disposible cell phones

[bdoyledimou]

I just visited the website this morning. Phones as low as $14.99 - but no mention of free minutes - is this a special promotion at certain times of the year? They also mention free ground shipping on orders over 19.99 - but didn't see if it pertained to Canada or not. Any insights ??

$14.99 phones will come with 150 minutes. but i don't think they will ship the phones to Canada.

 

[BackSlash3]

What I did was buy 2 AT&T GoPhones. I tried Tracfone/Net10 because they have free long distance to Canada (it was poor quality) but ended up ditching it after it became clear that it was impossible to top it up or keep it from expiring in Canada.

AT&T will recharge with a Canadian credit card online, the only requirement is that you need to add $25 every 90 days or $100/365 days to keep the account active. On my first trip I bought 2 and signed up for the $1/day unlimited calling to AT&T customers (the other gophone) so I had 2 phones that could call each other for $2/day and you don't get charged on days where you don't make a call.

I kept 1 active so on any trip to the US (or Mexico for some reason) I have a contact number that I know before I leave so I can give people a way to reach me, unlike if I had to activate or reactivate on every trip.

I just bought an unlocked Motorola Q9 on Tigerdirect.ca for $100 so I have a relatively cheap phone with a textable keyboard.

 

[elainesj]

well, after a ton of research on this site and many others, I finally came up with a solution that I think will work for me.

My needs:

- 2 phones (for dh and me)
- reasonably cheap calls between the 2 phones, will probably use 10-15 calls/texts a day.
- small amount of data access (to check lines LOL!!)
- something I can upkeep for 10 days in January when in Florida, and 1-2 weekends a month between May and October when I plan to visit Cedar Point regularly (season passes!!!)

Originally I was planning to do what most other people here do and get the net 10 phones. They were good because:
- same cost to call/text Canada. I expect to do this very occassionally for a minute or two here and there.
- cheap, relatively decent phones with web browsing capabilities (this was HARD to find. Most with web browsers were $$)
- simple plan - 10 cents for text, talk, and web. it was fairly comparable to the daily access fee other plans had for the amount of usage I expect. (10 mins or so a day)
- free activation whenever you let the plan lapse (just have to get new numbers)

Then I started looking at T-mobile plans and they worked out better for me. I have a Blackberry and a Sony Ericsson tied with Rogers. Both are GSM phones.
I spent $20 to unlock the Sony Ericsson and 1 cent to unlock the Blackberry.

- it cost a bit more to unlock the phones but the Sony Ericsson is my primary camera (it's just as good as a point and shoot) and it means I can carry less devices. Plus it has wifi for my trips to Ohio. The blackberry is much better for texting, is lighter, and so much easier to surf with. Buying any US phones with the capabilities of my two Cdn phones would have cost a lot more and leave us with more devices to worry about. ymmv.

Unlocking did mean I had to do some slight adjustments to my phone's internet settings and that took me a few minutes to figure out. but it wasn't too complicated. tmobile reps had no clue though.

Other advantages of t-mobile

- $1.49 web daypass with 24 hr unlimited data. I can do with less - but it's always nice to have more.
- 10 cents per call (with the $100 prepaid card - good for 1 year)
- same cost to send and receive texts in both Canada and US to both Canada and US phone numbers
- calls to and from Canada are a bit more, but reasonable. e.g. 50 cents to call Canada from the US.

all in all, I'm probably spending just a little more to unlock my phones and go with t-mobile vs net10...but for me the advantages of carrying fewer devices and having much better quality devices wins out.

I think if you're just looking for limited talk and text, a cheap net10 is good. note that for phones with a full qwerty keyboard is going to cost more. if data is important as well as a qwerty keyboard, then try unlocking your own phone (if it's a GSM phone - not all phones will work in the US and even then you're limited to certain carriers).

