Tracfone or similar for occasional use?

[tinker&belle]

My DD is getting older and going to friends houses more often in the summer. I would like to get some sort of 'loaner phone' she could borrow to take with her to be able to call or text me in these situations. I do not really want 'smart' technology. I would like to have some sort of qwerty keyboard since it is difficult to text on a flip phone.

Any suggestions on plans or phones? I would like to be able to buy VERY small amounts of minutes/texts that preferably have a long length of time to expire. I am guessing we may need 5-10 min of air time and 20 texts a month tops.

 

[halfpintpeggy]

Tracfone sounds perfect for your situation! Inexpensive, no contract, & you can control the minutes. Also - sounds crazy but is true, they tend to get reception just about everywhere since tracfone uses all of the cell towers unlike the major companies that only use their own towers. Bonus - better for your child's health than a smartphone.

 

[Alesia]

My daughter and I both use Tracfone. Our phones are better than my husband's Iphone and I only pay $30 every 3 months for my plan and $20 every 3 months for hers.

 

[tobikaye]

I had a Tracfone for about a decade and loved it. I still miss it sometimes since I did get great reception.

My dad and my mom have both gone to the Tracfone as they do not use it as often. They found a great deal on HSN for a phone, 400 minutes good for 1 year, and triple minutes for life card (so actually 1200 minutes) for about $80. The 400 minutes for 1 year card is about $100 by itself so it was a good deal.

 

[Jaime4004]

I gave my daughter a tracfone also when she was 9. It was for me to be able to track her, or her to get in touch with me, because she did a lot of activities. It was a very basic phone, she didn't use it for anything but texting and calling me. We paid $20 every 3 months.

 

[bjscheel]

My girls and I are all on Tracfone. I like the $99 annual cards so that you don't have to remember to re-up your minutes very often. It's about $8/month and would have plenty of minutes for her usage. I used to have a slider with full keyboard that I liked pretty well. It is surely no fun to text with the old way! We're on iPhones now which can be an option for her when she's older. Tracfone can be a hassle to deal with, but as long as you're just activating a regular Tracfone on a new number, it should go pretty slick. It's when you try to change phones or do something more complicated you can have trouble and then Live Chat is the way to go.

One thing to watch out for, if you know whether Verizon or AT&T works better in your area, the phone models that end with "C" go on Verizon towers, and the models ending in "G" go on AT&T towers. In our rural area, Verizon is definitely better, but if you're in a more metropolitan area, either should be fine.

I just did some looking and unfortunately, Tracfone is only offering smart or flip phones- no dumb phones with a full keyboard. On Amazon, the Tracfone sliders are expensive because they're getting rare. Maybe you can find something at the store- I know Dollar General sells them along with other discount stores.

I know I have a couple here that we aren't using anymore...if you can't find anything!

 

[Alesia]

This one will probably fit your needs nicely: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B009...s=tracfone&dpPl=1&dpID=41OeaB5gXDL&ref=plSrch

 

[ctc917]

ALesia I have a couple of question on your Tracfone plan, do you need to use all your minutes during the 3 months that you pay $30 ? or can you roll them over? Also if you use all your minutes during the 3 months can you just purchase minutes only? And what is the difference between your $30 plan and your daughter's $20 plan?

Thanks
ctc917

 

[Alesia]

ALesia I have a couple of question on your Tracfone plan,

1. do you need to use all your minutes during the 3 months that you pay $30 ? or can you roll them over?
2. Also if you use all your minutes during the 3 months can you just purchase minutes only?
3. And what is the difference between your $30 plan and your daughter's $20 plan?

Thanks
ctc917

1. They roll over as long as you remember to buy more minutes before your 90 days is up. If you enroll in auto-fill that's never an issue, though.
2. You can purchase more minutes whenever you want.
3. She gets 180 minutes and texts, I get 360 minutes and texts (our phones get triple minutes.)

