The LIFE of a TracFone?
joshh...@fastmail.fm
and, although it's not the a good deal for people who use their cell
phones a A LOT, it's working out well for me. For just over a hundred
bucks, they gave me a reconditioned phone, one year of airtime and 400
minutes. The phone looked brand new to me, and was sealed in factory
packaging. I have no complaints about it. It's great for short calls
when I'm traveling, but at 20 cents a minute I seldom use it here at
home since I have a landline.
I've noticed that some of their deals for buying more airtime &
minutes state "Double Minutes for the life of your phone." I assume
that means if I pay $140.00 for their deal of a year's airtime, 800
minutes and double minutes on any card I buy in the future, and
download the minutes into my TracFone and damned thing goes belly-up
the next day, I've just wasted $140.00.
My question is how long can you reasonably expect a cell phone to
last, if you're careful not to drop it or let it get stolen? How long
before the rechargeable battery stops taking or holding a charge?
Forrest
<joshh...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:aa58aa60-1fee-4d0d...@a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
My wife, son and I have been using TracFone for about six or seven years. As
you said, it's a great deal for a person that doesn't use a cell phone much.
My wife and I don't. Our son, on the other hand is always out of minutes.
He'll sit at his computer and talk on the cell phone with the land line
right next to him, which is free. Whatever ...
We have each had at least four or five different phones. They keep coming up
with deals that include a free phone. I have a whole drawer full of them. I
think the one that I used for over a year, a Motorola, got to where it
didn't hold a charge very well. The last phone that I got came free with the
purchase of a one year card. The card was 400 minutes and one year service
for about $95. The phone was a double minutes for life and even got free
shipping. I'm using the phone but haven't needed to cash in the card yet. I
don't want to do that until I need to. The rub is that if you loose or break
the phone, you will lose the minutes on it. The unused minutes roll over. I
have over a thousand on it. When you get a new phone and have the old one,
you call Radii, in Pakistan or India or where ever and go through a whole
bunch of crap punching in codes and get the minutes transferred to the new
one.
Speaking of phones, I noticed that our home land line was getting sky high.
I called and said, "before I have this thing disconnected, is there anything
that can be trimmed on our plan"? I found out that we have been paying about
$15 a month just to have "long distance access". Hell, I never use it and if
I needed to I could use the cell phone. I had that removed and got the
measured rate for local. That saved even more. I sent away for a "MagicJack"
that plugs into the computer. It works OK. You get all you can eat of local
and long distance. It was only $40 and you get a year's use out of it and
then $20 a year after that.
phil scott
the phone company would have both your minutes used and your payment
on record,
my guess they give you a new phone or you pay a small charge to get
another one.
check with them.
thanks for the tip, I live on the road in a motorhome, and want to
dump my second cell phone and just
use one for the broadband connection... a back up such as you have
would allow me coverage in the
event I the other ones has a glitch. a lot cheaper than the 700
dollars a year I pay for the second phone I have now.
Phil scott
Zuke
> I started using TracFone prepaid cellular service back in the Spring
> and, although it's not the a good deal for people who use their cell
> phones a A LOT, it's working out well for me. For just over a hundred
> bucks, they gave me a reconditioned phone, one year of airtime and 400
> minutes. The phone looked brand new to me, and was sealed in factory
> packaging. I have no complaints about it. It's great for short calls
> when I'm traveling, but at 20 cents a minute I seldom use it here at
> home since I have a landline.
>
> I've noticed that some of their deals for buying more airtime &
> minutes state "Double Minutes for the life of your phone." I assume
> that means if I pay $140.00 for their deal of a year's airtime, 800
> minutes and double minutes on any card I buy in the future, and
> download the minutes into my TracFone and damned thing goes belly-up
> the next day, I've just wasted $140.00.
>
This just happened with my tracfone. I went out and bought a new
one for $14.99 at Meijers and the minutes transferred over from
the old one. I also received an extra 2 months service and 1000 minutes
with the new phone. I did the transfer myself on-line. One thing
you should keep handy is your old phone's IDs. I was worried as
you are about losing the minutes in my old phone but they transferred
easily.
Forrest
"Zuke" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.OSX.4.64.08...@ucfs1.ucfs-public.net...
