the Price of Pay by the Minute Prepaid Cell Phone Plans

My husband purchased a no-contract cell phone with 30 initial minutes through a well-known prepaid wireless company. Additional minutes were buy-as-you-go.

The service is acceptable; but there are black areas where the service drops without warning. In addition, those minutes add up faster than you can even begin to count; in a single 20 minute conversation, you can decimate 2/3 of the minutes with which the phone comes. To buy additional minutes, you spent 30 to 50 cents per minute. This allowed three additional conversations. My recommendation would be that, unless you are planning not to use this phone except in the case of a life-threatening emergency, don't use a no-contract phone or prepaid minutes. These are expensive and not at all worth the expense.

*Don't use the phone unless it is an emergency

* If you want a phone that you can actually use for talking, consider getting a regular contract with a low monthly minute limit; many of these are at least as reasonable.

* Don't buy small numbers of additional minutes; most offer additional discounts for higher numbers of minutes purchased; again, even a single emergency could require a 15 minute phone call - and nothing would be worse than having your phone shut off in the middle of an emergency because you are out of minutes!