Those were just some of the thoughts going through my head once I
decided that I needed a cell phone. After studying advertisements,
brochures, and websites until my eyes were blurry, I finally decided
that the TracFone wireless was right for me.
Is
TracFone right for you? Only you can answer that, but here is my
real-life experience with TracFone in the hope that it helps you to make
an informed and confident decision.
Things to
Consider Before Buying a TracFone or Any Other Cell Phone
The first thing I had to decide was how many wireless minutes would I
really need. I wasn't particularly looking for a cell phone to use to
chit chat with friends for hours on end, but rather I just wanted
something to use for emergencies and for the occasional, "I'm at the
store now, what was it you wanted me to get again?"
With that in mind, I started studying the various wireless plans. What I
found was that for the standard plan where you sign a 1-year or 2-year
contract, the cost per minute gets pretty darn high if you don't use
very many minutes.
Even the cheapest contract plans cost around $15 or $20 per month, which
is pretty steep if you are only planning on using 15 or 20 minutes per
month!
That's why I decided on going with a prepaid service. But which one?
Almost all of the wireless providers offer some sort of prepaid plan, so
I was back into research mode again. But at least I had a bit more focus
now.
How Do Prepaid
Plans Work?
The way prepaid plans work is that you buy the phone, activate it with
your wireless provider, and then pay to put minutes or "units" on your
account.
When you use the phone, minutes are subtracted from your account. As
with all cell phones, it doesn't matter whether you called them or they
called you, minutes are deducted whenever you use the phone. When
you run low on minutes, you pay to put more minutes on your account.
It's as easy as that - or is it?
As
usual, the devil is in the details. For instance, with some prepaid
wireless plans, your minutes are only good for a limited time, usually
30 to 90 days. If you don’t use them before they expire, they are simply
subtracted from your account anyway.
I
didn’t know for sure how much I would be using the phone, and I didn’t
want to waste money paying for minutes that are just going to expire, so
I quickly scratched those plans off my list.
I
also discovered that some prepaid cell phones only work in your local
calling area. With these plans, if you are outside of your local area,
your phone just simply will not connect and you can’t make or receive
calls.
Since I occasionally travel outside of my local area, and it sure would
be nice to still be able to use my cell phone, it was an easy decision
to eliminate those plans from my list.
In
fact, the two issues above are the main reasons why I finally decided
that TracFone was right for me.
How Does
TracFone Work?
TracFone doesn't actually own any cell phone towers, they simply lease
air time from the local cellular providers. Then who sends you a
bill?
That's the best part: nobody sends you a bill! Like all
prepaid plans, you buy your air time up front and then only use the air
time as you need it.
With TracFone, your minutes never expire as long as you keep your
account active. Aha, but how do you keep your phone active, you ask?
Well, there are several easy options.
The first option is to just add more minutes to your account. Whenever
you buy a standard 60, 120, 250, or 400 “unit” airtime card, your phone
will automatically be extended another 60 days, up to a maximum of 120
days.
By
the way, it’s super simple to know to how many minutes you have left and
when your activation due date is because it’s displayed right on the
screen on your phone.
You don't have to call any special numbers or punch in a certain code,
it's just right there on the screen on the phone whenever the phone is
on. Easy!
It
takes special programming in the phone to do that, however, so you do
have to have a TracFone phone to use their service.
Anyway, like I mentioned above, another option for keeping your phone
active is to buy a special 250 “unit” card that adds 250 airtime "units"
to your account and extends your activation due date for 365 days, up to
a maximum of 730 days.
This “one year” card currently costs about $99, which comes out to
around $8 per month for nationwide cell phone coverage with 250 “units” of
talk time. Now that’s a pretty good deal, if you ask me!
What’s this “units” business? It simply refers to the fact that when you
make a call from your local calling area, the phone deducts one unit per
minute.
On
the other hand, if you make a call from outside of your local area, you
are charged 2 units per minute. That can get pretty expensive, but at
least the phone will work if you need to make a quick call. The
exception to this is with the new Single-Rate TracFones, which I talk
about in the next section below.
Now, let’s say you have quite a few minutes built up, and you don’t want
to mess with buying more minutes to keep your phone active. TracFone has
a special autopay plan where you can simply pay $8 per month to keep
your phone active without adding new minutes.
What if you forget to activate your phone before the due date? Well,
there's good news and bad news.
