If you don't use a cell phone much etc or travel, look for the Trac phone. My son uses one all the time and he is a long distance truck driver. He just loads whatever he thinks he needs and there is no problem.

I don't use my cell phone much and DH uses his very rarely so we went with Verizon pre-paids.
We got a really good deal at the Verizon store.
If you use the phone a lot, it is not a good deal since the it is 25 cents/minute but for us, it is great.
Before we went with pre-paid, I was told it would be an extra $30/mo to add DH.

A few relatives have straight talk. They love it. Unlimited everything for $45/month.
I have Tracfone, costs about 10 cents per minute. I can send about 3 texts on a minute or unit I think they call them.
I've been buying the time online. They always offer a good deal when you check out. Like say I clicked to order a 60 minute card. When you go to finalize it asks if you'd like to purchase an additional 30 minutes for $5?
Now I've signed up for one of the value plans where the minutes are sent to my phone once per month. Many of their phones have double minutes for life. Now I see some online with triple minutes for life. If you buy 60 minutes they give you double or triple that for the same $19.99. If you order phones online you have them in 3 days. Shipping is free. Or you can buy at Walmart,Sams, Kmart etc.

My daughter had Straight Talk before she passed away. She loved it as it was her only phone. In rural TN the only one that works is Verizon & she had her choice of carriers. Guess it depends on how much you are going to use it. We have Tracfone only for emergencies so that is good for us. I would say no trouble with either one

My sister has straight talk and love it. I have Virgin Mobile and am quite pleased. I got in on a $25. a month deal 2 years ago and they haven't raised my rates. Unlimited text and 300 minutes a month and web. I think it is $35. a month to sign up for that plan now. They have unlimited plans too.

TracFone owns Straight Talk. DH and my mom have TF. They are both on a family plan with double minutes for life phones. Mom gets (after the minutes are doubled) 100 minutes per month, DH gets 80. TracFone rolls over unused minutes. With taxes, we pay a little over $17.00 monthly for both of them together. Their phones both use AT&T towers. A sister who has it is on Verizon towers.

My sis, BIL, step-daughter, her husband and I all have Straight Talk.
I have a Samsung Galaxy Proclaim smart phone. I paid $179.99 for it from ST. Also available at Walmart.com.
It used Verizon. AT&T works great where we live in MN, but not where we are in FL. So if I have one that works on Verizon towers, I can at least text from the house, and use it when we go to town.
The customer service is not good, but I hear that about lots of cell service companies.
I pay $45.00 a month for service.
The LG511C is a touch screen, with slide-out keyboard, for $99.99 on ST.
You can get a re-conditioned Samsung 451C for $20.00 on ST. No touch screen, but a good basic phone. The data on both of these is slow, but texting and calling work great. And they will both run on $30.00 a month for 1,000 minutes, 1,000 texts and 30 MB of data monthly.

ST doesn't roll over their minutes.

Oh, forgot. If I need customer service, I use their FB site. Much easier to understand the typed word than the spoken word sometimes.

45 dollars a month is not cheap, there are plenty of plans that are cheaper. I'm not much on cel fones but I've had a tracfone for years. I paid 30 dollars for it at tracfone site and about a hundred a year for a one year double card. I only use the phone to be reached or to order food on the way home and occasionally to make a call, thus I have 1500 minutes stored. My husband has the same. We have a land phone we hardly ever use. I use email or visiting.

$45.00 IS cheap for what you get. If you don't need unlimited texting, minutes, or fast Internet, than it would be foolish to have an "unlimited" plan. If the phone only for occasional use, then TracFone would be a great alternative. It all depends on what you want the cell phone to do.

Thank you all... I had one when I was working. My bosses got an extra line for me. It was a basic flip phone to call them if I had a problem. It was verizon, we get that reception here at the house. Judy let me use it all the last year and a half. She wouldn't let me pay for it! I used it to call my brothers, hubby and son, they are all on verizon. DH's phone is through work. We do have a land line.

I have no use for a cell phone other than for emergencies when I'm driving, or to talk to DS and DH when I'm gone. Which isn't much. DH had Nextell for a while he could NOT get any reception at home which was bad when his customers couldn't reach him. And DS had Sprint for a while and couldn't get reception here either. But I guess I wouldn't use it here much at all. thanks all.. I might look in to the tracfone. We had one for DS when he was in highschool. It worked fine until his friends had regular cell phones and called him on his cell all the time.

Since so many of you have tried several phones, please answer a question for me. When you buy the phones, are you able to use a phone number of your choice? We've had the same number for years and years, everyone and his brother has this number, and I wouldn't want to lose it.

