Pre Paid Cell Phone Help...

[Casey]

My mother-in-law needs a prepaid cell phone for Christmas...she doesnt really want one but she was just in an accident and had no way to get a hold of anyone so we are making her have one....she will rarely use it...probably stuff it in her glove box ONLY for emergencies (until she realizes how conveinent cell phones really are..)
I have been looking around but there are so many pros and cons to each brand....anyone have a plan where the phone is cheap, the minutes are cheap, and the minutes don't run out in 1 month....also she is not internet savy, so she would have to go to a store, or call to reload her minutes....thanks!

 

[anarkust]

http://www.t-mobile.com/prepaid/overview.asp

Bought 2 of these Nokia 6010's from hsn.com thru spoofee FAR earlier in the summer. I love em. The more cumulative minutes you buy, the longer till they expire.

Gabriel

 

[jasejase123]

Virgin Mobile is also a decent system and good for the value.

 

[Heidi Kickhouse]

My family uses the Trac-Phone systems

When we buy 100 minutes at a time, it works out to be about three cents a minute. (But I bought my hubby the Virgin one for pretty cheap on BF at BB; won't get tested until after 12/25...)

 

[WadeTheWise]

I have been using Virgin Mobile for about 2 years now, and for my purposes it's really great. We got a phone for my grandma for similar reasons, its good to have an emergency phone. The problem is she rarely carries it with her, and if anything ever goes wrong with it she's calling us <on her house phone of course> to have someone come fix it.

As for the phone service though, it is really nice. Minimum requirements for keeping the phone active is put $20 in the account every three months. Minutes are relatively expensive at $.25 a minute, but if you don't use it much it's better than $30 a month when you wont use it much.

As for a phone, they have several low end phones that you can buy for under 50 bucks. I don't know if they still have a phone called 'The Party Animal' but I had that one and I used it for 2 years until i got a little better one for $20 on BF.

Coverage isn't great, they use the Sprint PCS network. You can check coverage in your area by clicking on this link:

http://virginmobileusa.com/coverage/prepareCoverage.do

That's what I know. Hope it helps.