First, the bad news: If you let your phone expire, then you will lose
your current phone number and will be assigned a new phone number when
you reactivate your phone.
The good news is that as long as you reactivate your phone within 60
days from when it expired, you still keep all of your unused minutes
from the old phone number!
That way you don't lose all of the minutes that you have already paid
for just because you missed your due date by one day.
Also, if you're really worried about forgetting to keep your phone
active, TracFone has a special deactivation protection plan. If you sign
up for this optional plan and you miss your activation due date, they
will simply charge you $8 and extend your due date by another month.
"Single Rate"
TracFones
TracFone is now
releasing phones that are what they call "Single Rate" phones, such
as the Nokia 1100, Nokia 3390, the Nokia 2600 color, the Motorola C155,
and the Motorola V170. Actually, any new TracFone you buy now will
be a single-rate phone. The way that Single Rate TracFones differ from standard
TracFones is in coverage area and how the roaming charges work.
Basically, with the Single-Rate
TracFones there are no roaming charges. All of your calls will
only deduct 1 unit per minute of talk time no matter where you are in
the country. That's the good part. The bad part is that the
coverage for the Single-Rate phones is a bit smaller than the coverage area
for standard TracFones.
Certain areas of the country
have better coverage than other, but in general, the Single-Rate phones
mainly cover areas around population areas and major highways. The
older standard
TracFones, on the other hand, will work nearly anywhere in the country
where any cellular signal is available. So if you live in an
isolated area, you may want to try to find an older TracFone to buy.
To read more about an
alternative to the single-rate phones, read my Net10
Review.
Where to Buy a
TracFone
So, how do you get one of these slick little TracFones for yourself?
While the best prices on airtime cards can be found elsewhere, the best
deals on the phones themselves can be often be found on the TracFone website.
They are always running some kind of special deal to get the phone plus
extra minutes at a discounted price. This is definitely the way to go if
you want the best deal and don't mind waiting a few days for your phone
to arrive.
Click here
to see the best deals TracFone phones.
If you're really really
in a hurry to get your phone, you can just go buy one at a local
retailer. With over 60,000 retail locations selling the TracFone in the
U.S., there's sure to be one close to you. You can see a list of
retailers on the TracFone website.
Since I was really in a hurry to get my first TracFone, I bought it at a local
Staples store. Yes, I could have had a better deal from the
TracFone website, but that's the price I had to pay for waiting until
the last minute!
I
decided to get the Nokia 5180i phone simply because it was the cheapest,
and I wasn't planning on using it as an every day phone. It worked well for me,
but I now have a single-rate Nokia 2600
color screen TracFone, which I have been very happy with!
How to Get Started With Your New TracFone
The first thing I did after buying the phone was to get the battery
charged up and to read over the user's guide that came in the package.
Once the battery was charged, it was time to activate the phone.
Activating the phone was easy. I simply followed the step-by-step
instructions on the TracFone website, and the whole process only took
about 10 minutes.
Once I had the phone activated with TracFone, I had to wait for it to be
activated with the local wireless provider. Remember, TracFone doesn't
own the cell towers, they simply lease time on the towers from the local
providers.
The user's guide says that it can take up to 24 hours for the phone to
be activated by the local provider, but I was able to use my phone less
than 1 hour after activating it with TracFone.
Your wait time may be longer or shorter depending on what part of the
country you are in and which wireless provider covers your local area.
Also, the user's guide states that you might have to enter a 4-digit pin
code whenever you want to make a call as a protection against fraud, but
here in southwest Missouri, I don't have to enter any pin code.
I
just enter the phone number like normal and press send, and my phone
works just like any other cell phone. Also I was assigned a local cell
phone number, so it's not long-distance to call my phone from within my
local area.
Since I have digital coverage and a digital phone, my TracFone service
also comes with free voice mail, free caller ID, free call waiting, and
nationwide long distance.
TracFone's caller ID, call waiting, and long distance all just work without you
having to do anything special, but you do have to make some extra effort
to set up your voice mail.
The process is pretty simple, though, and there are step-by-step
instructions on the TracFone website to guide you through the process.
Since I didn't know yet that I could setup the voicemail using my home
phone, I
did have to use up about 5 minutes of airtime to get the voice mail all
set up, so those 20 free minutes I got at activation sure came
in handy.
