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Get a Free Prepaid Cell Phone

Free prepaid no-contract phones with airtime purchases

Yes, you can get a free prepaid cell phone or free prepaid no-contract phone from a couple of different companies online. This is a surprise because there’s no contract to tie you down. True, these phones, with one or two exceptions, are not really high-end phones, but they do the job.

The companies take the risk that if they give you a free phone with the purchase of and airtime card that you’ll be inclined to stick with them for a while even without a contract. So let’s start, naturally enough, with . . .

Tracfone

Get a Flip Phone or Slider with $20 airtime card purchase

Tracfone offers a couple of free flip phones and one slider phone when you purchase a $20 airtime card from them. You can get the LG 410g, or choose from one of two refurbished phones, the LG 420g flip phone or Samsung T301g slider phone. The latter two offer double minutes for life on airtime card purchase and therefore are a better deal than the 410g which only offers single minutes.

Net10

Net10 offers a few free phones with the purchase of a $25 airtime card. Using the $25 airtime card signs you up for their $25 montly plan though you can switch back to their pay as you go plan after the first 30 days. Again, Net10 hopes you stick with the $25 plan, hence the offer.

Net10 offers the Samsung T401g, Samsung T201g or LG 300g free with purchase of a $25 airtime card. The T401g is a best phone of this group.

Free phones plus Low-Cost Unlimited Service.

Net10 also offers a couple of phones free with purchase of a $50 30-day unlimited airtime card. What’s great about this deal, is that on these particular phones, you can renew the unlimited service for up to 12 months for just $30 per month when you sign up for auto-refill of your airtime. You can cancel the auto-refill at anytime but you then lose access to the special rate.

The Net10 unlimited phones offered here are an LG 600g plus $50 airtime card for $40 and a Motorola W408g plus $50 airtime card for $50. There are two other phones under this low-unlimited plan offer for $60 and $70 but not mentioned here because they don’t technically qualify as free phones because you have to pay $10 and $20 over the price of the airtime card.

Straight Talk

Best Deal

You can get the Samsung T401g free with purchase of a three month unlimited airtime card at the discounted price of $99.99. This is actually the best deal, because you get a phone and three months of unlimited service for under $100.

Straight Talk offers three other free phones with the purchase of airtime cards. You can get the LG 620g, LG 420g, or Motorola W418g with the purchase of a $30 1000 minute airtime card or $45 unlimited airtime card, both of which are good for 30 days.

The Motorola W418g is very similar to a free phone offered by . . .

Consumer Cellular

Consumer Cellular offers a free Motorola WX345 for signing up for any of their monthly no-contract plans starting as low as $10 per month. The WX345 actually offers some good features for a basic flip phone, such as a 2 megapixel camera and mp3 player.

The drawback is that there is a $35 activation charge. The advantage is that Consumer Cellular will actually send you a bill (via paper or email) every month rather than having to deal with airtime cards.

PlatinumTel

If you’re willing to buy a $100 of airtime to start with, PlatinumTel will give you a free messaging phone, the LG Rumor with slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The $100 airtime card is on their Real PayGo plan which offers really low airtime rates.

Mingo Wireless

If you’re looking for a phone with a touch screen or vertical QWERTY keyboard, Mingo Wireless offers three choices if you buy $100 of airtime on one of their Flex (pay as you go) plan. The free touchscreen phone is the Samsung M810 Instinct. The QWERTY keyboard phones are the Blackberry 8330 or the slim red Blackberry 8130. These last phones are actually smart phones.

So, as you can see, you’ve actually got a pretty good options for getting a free prepaid cell phone as long as you’re willing to get between $20 and $100 of airtime to go with them.

SBI!