Saturday, January 21, 2012

New Cell Phones

Last Monday I ordered new phones for me and The Old Lady.  Our old cell phones worked just fine but they were in a plan where we would pay X dollars for Y minutes a month.  Any minutes you didn't use were gone at the end of the billing period.  No contract and it was reasonable when we were using them more.  Lately the only calls I get on my cell phone are either a wrong number or The Old Lady calling me when she was ready to leave Menard's and is wondering where I am. (Menard's is competition for Lowes and Home Depot in the Mid-West)  That and I am tired of getting spam texts and my old phone has no way to delete a text without opening it first.

The minutes may cost a little more than our old plan, but we keep all our minutes until we use them.  I ordered two phones like the one pictured below.  They were $19.99 each and came with a 60 minute card.  They will double the minutes each time we add minutes as long as we are using these phones.  After activating the phone which gave me 10 minutes and adding the 60 minute card I had 130 minutes and 150 days service.  The question I have is, did we get free 60 minute cards when buying the phone, or did we get a free phone when buying the 60 minute card????
Tracfone said we could activate them online, but when I put in the serial number for my phone it said it was already on an account.  So I called the toll-free number and activated it that way.  Same thing happened to The Old Lady when she went to activate hers.

My old phone was only text or talk.  If I was to text each one would cost 10 cents in addition to the monthly bill.  I never sent a text with my old phone and that's why it pissed me off to get spam texts as they cost extra. With the Tracfone a text is only a fraction of a minute.  Sent my first text to The Kid to let her know we got new phones and it cost me 3tenths of a minute.  Have yet to hear back so I would know it went thru, but so it goes!!

My new phone has all kinds of features, bluetooth which I Synced to the car so can talk thru the radio for hands-free if get a call while in the car, and a camera which I may use and send pictures right from the phone.  It even has an internet browser, but I think that'll burn up the minutes fast.  All in all for a cheap little phone it does much more than my old Nokia, but it was a bottom of the line Nokia and after four years practically an antique!!

5 comments:

  1. My first cell phone was a pretty big sucker that had it's own bag, bought it when I was long haul trucking, didn't use it much.

    After moving here I bought a Tracfone but didn't like it or use it much, but in the bar one night when the bartender was busy bullshitting with others and ignoring the fact that I needed a beer I called the bar.

    Ring, ring... "Reggie's" "It's Bill, I need a fucking beer." "You son of a bitch." But I got my beer. :-)

    Anyway, got a pay per minute Samsung now but don't do texting with it and the only text messages I get on it is from AT&T.

    Don't do the web with it either even though I have over 80 bucks credit built up on it.

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  2. when I worked at Family Dollar we sold a bunch of those phones(tracphone) especially to Spanish people as they had the best rates for phoning to Mexico.

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  3. You couldn't just unlock the phones?

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  4. My whole family's been using Tracfone phones and phone cards for the last 4 years and we've learnt to use our cell phones sparingly, but we've saved over a thousand dollars a year compared to my family being on a cell phone contract.
    I've had nothing but top class coverage and reception on the Tracfone phones as they use the major networks and they are great value for money.
    Soome of the most amazing things about Tracfone is:
    - You only pay $7/month for service,
    - A phone can cost as little as $10,
    - The family value plan only costs $27.96/month for a family of 4 in total. Where I get 50 minutes and my kids get 40 minutes/month.
    - There is a Tracfone SVC phone for seniors, Samsung T155G (costs $15) and has bigger keys and letters on the screen for those who don't see too well.
    I'm super happy saving money using Tracfone prepaid plans.

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