So you have decided to get a prepaid cell phone and are simply overwhelmed by the number of choices. Well, here is a guide to the different plans offered by Cingular. One thing to note is not every company is available in your area but by visiting cingular’s website you can find whether or not they are available in your area.
Cingular Go Phones: You can usually buy these phones for anywhere as cheap as 18.43-199.99, depending on where you shop, and the phone you choose. I found that the cheapest places to shop were the cingular site itself (www.cingular.com), or walmart both online at their site (www.walmart.com) and obviously in their store. The problem with shopping in the store is they don’t always have the phones that you may have seen online however there are benefits like special deals and not having to pay shipping. Cingular offers a phone for kids called the firefly also which is a simple four button phone. They offer a wide variety in go phones, which is their version of prepaid phones.
They have two categories of go phones; pay as you go and pick your plan. Pay as you go, you buy a certain card which comes in many different denominations including $15, $25, $50, $75, and $100. You get $10 dollars free when you buy the phone and a bonus if you activate a $25 or higher card when you activate the phone. Basic voicemail, call forwarding, call waiting, caller id, and three way calling are all included for free. However you have to be careful because like with three way calling you are charged for both calls separately based on your plan.
There are two plans with the pay as you go option one you pay $.25 a minute for any call, not including international there are no daily fees or anything else. This means that any call across the united states no matter who it is to is going to cost you $.25 and if someone calls you it will cost you the same. There is no free nights and weekends or free mobile to mobile.
The other plan they offer is $.10 a minute for all your calls, however everyday you use your phone you are charged a $1 dollar daily access fee the next day after you use the phone for a voice call (anything other than text messaging). The main benefit of this plan in my eyes is that you get free mobile to mobile so you can call all of your friends and family that have cingular wireless for free and unlimited. The thing is though these calls are free they still count as a voice call for that daily access fee. I chose this phone with the daily access fee because I know at least 5 people with cingular that I can now call for free and their were plans I liked better on other carriers, however their phones were more expensive or they were unavailable in my area. What I do to keep the costs down with this plan is tell my friends I am trying to conserve money and that I only will answer the phone on Monday and Thursday. You can pick whatever days you want or however many days a week but this works well to conserve the days you use it and the money that you spend. Text messaging is available on both of these plans for $.05 a message either received or sent. Also depending on the phone you can access your internet and the web on you phone.
The Pick your plan option allows you to have any number of monthly plans ranging from $29.99-69.99. The way this works is that you have the monthly fee drawn out of your bank account or taken off your credit card at the beginning of the month when you start getting low on funds you can purchase more minutes in increments of $15 or $25. To any of these type of plans you can add for $4.99 a month 200 text messages or for $19.99 a month 3000 text messages.
There aren’t a set amount of minutes you get but if you choose the $29.99 plan and use it all for voice calls which means no text messaging, ring tones, or accessing the internet you would have 200 minutes because each minute would cost you $.15. On this plan you get no night and weekend minutes or free mobile to mobile. The other nice feature of cingular is on all of their plans you get rollover minutes, so if you don’t use all of your minutes for a month you get to keep them. This is important if you don’t talk a lot or as much as you had expected.
Their $39.99 plan you pay $.133 per minute therefore if you use your phone only for voice calls you would get 300 minutes per month. However on this plan you get 1000 minutes for nights and weekends and no mobile to mobile minutes.
For $49.99 you would get 400 anytime minutes based on $.125 per minute rates and using the phone only for voice calls. You also get unlimited nights and weekends and still no mobile to mobile minutes.
Their highest plan at $69.99 makes your minutes $.108 per minute meaning you would get 650 minutes a month if you used the whole plan for voice calls. You also get unlimited nights and weekends and unlimited mobile to mobile. This plan is probably the best deal because you would rarely use the 650 minutes with the fact that you get nights and weekends free and calls to all cingular customers free anytime. However nearly $70 dollars a month may be a little steep for a cell phone.
Overall I think that cingular phones are the best prepaid phones you get very good reception and can check what kind of reception you would get in your area on their web site. The cheapest phone offered is the one I got because I am not looking to outlay a huge amount right now. The phone is great! Great sound, and I have no other complaints because I was looking for simple. I get great reception also! The only complaint that I have so far is that it costs you minutes to call customer service. I will be writing more articles on other providers so look for them if you are trying to compare!
