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Tracfone Prepaid Cell Phones

Our First Choice

Indeed, we chose Tracfone as our prepaid cell phone service. They offer a good balance of features, reliability, coverage and price. We've been happy with our choice, but let's see if it's right for you.

First, let's compare where we're coming from. We're your basic family here with one income and two young children, so you probably won't find it surprising that we decided to cut unnecessary expenses in order to try to provide the best for our children. One way to do that is to get rid of your monthly cell phone contracts and get a prepaid cell phone plan.

Nowadays there are such great choices that even when you choose a prepaid phone you don't have to miss . . .

Blowing out candles on birthday cake

the party.

Why Choose Prepaid?

Well, you can purchase their phones and airtime cards almost anywhere. It's hard to find a store in America that doesn't carry them!

They also have good deals online, but let's not get ahead
of ourselves . . . .

First we'll check out their coverage, rates, handsets, features and customer service. By the time we're done you'll be confident in your decision about whether to go for them.

How good is their Coverage?

Coverage is key. The time when you really need a reliable cell phone is when you're traveling. Tracfone may be the most popular prepaid cell phone service in the USA, but that doesn't mean anything unless they've got good coverage both in your area AND, when you're traveling.

They do not have their own physical network, but sometimes that can actually be an advantage. They lease their network from other cellphone companies. This basically means that as long as one of the companies that they have a deal with has a network where you are, you can make and receive calls.

Practically speaking, this actually translates to great coverage .

Note: "your mileage may vary". In my area, Tracfone seems to lease their network from AT&T. In other areas Tracfone relies on the T-Mobile and even Verizon (if you have a CDMA phone) networks.

When you make a call you have to dial the in order to make local calls. When I first got Tracfone I could just dial the local number but AT&T, themselves, sent out notices to their customers with their bills that this change would occur, but, since there are no Tracfone bills, this came as a bit of a surprise to me. (They may have sent an email or Text message, which got ignored as marketing.) So if you were in the Cingular/AT&T area and were a Tracfone customer you had to re-enter some of your contact phone numbers. Oh, well.

One way to find out who the local carrier is by sending an text or MMS message via a friend's Tracfone to one of your email addresses. The messages you receive will have the sender as something like my-phone-number@mms.[the carrier's domain].com In my case, messages came in as my-phone-number@txt.att.com, so I knew my local carrier is AT&T.

So the coverage is good. Now . . . .

How are their Rates?

An airtime card will allow you to add a certain number of minutes to your account balance. These minutes are good for a period of 90 days or 1 year depending on the card.

Triple Minutes for Life

Triple Minutes for Life (TFML) phones give you three times the number of minutes stated on the airtime card.

Double-minutes-For-Life

Double-Minutes-For-Life (DFML) phones simply give you twice the number of minutes for every airtime card activate.

If you have a phone that's not a double-minutes phone, you can also buy a double-minute cards that will convert your phone and give you double the minutes on future airtime card purchases.

When you activate your card the phone actually displays the number of units you have, NOT minutes.

No roaming charges

There are no roaming charges with all recent Tracfones. No matter where you're calling from, every minute of a call uses up 1 unit of your account balance.

Text messages

Text messages for single-rate phones cost only 0.3 units.

"Standard" Rate

Older Tracfones may be "standard-rate" phones, for calls from your home calling area, 1 minute uses up 1 unit of your account balance. Text messages on these older Tracfones cost 0.5 units.

Roaming Charges on Older Phones

Older Tracfones may charge a roaming rate of an additional minute for each minute of a call.

These airtime minutes have to be used within their . . .

Service Period

Units on an airtime card are usually valid for 90 days. If you add airtime before your units run out or before the service period ends, the remaining units rollover and your service period should be extended by 90 days beyond the current expiration date. Using two 90-day cards, you can extend your service period to a maximum of 180 days.

You can continue to add minutes, but for a service period longer than 180 days, you may have to buy a one-year airtime card. At least that's the official policy.

You pay more for these one-year cards as you're essentially paying for an extended service period in addition to paying for the minutes. By using one-year cards, you can extend your service period to a maximum of about two years (730 days to be exact).

Promo Codes

Luckily, there's always a pretty good promo codes which adds about 200 or 250 minutes which makes the one-year card worthwhile, especially if you have a triple- or double-minutes phone.

So now that the rates are pretty reasonable, you're probably asking yourself:

Can you get attractive Phones?

Or will you have to get a cheap, ugly phone?

Well cheap, basic phones do have their advantages, such as a long battery life, but you can actually get attractive and modern handsets from Tracfone.

Best Phones

Touchscreen Phone

Tracfone has introduced two prepaid touchscreen phones: the LG 800g and the the Motorola EX124g.

