Hello, not sure if I've ever posted, but have been reading the forums for quite some time. We are a family of 3 Tracfone users on the monthly plan which is dirt cheap, $23.66 per month. Wifey is out buying an LG800G right now for herself, but I am checking out other options.
I don't know how the AT&T GoPhone works with keeping it active month to month. I hardly ever use the phone to make phone calls, we just keep in touch through text while at work or away. It would also be useful to have a better phone that can connect to the web, so I was looking at the GoPhones. I see on the site the "10 cent/minute" plan. I was wondering how that would work with also going with the $4.99/month 200 message text package and also a web package.
I think I remember reading here that you can purchase the 500mb $25 data package and the remaining mb roll over. That way, you could purchase the $5 10mb to keep it active until all mb data is used before purchasing another $25 data.
I am looking for the cheapest way to have more feature than Tracfone offers. Want to know how the phone keeps active month to month and if I could do the pay/minute plan with the other packages mentioned and the phone would stay active.
If you choose the $0.10 per minute plan, you can spend all your balance for messaging plans. You just have to pay attention to the expiration dates of the refill cards.
Buy a $100 GoPhone card and be done with it for 365 days. (Easy to find for $90 or less...) also that entire balance will be available for you to add messaging packs and data. The data rolls over, $5 per 30 days to keep it going. Same with the messaging plans. Don't trust their "auto feature renewal" a lot of folks have trouble with that. Just log in once a month and add them manually.
Just coming back to say thanks for the replies. I did pick up a phone and activated this evening. I bought 2 of the AT&T Avail phones. I liked playing around on the screen on them better than the LG Thrive which were the 2 smartphones available at the store. I did just the per minute call plan with 1000 text and 500 mb data on mine and just 10 mb data on my wife's (she will pretty much only use hers at home connected to wifi where I will use mine at work more often not on wifi.) Added a bit of money for any phone calls that may happen. We pretty much make a phone call every few months now since being able to text.
Will see in 30 days how much we use the texting and data. Figured I'd get a few months adding $5 to the texting and probably quite a long time just adding $5 to the data until I use up the 500mb.
This is our first time with smartphones. I think it will be a much better deal and far more useful than the 100 Tracfone units per phone per month we were doing for roughly $25/month (still have 1 Tracfone for my daughter as she is only 11 and only has it for when we are both working in case they get home from school before we do.)
So far enjoying the phones and so much easier to text on than the numeric padded flip phone we replaced. Now my iPhone sporting coworker won't make fun of my 1980's tech phone anymore, LOL.
Well, here's my experience with ATT's GoPhone plan.
I purchased the Thrive last April. I purchased the 500 mb data plan and the 1000 text plan, so I believe that ended up being about $40. I then put $25 into my account. I also setup the $5 text and the $5 texting plan.
I've been averaging adding $25 to my account every other month. That allows $10 for the data/text and gives me a little bit to make calls. I'm usually on Wifi, so I don't use that much data. I also use GoogleVoice for most of my texting which means I don't use much of my texting plan (although it is worth spending $5/mo as a backup for the _few_ times Google Voice was having trouble).
I still have about 250 megs of data left
Something to be aware of though, Android seems to use quite a bit of data in the background even when you aren't using your phone. JuiceDefender helped me quite a bit by limited _when_ programs could access 3g. What _really_ helped was rooting my phone and putting DroidWall on it. If you don't want to root your phone, then you'll have to use something like JuiceDefender, or simply turn off your 3G data when you don't want your phone to use it.
I would suggest using a tool such as 3G WatchDog pro and/or Onavo to keep on watch on 3g data usage.
I do like the GoPhone option though...it is costing me less than $15/mo and I have web access when and where I need it.
Coming from a family that used all Tracfones and two of us now on ATT Gophone, I agree,
Gophone can be very affordable and give you more features and flexibility for about the same price or less.
Especially if you don't talk much on your phone and mainly want text and/or data.
When my daughter was 13 and wanted a qwerty phone, back then Tracfone didn't have any
and also she used too many minutes (units) because she texted alot.
We got her a Gophone then and put her on the $10/1,000 txt per month.
I have been using Tracfone for over 11 years and although I could now get a qwerty or touchscreen phone from there, I chose Gophone, because it will still end up cheaper for me, 200 txt for $5 and the occasional call at 10c/min and the ability to send international text messages home to my family in Germany. Costs $.25 each to send but the ones I receive get deducted from my text bucket.
My son who is 12 uses his phone only when we need to get ahold of him so he has a cheap flip phone and I have him on the H2O minute plan which is $10 every 90 days.
So we pay less than $20/month for all three phones.
AT&T, Pg Plus, formerly TMo but bldg penetration was lacking
Feedback Score
0
Originally Posted by mommusic
Coming from a family that used all Tracfones and two of us now on ATT Gophone, I agree,
Gophone can be very affordable and give you more features and flexibility for about the same price or less.
Especially if you don't talk much on your phone and mainly want text and/or data.
When my daughter was 13 and wanted a qwerty phone, back then Tracfone didn't have any
and also she used too many minutes (units) because she texted alot.
We got her a Gophone then and put her on the $10/1,000 txt per month.
I have been using Tracfone for over 11 years and although I could now get a qwerty or touchscreen phone from there, I chose Gophone, because it will still end up cheaper for me, 200 txt for $5 and the occasional call at 10c/min and the ability to send international text messages home to my family in Germany. Costs $.25 each to send but the ones I receive get deducted from my text bucket.
My son who is 12 uses his phone only when we need to get ahold of him so he has a cheap flip phone and I have him on the H2O minute plan which is $10 every 90 days.
So we pay less than $20/month for all three phones.
Mommusic, thanks to a post once by you in which you recommended their text plans, I too now find Go Phone very competitive and affordable on a network which gives me better indoor service than I was getting with TMobile. I mostly text. And with texts rolling over, I have usually been able to alternate every 30 days between the $9.99 and $4.99 text pkgs for an average of $7.50 a mo. So the $25 every 90 days usually has sufficed for me.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by mommusic
Bookmarks