anyone know anything about disposable cell phones?

[Briar Rose 7457]

my 10 and 12 year old dd's will be doing a bit of travelling away from home.

last summer I gave the older dd a prepaid calling card to use when she wanted to call home. but I've heard they have disposable cell phones now, and I think that might be easier than trying to find a phone and using the card.

I don't want to give either dd a cell phone with unlimited minutes, though. I'm afraid they could run up a big bill for me. and I don't want to worry about them losing the phone.


can anyone suggest cheap options/altenratives?

 

[Briar Rose 7457]

sorry, this belongs on the CB -- can a moderator move it please?

 

[emmagata]

Check Wal-Mart for the Tracfone. It's a prepaid phone that can have more minutes added.

http://www.tracfone.com/home_page.jsp?b=i

 

[CarolMN]

I think you will find it much less expensive to give your daughters the prepaid phone cards. We bought my 17 year old neice a TracFone for Christmas, so I did a bit of research. Her parents were worried about her ability to "regulate" her phone use and the prepaid model seemed to fit the bill. There were other prepaid phones that seemed to be a better deal than TracFone, but the TracFone was the only one that had coverage where she lived. You'll need to make sure that whatever you purchase will work in the area that your daughters plan to visit.

Anyway, you have to buy the phone. That's at least $80 right there. Then you have to buy the cards. Even when you find a "deal" on the card, you are still talking at least 25 cents per minute. I found a 150 minute card at WalMart for $38 plus tax. The less expensive cards only have a few minutes and the rate per minute is even higher than 25 cents a minute.

To me, the prepaid cell phones are really expensive - unless you really need to be anonymous for some reason, LOL or don't have any other choices. Prepaid phone cards can be had for as little as 4 cents a minute.

Best wishes!

 

[Blondie]

We have a TracFone, and it works fine for us. We bought it to keep in the car, and it's only used in case of an emergency, or if we leave one of our sons home while I am running an errand, they can call me, or I can call them. It's not for fun calls to just see what's up with friends, etc.

If you don't use all your minutes, when it comes time to renew, you can roll over whatever you haven't used. We always carry at least 40 minutes over into the next cycle.

One of the good things about the TracFone is there is no credit checks, not hookup waits, no contracts, no sales rep calls, etc.

You buy the phone, you buy your minutes, and you're done.

Oh, and you can find the TracFones for as little as $60.00 down here.

 

[Wishydoo]

We got our TracFones on sale for $40.00, and sometimes they have had major sales on them for just $10.00!

We need to buy minutes every other month to keep it activated, and they do roll over to the next month. For ours we can buy as little as a 7 minute card to keep it activated.

I never use mine, but DH uses his. I have about 600 minutes on mine now, lol.

*ooops...I think I meant a $7.00 card...

 

[Lynn CC]

I got DS a Verizon Wireless Free UP Phone. You buy the minutes upfront and then add to them as needed.. It was great until he lost the phone in the ocean!