QWERTY Keyboard Phones

Two app-capable phones are the LG 500g and the Samsung T404g.

All of the above phones have megapixel cameras and a music player as well. If you don't want these features then there are a couple of phone that are . . .

Good Values

These are the Samsung T301G, the LG 600g, the Motorola W376g, or the LG 420g. These are all Bluetooth-enabled. The LG 420g and T301g are the best of these. They all have a VGA camera as well.

Basic Phones

Finally, there are a couple of very basic phones, the Samsung T105g and two flip phones, the T155g and the T245g (with camera).

All of the above are GSM phones that run on the AT&T or T-Mobile networks, but in certain areas you can get a CDMA Tracfone, such as the LG 200C.

So you can get attractive handsets, but will you . . .

Save money on them?

If you do go with Tracfone, there are a couple of online package deals for saving you money on those three attractive handsets which include double minutes for life. You can either go with a phone package and buy airtime separately or get a phone plus airtime package, and you can usually get free shipping.

Phone packages

There are usually a couple of (usually refurbished) phone plus airtime card packages available directly from Tracfone.

A refurbished LG 420g, Samsung T301g, or LG 600g is available for free with a $20 airtime card purchase. All of these are double-minutes phones.

When you get the packages that include a bucket of airtime minutes you don't have to immediately buy any airtime separately. These may not always offer the double minutes feature though so look carefully.

With good features

As you see, depending on the handset you choose, features include a touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, a megapixel camera, Bluetooth, calendar, phone book, speakerphone, voicemail, etc. Even some games and Java apps.

Tracfone Voicemail

Voicemail is a standard feature. It's easy to set up, however you will be charged airtime while you are accessing it.

Can I depend on their Customer Service?

Frankly, I don't have high expectations for any phone company's customer service in terms of hold times, the number of times I expect to be bounced along the menu, etc., but I was pleasantly surprised by their customer service when My phone broke, and I needed to transfer my number to a new phone. The customer service rep spoke clearly and guided me through all the buttons I had to push and all the numbers I had to enter. With this topic, though, it pays to emphasize that your mileage may vary.

And speaking of changes.

Changing your Tracfone calling area

If you move around, you are allowed to change your Tracfone number to reflect your local area code up to four times in a year. They will give you a new phone number however, so all you really transfer are your minutes. On the other hand, you can keep your old number if you want so that your friends can still reach you.

Can you unlock your Tracfone Prepaid Phone?

Not as far as I know. So if you are wondering whether you can buy a cheap Tracfone handset and then use it up with a standard cell phone service providers network without having to sign a two-year contract for the rebate on the phone, you're probably out of luck here.

On the other hand Tracfones handsets are priced reasonably enough, that if one breaks you just go out and get another inexpensive one.

Once you buy your handset, you have to . . .

Activate your Tracfone

You can activate your phone online or by calling their 800 number from another phone.

I recommend doing it online because you have to enter and confirm a long serial numbers etc., and it's easy to make a mistake while punching those buttons on a phone. It's easier to enter them on a form online so you can double-check the number before you hit the Enter key.

On the other hand, it's just as easy to add minutes via the handset itself, unless you're adding airtime from more than one airtime card. There's usually no point in doing that since it's a better value to buy enough minutes on one card.

One advantage to adding minutes online is that you can check that you've entered the correct promotion codes for bonus minutes.

Can you Port your Phone Number?

Since offering local number portability is the law of the land, you can port your current cell phone or home phone number.

Should you port your number?

(Note: Think before you port your home phone number. That line will be disconnected.)

You get 100 minutes if you port your phone number when you sign up AND if you either sign up for one year of service by buying a one-year card or if you buy a double-minutes prepaid card. (Updated to reflect new requirement.)

You have to purchase a phone and then go to the portability page on their website. Do not cancel your old service until the number has ported.

So you're all set to go, but maybe you have friends or relatives abroad.

Can you make International Calls?

Yes! You can now use your Tracfone to make international calls to many countries at no additional charge.

So you should be all set to make your choice.

If you still think Tracfone is the way for you to invest in your family by cutting your cell phone costs, you should get a package deal online because they often save you even more compared to buying them in stores.

Okay. So if you need more. More information. More time to explore the ins and outs of Tracfone service. Here are a few more articles to help you out.

Would you like a quick overview of the

Handsets available?

You can check out these:

Motorola models

LG models

and

Samsung models.

Wondering about

How you can add and save on Tracfone minutes?

Check out the latest Promotional Codes

Maybe you need to

Family Plans?

And if you have decided but want to get phones for the whole family you can check out their family plans.

And yes. They do have ringtones you can purchase.

I hope this information has been helpful in figuring out what's best for you and your family.

SBI!