Prepaid cell plans

[sarahbug79]

I can't wait to ditch tmobile. I have a contract until February but it might be cheaper to pay the cancelation fee and move to straight talk. We have 3 lines on tmobile two will need unlimited minutes. The third is not used but it belongs to my moms vacation home it's basically holding the phone number. What carrier has the cheapest plan? Basically doesn't need minutes, text or data.

 

[RitaE]

If you don't need a phone at all and just want to preserve the phone number, right now Google Voice is free of monthly charges. US and Canada calls are free and international rates are low. They haven't announced whether it will remain free in 2013 but I suspect (hope) it will. You can port a phone number into Google Voice from a cell phone plan. That's what we did with our old landline phone number that we had owned for about 15 years.

https://accounts.google.com/Service...lowup=https://www.google.com/voice&ltmpl=open

You can set it to simultaneously ring any other phone, including one or more cell phones. So when people call my old landline number it gets forwarded to me on my cell phone and they never know the difference. It has voicemail and call blocking. The best part of that call blocking is you can opt in to have their list of known telemarketing numbers automatically blocked. You can also set it to transcribe your voicemails and send them to you in an email.

It you purchase an Obihai device then you can also use it like a house phone too.

http://www.obihai.com

Otherwise the cheapest cell plan that I know of is the PagePlus $10 card. You have to buy a phone (you can get a used one from EBAY or Amazon). Then the $10 plan gives you 100 minutes that expire every 4 months. There's also a 50 cent monthly fee.

 

[sarahbug79]

Thanks I will look into google voice. When they vacation there a few times a year they always have their cell so it's a waste of money to have a home phone but have had that number and didn't want to give it up.

 

[C-CMom]

Not to beat the price listed above, but I pay $25 every 3 months for ATT Go Phone. If you don't want to reload that often, you can also do $100 for year.

 

[scrapquitler]

Thanks I will look into google voice. When they vacation there a few times a year they always have their cell so it's a waste of money to have a home phone but have had that number and didn't want to give it up.

Not to be difficult, but have you checked with the phone company to see if that landline can have a metered plan? Our vacaction home is in a rural area of Vermont, and we are able to get a metered plan where we have to pay by the minute for all local calls above a certain amount (60 minutes per month, maybe?, and the one time we went over, I found out that the excess per minute charge is like 2 cents per minute, so no big deal!) but that plan costs only $22. and change (even after all the taxes). It's actually better than a cell because the service is more reliable. This is with Fairpoint COmmunications. It's certainly worth asking at your local landline company.

 

[DawnM]

I love Straight Talk. I have had it for 3 months now. I have it with an iphone. Just so you know, you can get ST for as low as $42/mo if you buy their 3 month in advance card.

My husband's work pays for his cell so he doesn't need to be on my plan.

As for the cheapest cell plan.......the cheapest I have found is Spot Mobile. You need to top it off with $5 every 90 days, and out of that you pay .10/min talk and .05/text. But if you just want to keep the number, that would be approx. $20/year.

Dawn

 

[sarahbug79]

Yeah we will for sure use straight talk for the two. I moved my husband to st with an iPhone. The third phone we are holding the line on is for a vacation home to only get to 1-2 times a year so I wanted something even cheaper than st. I will check out the others mentioned.