[mamamilkers]

I need to get a new cell phone and plan and am wondering if anyone has advice as to going about getting the best deal on one. It will be the only phone I use (no land line) so I want to try and get lots of minutes without paying too much

Thoughts?

 

[MCsMom]

We use a pre-paid card 'plan' from T-Moble. We really like it, it is the same kind we used in Europe for years with no land-line. You pay for what you use when you use it. If you like you can keep a 'spare' card in your wallet to make sure you don't run out. We had a contract for one year for X minutes a month, we found it to be very wasteful and expensive because some months we hardly used it and others we went way over and then were harged expensive per-minute charges for going over.

 

[MeghansDad]

my wife has prepaided from cingular. She doenst use alot of minutes and that saves us alot of money by only paying for what she uses.

I have a fair and flexible plan from sprint. starts at 29.99 for 200 minutes with national long distance. every 100 minutes over is 5.00 more. so some months i spend a bit more some i only spend 29.99

I honestly thing prepaid is the better deal as your only being charged for what you use. Down side to prepay is that you are required to purchase minutes at specified monthly intervials in order to keep your phone active. It can be reactivated if by some chance its turned off but you will be reassigned a new phone number.

You really have to determine your usage to decide whats teh better route

 

[MaddieMay]

We don't have a land line either and haven't for over a year. We use Cingular as it's nationwide and we do a lot of traveling (and recently, moving). We pay $80.00 a month (taxes and fees included) for two lines and I *think* 1300-1500 minutes, can't remember exactly. Includes call waiting, caller id, and a bunch of other features we never use (not text messaging, but we don't use that anyways). I cringe when I think of $80.00 a month, but we use a lot of minutes as we're close to our families and talk to them A LOT. The nice part is, Cingular does do rollover, so we have never been charged for going over our minutes. Some months we go over, others we go under, but we never have to worry about it. Also, if your friends/family are in Cingular's network (none of ours are, hence the reason we had to get so many minutes), you talk free all the time.

I'm definitely not trying to sell you on Cingular, but rather compare different companies, prices, and features and decide what is best for you.

I hate the fact that we are so reliant on cell phones and we are paying almost $1,000 a year on them, I feel so mainstream in that regard. On the flip side, they are so nice to use in emergencies and you can't put a price on keeping in touch (well, I guess $1,000 a year

).

 

[~PurityLake~]

We use a prepay cell phone through Cellular One. We usually only put $50 on it at a time, because that's all we can afford at once. That buys us 300 minutes that are good if used within 3 months. If close to the end of the 3 months, the minutes aren't used, all you have to do is add more minutes and the old minutes carry over for another 3 months. You can add $10, $20, whatever you want. The more you buy at once, the lower the per minute rate is.
This works well for us, because we don't have to sign any contract and we only use the cell phone for emergencies and we keep it in the car. Since I'm due in 3 days, it's nice to know that if I'm out and about, and go into labor, I can call hubby right away.

 

[2busy2clean]

The first thing you need to find out, is what company covers your house. My cousin was with one company that decided to quit using the cell phone tower that transmitted to thier house. She was ticked! When we moved out here, we discovered that our then cell phone company didn't cover any of the area we are moving too.
Currently, we are reasonably happy with verizon. However we didn't like Sprint at all. (they didn't cover the country like we expected them too.)

 

[AprilDaisy]

We have a plan with Cingular for like 450 minutes a month on two phones at about $60 a month. We called around to our friends and family...asking what phone companies they use. 99% of them had Cingular too. That gave us free mobile to mobile. We also have lots of minutes for the weekend and use that time to call family for those really long "we miss you" conversations. Other than that, we don't really use the phone too much in our daily lives.

I want to point out a couple of things. One, you can adjust your plan (more minutes, less minutes, adding a line, etc.) once you get service. We adjusted our plan several times before finding the one that works for us (meaning we paid more a month for more minutes til we saw our actual usage) and two, ask about specials...even ones not listed online or on tv. My final plan is a special that was going on last christmas...and it was still in effect in spring, lol.

I hope this helps some...
April
intuitive medium