Prepaid cell phone

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Anyone know much about prepaid cell phones?

I had a smart phone along with 3 others I provided to a GF and family members on an AT&T plan. I went in Friday for help on my phone not being able to call out. I walked in using my cane and asked for a chair and was told they don't have chairs for people that walk in because it promotes loitering. In fact I went to another AT&T store and they don't have chairs either. So I canned the one I had.

Anyway I want a prepaid regular phone (non smart phone) where I prepay for just minutes that don't expire and when they do I can either refill it or chunk the phone. The AT&T gophones if you pay by the minute the time only last 30 days from the time you activate the card regardless of how big of a card you buy which is a big waste for me.

Any ideas?
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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If you have a cane, don't they need to accommodate you because of ADA?
Sure if you want to wait till the last person getrs waited on and wait for that tperson to find a chair in the back and bring it out. Same thing happened to my mother at a different AT&T store. She waited about 15 minutetes before she gave out and gave up. If you notice none of the AT&T stores have a place to sit down.
 

spronk

FPS noob
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if you can find the right phone - sprint, boost, maybe virgin, unlocked - you can tryRingPlus Mobilethey have free (100 mins/mo) plans that are offered once every 2-3 months, or just pay the $5-20/mo depending on how much you talk/data/text. Freedompop is a similar virtual network. Both basically piggyback off a major carriers MVNOs, but their uptime is not 100% and they can go down when overwhelmed with demand so maybe not great for kids and stuff. If you have a current prepaid phone you can type your IMEI code on their "check if your phone works" link off the homepage, but I don't think ATT phones work off the sprint networks.

you can try walmart for prepaid phones though, they have all kinds of deals like $20-50/mo also target. you can ride a scooter around yeeehaw
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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I guess it depends on the walmart. The one here is AT&T GoPhones only. I guess they would be OK because you can pay 0.10 per minute prepaid but the prepay card amount is only good for 30 days after you activate it. I haven't really looked into it but the walmart here only had $40 cards which seemed like a lot of waste for 400 minutes when I don't talk that much. I'm sure there are amounts but I haven't researched it.

Radio Shack had a large selection but were out of the Tracfones already mentioned that seemed like a decent idea.

Thankfully the cane is only temporary (and at least it's a straight cane not a 4 legged one similar to a walker) but I never noticed they don't have any chairs and just flat said we don't provide them because it promotes loitering.

I have a work provided android phone but there is no verizon service here, and I just never used my AT&T android phone enough to make it worth what I paid for it. I might make 10 phone calls a month on it, 5 text messages and no data usage.

Since I've been ill and had to move back in with my parents at age 43 to help take care of me for a time I thought it would be handy to have a cheap do nothing but call phone in case I needed it in the middle of the night to call someone else in the house.

Thanks for the links and suggestions obviously there is more to it than I first thought.
 

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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almost ALL prepaid phones have expiration dates or "services" times linked to them- if your buying the minimum or low time amounts- its basically month to month or at most bi-monthly.
 

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
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I use a Tmobile prepaid as my primary phone. Minutes expired after 90 days until I had spent 100 dollars in minutes, then they last a year. The phone costs me about 50 dollars a year total now, because I don't use it much.
 

splok_sl

shitlord
57
0
Anyone know of a prepaid that handles international roaming fairly well? (ideally with not-entirely-insane rates)
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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I wound up grabbing a Go Phone from WalMart based purely on convenience. I bought the cheapest phone and time card. The phone actually isn't bad and I only use it for voice. However AT&T sends a text to tell you how much time is remaining after every call. If you make a bunch of short phone calls you wind up with 15 messages that come in one after another just spaced far enough apart you close the phone and open it to see what the message was. Everything else about it is utter shit. Maybe I need a senior citizen phone with nothing but voice.