Prepaid cell phones

[Jive_Turkey]

Anybody have any experience with these - good or bad? Thinking about getting my younger sisters prepaid cell phones for Christmas. They don't have cell phones and I think they should have them for emergency situations or for those times when you just need to know where they are. Example - I'm meeting my sister at a bar, but she's nowhere to be found. I'd like to just let her know I'm there or to see if there's any problems.

Because of the limited minutes, I'm hopeful they won't abuse the cell phones and talk about stupid **** with their friends.

Thanks.

 

[UTCzech]

We have 3 of them, pretty good deal. We rarely use ours anyway, mainly for emergencies or last minute change of plans type things, so it works out really well. Never had any problems with reception or anything, ours (Tracfone) use AT&T system, so you can get a connection just about anywhere. One downside with Tracfone, you have to renew/add minutes every 2 months, or else they give your number away and you have to get a new one. I've stil got 60 minutes left and my renewal is up next week. But it's only $25 or so every two months, I can handle that....

 

[BigWill]

I researched them heavily, and went with ATT Go Phone for a few months. Service was good, so I converted to a regular ATT account for me and the wife and kid.

 

[SLBBQ]

I think they are awesome. Getting stuck in those cntracts are total BS. I use cingular. Spend about 20 bucks a month on it.
Sprint is by far the worst cell phone company there is. I have never been treated so rudely. Whenever I see a promotional booth on campus I stand nearby and let everyone know what kind of experiance I had with the shysters.

 

[grinder]

I'm not so sure this would be a good idea unless they are very well-disciplined and no not to talk longer than necessary with them. I've had mine for 2 years, and it was great and very cheap until I started using it somewhat heavily a few months ago for work purposes. Now, I "top up" at $30 every 3 or so weeks, where before it was $20 every 3 months.

 

[Snoop_Dogg]

I use to have a contract with Sprint. I HATED it...so, once the contract was up, we went with Virgin mobile. We mainly use the text messaging feature, and I have had no issed with it at all. We also used Cingular's pre paid, but that was years ago, and the network went down way too much. I do like Vrigin Mobile tho, and would use Cingular again, as their network issues have since been solved. I spend far less money on prepay as I did on contract.