Hi Kathy,

I also have Virgin Moble and like it a lot. I don't use my cell often but my husbands is on his all the time. We pay only $25. A month and get unlimited text and data and 300 minutes of talk. It's perfect for us and no contract. Well worth it.

sooey

Vee1, You can port your current number over.
We were with Alltel, just didn't use it enough to justify the monthly cost. So went to Tracfone and had them port the number over from Alltel. I still have the same number I always have.
I know the Tracfone website has information on it. FAQ and seems to me there is a place you click if you wish to join and keep your phone number. I would guess any of the cell companies can do the same thing.

Try Puretalk USA dot com. I have had their service for over a year. $10 a month for 200 minutes with rollover from month to month and no contract. You can't get better than that! The service is provided by ATT, I think. There is a place to make sure your are has coverage.

Kat, if you want to use Verizon towers, put in a zip code like 32134 when you look at tracFone's site. Then it will only show you phones that use Verizon towers, and not Sprint,, TMobil or AT&T.

Unlimited is fine if you live on the phone. I have other things going on in my life so a phone is a tool, not a lifestyle for me. If you don't use it much, the prepaid is the way to go and you can easily go less than $10/mo. I don't look at the per-minute cost since to me, per month is what you're really paying. Actually, per year since I buy over a year's worth at a time. My cell use has now cut way down from before so the "per minute" rate is higher since I buy less but still when I look at per month it's cheap enough. I can't see not having one for $5-$7 a month.

Joan_mn mentions a point that I always try to stress. With prepaid phones you need to check coverage areas. I have a CDMA which I wanted since it's better coverage in MN than AT&T, T-mo and Sprint's prepaid.

My Tracfone cost me less than $7/mo last time I added. I didn't even do much searching for a deal. I've gotten time for as little as $2/mo when I worked the specials. This time I needed to add time quickly so just added some minutes and added extra months since I don't use it too much. I average about 30-35 min/mo use these days.

BTW, the reason you need to put in certain zip codes is it costs less for Tracfone to buy the GSM (like T-mo/AT&T) than CDMA (Verizon) so they push you to get GSM whenever they can. Or you can just buy a phone that is CDMA and activate it anywhere, then it won't matter, although occasionally they might even try to replace the phone for you.

If you go with Tracfone, activate it online and you get a few extra minutes as a bonus. It's not a lot, but WTH, it's something more.

My DS,DIL & GS have them and they like them. We get good servie with them where we are. I'm still using boost but they are going out of service next year so I may have to get me a straight talk too.

Sprint is also CDMA, but it next to useless in a lot of rural MN.
Too bad we can't have just one technology in cells, it would make things so much simpler.

Ahh, more condescention from the cynic.

"Unlimited" does not mean one does not have a life outside of the cell phone, obviously.... I mean, how much really is occupying us if we have so much time to dink around on this site? LOL

$45 is a really good price for unlimited. I pay way too much for my plan - wish I had done that shopping around.

I pay just under 40 bucks before all the "extra charges", a total of usually around 46 dollars for 450 minutes.

I don't live on the phone, but last month went over by 130 minutes. I am out of roll over minutes.

I no longer listen to my messages before 9 PM. I call and say, please call me back on your cell to several friends, that are also on AT&T, but never have their cell on.

My plan runs out in November. I don't text, and no web. I am going to do some looking too, but don't know yet, which way to go.

When I first got this phone, I thought 450 minutes was plenty, and just went over for the second time, this time, it cost me a bundle.

Maybe I need to keep better track of my phone time.

Moni

okay, I finally checked Virgin Mobile. There are three
qualities of coverage. And we get the least coverage, at
fair. So I think that one is out. I just checked tracfone
and when you click on the phones under national coverage, it
looks good, but they don't have the close up on coverage
like Virgin did. I put in Joan's zip code, and the
coverage sure changed! Got smaller, just a thin amount
green in my area, basically down the I~5 corridor. And
nothing in the mountains, that must be normal, I guess.
What a pain! lol When you choose to browse phones,
there is "National Coverage" and a column that says
"One Click", but I can't find out what the heck the ONe Click is.
And the phones listed under the national
coverage and the 1 click (when "browsing" phones) are not
available for purchase when I click on "purchase phone".
Will a phone I buy at Safeway (or where ever)have the
distinction of CDMA or GSM coverage? sheesh! lol

USCellular doesn't offer plans here.

I just saw something from Costco... VOTEL... this morning.

Straight Talk and TracFone put a C (cdma) or a G (gsm) on the end of the model numbers.