Prepaid Cell Phones: Are They Really More Convenient?
Last Christmas, I decided to buy my neice a pre-paid cell phone from Virgin Mobile. She had just turned eighteen and did not have the credit to purchase a normal cell phone with the deposit, so I thought that ‘Pay as you go’ wireless was a simple solution. She was ecstatic when she opened the phone, and immediately activated it.
Apparently, nearly all of the wireless providers have come out with pre-paid cell phones that are sold in such retail stores as Wal-Mart and Target. In fact, you can usually buy the minutes at your local grocery store. The concept advertises no contract, no obligation, and more convenience. I thought that it might even be cheaper, and considered switching over myself. Cell phone technology is changing so rapidly that I felt confined by my year-long contract with T-Mobile.
As it turns out, I’m glad I stayed with my contract.
In February, my neice called me in tears, devastated by her pre-paid phone. Apparently, she had accidently called someone when the phone was in her backpack (the numbers depressed at random, I suppose) and she wasted $10 worth of minutes. Following her plan, minutes cost $0.25 for the first ten minutes of the day, and $0.10 for every minute thereafter. Essentially, she had wasted about 120 minutes of talking time. When she called the company and explained the situation, they refused to refund her minutes.
Enraged, I called the 800 number she gave me and asked to speak with the manager. I explained the situation again, and was given the same answer. “We cannot refund those minutes.”
Over the next month, my neice used $100 worth of minutes, and when we checked her cell phone use, she discovered that she’d only actually talked around three hundred and fifty minutes. Even if she’d been charged $0.25/minute, she should have been able to talk for 400 minutes. Not to mention, she was getting calls for three different people on a daily basis, which makes me believe that they are constantly recycling their numbers.
Her online password allowed her to check exactly how many minutes she’d used, and which phone numbers she’d dialed. The evidence online did nothing to substantiate the $100 worth of minutes.
After that episode, I began to wonder if pre-paid phones were all they were cracked up to be.
I began to research the other pre-paid phones, and though I didn’t test any of them, I began to see where the gimmick lies. They advertise “no contractual obligation” and “freedom to talk whenever, wherever”, but they over-charge ridiculously in the end. On a normal cell phone plan, $60.00 – $80.00 will get you 1000+ minutes which amounts to $.06 – $.08 per minute, plus free nights and weekends if your plan allows. Last month, I paid $69.95 for two lines with T-Mobile, and talked more than 1500 minutes.
My advise is that, when shopping for cell phones, it is best to go with a regular plan, rather than trying to save with pre-paid wireless phones. Not only will you save money, but you also won’t constantly be running to the store for pre-paid wireless top-up cards.
