Pay-As-You-Go / Pre-pay service

Who has the most affordable and best deal on pre-paid service? I have a cousin who is awful credit, and they are trying to find out the most affordable way to get a cell phone. A lot of investigiation by me and I see a lot of cases you are paying 30 cents or more a minute. That seems pretty extreme.

Is there a good deal out there for people who need to pre-pay?

I'm not sure where you are based, but if you are in the UK, T-Mobile have a hybrid service called Flext. You have an allowance which you adapt to your needs at the end of the month.

If you are outside of the UK, I'm sure there is somethong similar where you are.

We have prepaid cell phone cards here in Canada, just just like a long distance prepaid card, anyways, I have seen them as low as 15 cents a minute. I dont know how that compares in the US. I guess its not too bad if you don't really use your phone much.

Are those phonecards phone/carrier specific or are they generic? The ones I have seen here in the US are all specific to a carrier, but you can usually get them at a corner store.

I just wish there were more affordable plans. Like I said, 30 cents a minute is an outrageous credit tax. Especially when you have to buy the telephone with no discount.

Some of the cards are network specific, but others such as the ones I have seen in the grocery store, are just generic ones. They have them in gas stations, grocery and convenience stores. I am surprised they are not cheaper in the US. It seems everything in Canada is more expensive. lol.

I have pay as you go, it's 10 cents a minute and it costs $1 to connect for the day. Sucks, doesn't it?

Pay-as-you-go is pretty expensive but the Cingular Go Phone isn't too bad. You can have a no-contract automated type thing as well as the card system. Watch out for service drops for weeks, though.. That happened to me =/

My mom has Virgin (haha, that sounds funny...), and she's been happy with it so far. I'm not sure exactly what she's paying, but she uses it only for emergencies, so she actually ends up with extra minutes since she has to recharge her card every three months, I believe, whether she's used it up or not.

best service in my opinion is optus not expensive alot of bonus you coudnt go wrong

When you say service drops for weeks you mean you had paid for access and could not use your phone for weeks at a time? That is not good at all.

That's why I stopped subscribing. It was a rip-off.

It works for most other people, though, so it could have just been my phone.

Can't you buy these cards, enter the code, adn use the minutes and stuff until you run out? Thats what those kid phones have ( Fireflys ) So their parents dont freak out if they call China or something.

Verizon prepay is the best plan I've seen. Its 700 minutes for 70 dollars..that's ten cents a minute.

I've used the Cingular pre-paid services and it's been good. But something I've noticed is that the Cingular cards have a expiration date with them and if you don't use up your minutes by then, you just lose them. But if you go in the Cingular store and buy them and put the minutes into your phone with the receipt you get, they don't expire. You can use them until you run out.

Yeah Cingulars pre-pay is pretty cool. You can request rollover and your minutes never expire