The Observation Deck

I prefer to go the Prepaid cell phone route. There are more websites than I care to count all saying they are the best. We now have Trac-fone. Ok I know they are the most expensive and the tech support is terrible, in my opinion, hence the want to change to some other source.

How about some human input?
Recommendations or comments?

Mark Allan Crnolatas

Depends on how much you want to use it, and where.

If you just want to use it in the greater Cleveland area, Revol is pretty tough to beat. $45 for unlimited calls to anywhere in the US.

This may help you:

http://cellphones.about.com/od/prepaid_phones/qt/prepaid_plans.htm

My fiancee has Virgin Mobile...it uses Sprint's network, which is known to be spotty in areas. It's 25 cents for the first 10 minutes daily, then 10 cents per minute thereafter.

Coverage-wise, I'd recommend Verizon or Cingular.

coverage and service wise I'd recommend verizon. But not for prepaid. only if you were considering contracts though, because I used to be a prepaid customer of verizon and they charge too much. My mom uses my old prepaid phone now, and she ends up dishing out $30 a month for very little amount of minutes.

I was just looking for a pre-paid plan for my MIL who is 80. Just need an emergency phone, but I imagine with the free long distance it will get a little more use.

What I found was that many of the services charge a daily access fee, or $1 for each day you use the phone. Well, if you make one call a day, you're up to 30 dollars a month PLUS the ungodly per minute rate.

So, I found this deal from Sprint. For a limited time, you can get the employee referral rate. Go here:

http://sprint.p.delivery.net/m/p/sprint/epc/epclanding.asp

Use savings@sprint.com as the employee e-mail. They offer a 29.99 phone, but if you click Change Phone you can select a free phone. For 29.99 a month, you can get 500 anytime minutes, free night and weekend which start at 7PM, and no activation fee.

Its the best deal out there right now.