Trumpet Mobile

Trumpet Mobile is another new prepaid cell phone service with a couple of unique features which may make it worth your while.

Trumpet phones are sold at Walgreens and Casey's General stores. You can also buy airtime there or buy it online once you’ve established service.

2012 Update: Not Sure it's Still Active

Their website is still up with their plan information, however the refill and activation pages are blank - so I'm not sure whether they're still a viable option. I would recommend against them until they update those portions of their website.

Coverage

As always, you have to first make sure you can use the service. Coverage is provided by the Sprint PCS network. You can check out out Trumpet Mobile coverage and see if it works for you.

Plans

You can choose an Individual Plan or a Family/Group Plan.

Individual Plan

This plan costs 10 cents per minute plus a 50 cent daily access fee on the days you use the phone. (So it doesn’t really cost you exactly 10 cents per minute.) So, if you plan to use it every day, that’s an extra $15 a month.

If you don't want to pay an access fee you can go with their Basic plan which charges 20 cents per minute.

Family Plan

The family plan is designed for 2 to 9 members. You can share airtime within your group, and you can set up a “reserve fund” that anyone in your group can tap if they run low.

The rate appears to be 10 cents per minutes within your group, and possibly 20 cents per minute outside your group. Or you can choose the 50 cent daily access fee and pay 10 cents per minute outside your group as well.

Western Union Money Transfer

Update: Discontinued?

I can't find any mention of this feature on their website in 2012. Here' the earlier info:

You can make a Western Union money transfer directly from your Trumpet Mobile phone. If you transfer money frequently, then this is an amazingly useful (if somewhat expensive) feature.

You can transfer money from your Trumpet Cash card only, so you will have to load it up to use this feature.

You can send money anywhere in the US, the Carribean and most of Latin America.

Just remember to factor in the fees involved with using the Trumpet cash card in addition to Western Union's fees.

Trumpet Cash Card

Also Discontinued?

The Trumpet cash card allows you to withdraw money from ATM's and use it for payment wherever they accept debit/cash cards.

You can load up the cash card at Radio Shack, Western Union or any locations that are part of the Green Dot network.

The load fees can be as high as 4.95 which makes it quite an expensive way of handling your money. The advantage to it is that you can use it for Western Union money transfers from your Trumpet Mobile phone.

Phones

Trumpet Mobile's website lists three phones and Radio Shacks's lists four. Because the lists don't completely overlap, you appear to have a choice of up to five phones:

LG125: A basic flip phone with a dedicated text messaging key.
LG150: A basic flip phone with Bluetooth.
Samsung A-420
Samsung A-580
Samsung SPh-A640: Pictured above. A flip-style camera phone with Bluetooth.

So . . . .

This could be worth trying for the Western Union money transfer feature, as few other services offer this.

SBI!