Tracfone Prepaid Cell Phones

This time it's personal!

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 nuclear family here (just a fact, not a statement), and with one income and two young children (kindergarten and preschool), 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.

You may not use your cell phones a lot, but sometimes you just need them, such as when you're lost, and you don't want to miss . . .

the party.

Why Choose them?

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.

Actually, it is a little more complicated. The coverage map for single-rate phone is a little different than for the phone which have a roaming rate.

For example, the coverage for single rate phones is not as good in the Western half of the U.S.

Note: "your mileage may vary". In my area, Tracfone seems to lease their network from AT&T (formerly Cingular), so due to a change in their system, I now have to dial the area code in order to make local calls. Cingular, 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're in the Cingular area and are a Tracfone customer be prepared 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 MMS messages you receive will have the sender as my-phone-number@mms.[the carrier's domain].com In my case, messages come in as my-phone-number.attmms.com, so I know 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 45 days(online only?), 90 days or 1 year depending on the card. You can also buy double minute cards that double the minutes on furture airtime card purchases.

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

For a single-rate phone, every minute of a call uses up 1 unit of your account balance. There are no roaming charges. Text messages cost only 0.3 units.

With a standard-rate phone, for calls from your home calling area, 1 minute uses up 1 unit of your account balance. When you are roaming, 1 minutes uses up two units. It costs 0.5 units to send or receive text messages.

These airtime cards 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 have to buy a one-year airtime card.

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).

So now that the rates are pretty reasonable considering how much you're actually going to use the phone, you're probably asking yourself:

Can you get attractive Phones?

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

Well cheap and ugly phones do have their advantages, but you can actually get attractive handsets from Tracfone.

There are a couple of new attractive basic phones coming out as well. They are the W175 and the W260.

However, because of the package deals that Tracfone offers, you're better off going with one of their four best Tracfones.

These are the LG 600g, the Motorola W376g, the LG CG225 and the Motorola C261. The W376g and LG600g are Bluetooth enabled. The W376 looks like the stylish Razr. They both have a camera as do the LG 225 and the Motorola C261.

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.

Phone packages

Here are a couple of phone packages.

Get the Bluetooth-enabled Motorola W376 for $49.99 and receive double minutes for life free. See my review for further details.

You can buy a refurbished Motorola C261 phone for $39.99 and also get those Double Minutes See my mini-review.

Or you can get a LG 225 phone. You get $30 off, plus double minutes, an accessory kit and free shipping for $49.99My review.

On the other hand, as I said, you can also get various phone packages that include a bucket of airtime minutes so that you don't have to immediately buy any airtime separately. These may not offer the double minutes feature, so when you go to buy more airtime later on, you won't get twice the number of minutes listed on the card.

Phones plus airtime packages

Here are a couple of these packages, but read the reviews listed above first and later on you can come back here.

TracFone Ultimate Bundle: Get FREE LG 225 phone with the purchase of a one year card and save $100!

With good features

Depending on the handset you choose, features include a camera, calendar, phone book, speakerphone, voicemail, etc. Even some games. And, of course, ringtones.

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 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

You are allowed to change your home calling area up to four times in a given year. You may have to exchange your phone, as the local network may be different, for example if you move from an area that uses a GSM network to an area that doesn't. They will give you a new phone number however, so all you really transfer are your minutes. I guess you don't really need to do this if you have a single-rate phone, as there are no extra charges for roaming.

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 long serial numbers, codes, 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.

Should 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.

(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. (Most companies offer a similar incentive.)

You have to purchase a phone and then go to the portability page on their website.

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 but cutting your cell phone costs, you should get a package deal online because they often save you even more compared to buying them retail in store.

Okay. So 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