E

 

[tgropp]

Last Dec while in the states I purchased a net 10 phone for our Christmas vacation. It cost $34.00 for an LG phone and 200 minutes. I activated it and it came up at 210 minutes and it was good for 3 months. We let our son.daughter in law phone home when they arrived in Florida and on Christmas morning., I phoned family members and we still have 77 minutes left on it. We also got 3 wrong number phone calls as I had registered it as being an Orlando phone number. Funny, we got a recorded message that someone had missed some payments and they would be in trouble if they did not meet them.
Anyway when I get home and look at Net 10's website, I notice some long distance options. We are going on a Caribbean cruise in Feb and so I phoned them and asked them if the phone would work in San Juan, peuerto Rico. They said that it would work there as well as the U.S Virgin Islands so we can use it in St Croix also. This phone was a great deal and when we phoned home, everyone told us how well they could here us.

 

[alohamom]

Can someone who has purchased a Net10 clarify for me-you purchase the phone, activate and use in the US and then if you dont use the minutes up you can use it again the next time you are in the US so long as the time period doesnt expire (think I saw 90 days). If the time period expires you need to re-activate you phone at an extra cost and may be assigned a new number-do I have that correct? Or are you able to keep the phone number and activation if you dont use up your minutes? Thanks in advance...

 

[alohamom]

Can someone who has purchased a Net10 clarify for me-you purchase the phone, activate and use in the US and then if you dont use the minutes up you can use it again the next time you are in the US so long as the time period doesnt expire (think I saw 90 days). If the time period expires you need to re-activate you phone at an extra cost and may be assigned a new number-do I have that correct? Or are you able to keep the phone number and activation if you dont use up your minutes? Thanks in advance...

 

[tgropp]

Can someone who has purchased a Net10 clarify for me-you purchase the phone, activate and use in the US and then if you dont use the minutes up you can use it again the next time you are in the US so long as the time period doesnt expire (think I saw 90 days). If the time period expires you need to re-activate you phone at an extra cost and may be assigned a new number-do I have that correct? Or are you able to keep the phone number and activation if you dont use up your minutes? Thanks in advance...

From what the salesperson told me at Walmart, if it does expire , it can be re-activated and you may have to get a new number. The phones minutes are good for 90 days, regardless how many times you go to the states and come home. It is good in all the states including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

 

[iluvflorida]

I bought a Trac-Phone at Walmart in US 3 yrs ago and still use it and the same number. Go to states frequently so just make sure I top up by adding minutes from a card which adds 90 service days. As long as my service days do not expire the minutes never leave. I understand that even if I let the service days expire I have 6 months before I lose the number and all I have to do is buy another time card. They are cheap $9.88 at Walmart which gives double minutes. They work great

 

[North7]

Can someone who has purchased a Net10 clarify for me-you purchase the phone, activate and use in the US and then if you dont use the minutes up you can use it again the next time you are in the US so long as the time period doesnt expire (think I saw 90 days). If the time period expires you need to re-activate you phone at an extra cost and may be assigned a new number-do I have that correct? Or are you able to keep the phone number and activation if you dont use up your minutes? Thanks in advance...

If your time period expires, you will lose any minutes you had left. There is no cost to reactivate it other than purchasing more minutes.

I have 2 Net10 phones. They were last used in August and the time expired in September. I just reactived one of them last week. I've had these phones about 3 years and have reactivated them many times and have always received the same phone number.

Sometimes I'll buy an extra prepaid card so I'll have it when I want to reactivate the phone, but most of the time I just purchase it online from the Net10 website. I normally buy the $30 prepaid card which is good for 300 minutes and 60 days of service.

 

[TagsMissy]

we use tmobile (we dumped at&t under less than a year due to hating the network, service and just other customer service issues.) my phone was cheap, or if you have an unlocked phone their sim card is free ((or was at the time)). Hubby just puts the card in his unlocked phone... for me it depends on what I am doing since we have android phones--at WDW I like to lock up my phone and just carry my small tmobile phone in my pocket. once you put 100$ on it the minutes roll over year to year, all you need to do is add 10$ before the year is up once you add on $100 and your number isn't constantly changing and you get bonus minutes.

You'll find $30 here and $30 there on the Net10 phones add up and you are constantly losing minutes/getting new numbers.