¢/min plan. They also have a $16/month plan with 250 minutes and unlimited texts that might be good for teens.

For hardware, Amazon has a variety of basic unlocked GSM phones under $30. If you already have an unlocked GSM smart phone, you can use that but be careful about data overages.

[Dragonfighter]

We used Virgin for years. The prices started creeping up and the unlimited text and data became an issue as the girls both talked more with the keyboard than the microphone anyway; which was fine with me as that was more time the things weren't next to their brains. My and my wife's were lesser than that but we all needed new phones and when we did that, we would all have to start paying the new and higher rates putting us up around $160/mo with fees and all.

T-Mobile has a plan with unlimited talk, text and data (4G to a point then drops to 2G*). We all went from short bus phones to smart ("or smarter than me" in my case) phones which were unlocked. We ported our numbers over and our bill is about $117/mo after fees and such. It will be less for two lines.

We are cutting cable and such and just had our home # ported over to my wife's and dropped the land line. The coverage is good and between four of us family will always be able to contact someone in an emergency.

*We selected the 500MB per/month 4G and though we have had opportunity and enjoy the ability to hop on the web and check prices, get directions and all sorts of things, the closest any one of us has gotten was a touch over 400MB before the cycle started over.

[KimSig]

I use straight talk unlimited $45 plan that works out to be $42 per month with a 3 month refill. I have unlimited minutes, unlimited text/mms and 3GB of LTE high speed data. I have never had any issues with straight talk and the sim that I have run off AT&T towers. You can choose a T-Mobile sim or AT&T Sim. Straight talk is owned by tracfone who is owned by America Movil which is a Carlos Slim venture. AIO is AT&T prepaid MVNO which just bought out Criket. You will get better latency on Data with Criket / AIO but your speeds are capped at 8 Mbps

[cb1000rider]

I use ST too. I've also used Virgin. Both are simply pre-paids on major carriers - Virgin: Sprint. ST: T-mobile and AT&T (depends on which SIM).

It's an awesome lesson in how major carriers have screwed up. I was a sprint customer for literally 10 years. Eventually they got me locked into having to change my plan to upgrade to a reasonably modern phone. Two phones - voice / data would have run me about $140 a month. Significantly less if I was a "new" customer. Literally, I told retention that I'd be "reasonable" but expect 2 modern phones (I'm willing to pay for completely) and a phone bill of <= $100/month or I quit. They let me quit.

So I get sprint service through pre-paid for ~$80 month. Some middle man keeps Sprints profits and they lose a direct customer.

I found Straight Talk (AT&T) to be better coverage and service where I am, so I switched to that. I used both T-mobile and AT&T sims.

Down side: If you EVER have to talk to support, expect the worst service you've ever experienced in your life. Support is out of India, wait times are extremely excessive, and generally if they can't solve your problem, you have to start over and try someone else. Actually getting relief on ST's screw ups, I had to get corporate attention through form complaints to the FCC/BBB. If you don't need service, they're the best deal running... I don't know why everyone doesn't do pre-paid.

[RoyGBiv]

TMobile has several very good prepaid and monthly-no-contract plans. You can get a monthly no contract plan for as little as $30, IIRC, with unlimited calls and text, but with limited data. I had an unlimited everything plan from them for $50/month, no contract. They throttled (reduced from 4G to 2G) the data speed after 500MB, but for me that was ok since I'm almost always on WiFi. I rarely even came close ..