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

I'm going to be the odd man out and say that I didn't care for Trac Phone's setup. We tried it with my son when he went on vacation with another family last year and I just really didn't like it. I didn't like that the minutes and activation expire so quickly. Also, it was such a headache because the phone that worked here ended up not working at the beach, it was roaming. I spent a couple hours total with trac phone's tech support and we did finally get the phone to work. But then I tried to add data to it and that set off another chain of events that required me to spend a bunch of time with the trac phone customer service. Oh, and even though the phone packaging had promised us double minutes, we never got them, and the foreign person at customer service either couldn't understand what I was trying to say to them about it or they were playing dumb, I'm not sure. I spent so much time on the phone with customer service over that stupid phone.

I've had a T-mobile prepaid phone for about 8 years now and I prefer their setup, so this summer I bought my son a tmobile phone and signed him up for a prepaid plan.

For emergency purposes, you can set up the tmobile account to automatically debit the minimum from your credit card and then you don't have to worry about it. The minimum to keep the phone active is $3 per month, that gets you 30 minutes or 30 texts (or a combination of the two). After that the minutes/texts will be billed at the rate of 10 cents each and you can set it up on their website to transfer a certain amount of money from your credit card into the t-mobile account each month. When the money runs out there's no more minutes until the next monthly $3 payment unless you choose to put more money into the account manually. I really like having absolute control over the account.

Then you can easily switch between types of plans if you need a better plan or data for a certain month. For example, this month my son went away with a friend on vacation again and I switched his plan to a data plan for the month, and I set it up to switch back to his regular plan at the start of the next billing cycle. Easy peasy.

My husband has the $25 unlimited talk and text plan and my son will have the same plan on his new phone this school year.

 

[Cars2006]

My kids are young 8, 10 & 12 years old. I purchased three iPhone 4s back in December from eBay and put them on bring your own phone on Trac Phone. I wanted to be sure that they were responsible before purchasing new phone which I will do later this year. They have 60 minutes for ninety days that rollover since they are on the auto fill. They all play sports and sometimes are in different place at different times for pick up. I wanted to make sure that they could contact me or I could contact them to let them know where to wait for me. So far so good with no problems with the service.

 

[Jonny_Duck]

My DD is getting older and going to friends houses more often in the summer. I would like to get some sort of 'loaner phone' she could borrow to take with her to be able to call or text me in these situations. I do not really want 'smart' technology. I would like to have some sort of qwerty keyboard since it is difficult to text on a flip phone.

Any suggestions on plans or phones? I would like to be able to buy VERY small amounts of minutes/texts that preferably have a long length of time to expire. I am guessing we may need 5-10 min of air time and 20 texts a month tops.

Freedompop might be good...It's free. I can't testify to their phone service but I've been using a free hotspot for my work internet and so far I'm happy with it.

https://www.freedompop.com/offer/vo...=subpromo_offerGpad49MULTI_USallBUs365_070716

 

[scrapquitler]

My DD is getting older and going to friends houses more often in the summer. I would like to get some sort of 'loaner phone' she could borrow to take with her to be able to call or text me in these situations. I do not really want 'smart' technology. I would like to have some sort of qwerty keyboard since it is difficult to text on a flip phone.

Any suggestions on plans or phones? I would like to be able to buy VERY small amounts of minutes/texts that preferably have a long length of time to expire. I am guessing we may need 5-10 min of air time and 20 texts a month tops.

Yes, Tracfone sounds like exactly what you need! We bought my son a cheap android phone from Tracfone (I think it cost about $50), but we were sure to get one that was billed as having 'triple minutes for life', so essentially, it triples the talk, text and data provided by whatever card you buy to load the phone. We need to buy a new card every 3 months, but we buy a $20 (or $25? I can't remember) card that gives him 90 days of service, 60 minutes of talk, 60 text messages, and 60 mb of data, all which triple to 180. And all that rolls over and accumulates if he doesn't use it. He barely uses it, but at least we can hold of him. For $8 a month, it's a great deal.