Was your old phone still functional or just battery not holding a charge
well? I have never done the transfer on-line. I didn't know you could. I
know that you can add air time and activate cards on-line. So, if you know
the phone's ID# etc, then you can transfer even if, say you dropped it in
the bath tub and it doesn't work, or you lose it?
I think your thousand minutes above must be a typo. You probably meant 10
minutes.
Rod Speed
Forever.
> How long before the rechargeable battery stops taking or holding a charge?
You should get a good year or two with the original phone manufacturer's battery.
And popular phones like Nokias use the same battery on lots
of models, so they cost peanuts to replace when they do die.
Can be a lot harder to find replacement batterys with some
other brands which have a unique battery for each model etc.
If you dont recieve calls on it much but mostly just make them, you can
turn it off when not making a call and extend the battery life tremendously.
Zuke
My phone was dead. It lit up and that was all, no letters. I called
tracfone and they sent out a new sim but that did not fix the problem
as I suspected it wouldn't. Then I went to Meijer's and got the $14.99
phone. I went online and there is a page to transfer the phone. All
you need is the old phone's ID's. That 1000 minutes is not a typo.
I don't know why I recieved it but I went from 800 minutes and a
deadline of Jan 29, to 1800 minutes and a deadline of Mar 29th. I did
pay for double minutes for life the last time I extended minutes so
maybe that had something to do with it.
Dennis
<REMOVETHIS...@gmail.com> wrote:
>My wife, son and I have been using TracFone for about six or seven years. As
>you said, it's a great deal for a person that doesn't use a cell phone much.
>My wife and I don't. Our son, on the other hand is always out of minutes.
>He'll sit at his computer and talk on the cell phone with the land line
>right next to him, which is free. Whatever ...
>We have each had at least four or five different phones. They keep coming up
>with deals that include a free phone. I have a whole drawer full of them. I
>think the one that I used for over a year, a Motorola, got to where it
>didn't hold a charge very well. The last phone that I got came free with the
>purchase of a one year card. The card was 400 minutes and one year service
>for about $95. The phone was a double minutes for life and even got free
>shipping. I'm using the phone but haven't needed to cash in the card yet. I
>don't want to do that until I need to. The rub is that if you loose or break
>the phone, you will lose the minutes on it. The unused minutes roll over. I
>have over a thousand on it. When you get a new phone and have the old one,
>you call Radii, in Pakistan or India or where ever and go through a whole
>bunch of crap punching in codes and get the minutes transferred to the new
>one.
A. It is pretty cheap to replace the battery on those Motorola
phones. Like less than US$10 (I think I found a Motorola branded
replacement battery for for mine for around US$5 shipped).
2. If you have a huge bank of minutes accumulated on your Tracfone,
why are you buying more? It only costs US$4.95/month (i.e., less than
US$60/year) to keep the minutes you have on your phone active after
their original expiration date.
Dennis (evil)
--
I'm behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave,
dodging the bullet and pushing the envelope. -George Carlin
Forrest
I think you just got lucky. Double minutes or not, no way you would get an
extra 1,000 minutes added. Usually a new phone comes with a couple of months
service and 20 minutes or so. I better write down the ID numbers of our
phones, incase we lose or break one of them. I sure would hate to lose all
of those minutes that my wife and I have accumulated.
It seems like I can never find a phone that has enough ringing and listening
volume. This last one is an LG 225. It's OK but if I could turn it up some
more, I would. I guess I'm just picky about phones and how they fit my ear
and sound. Maybe I just need a hearing aid. Which phones have you had and
how did you like them?
Forrest
"Dennis" <dg...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bfqvd4hh3dhdsk6sn...@4ax.com...
Well, I had a Motorola flip phone (V60i) that I really liked. TracFone
informed me that something about the service was changing and that it would
no longer work. They sent me a free replacement phone. It too was a Motorola
but crappy (V170). The phonebook wasn't on the sim, I guess, and all too
often it would say something like, " phonebook not available at this time".
I saw the LG 225 (new, not reconditioned) with double minutes for life, for
free and free shipping with the purchase of an annual card that had 400
minutes. That was about $95 or $100. I didn't realize that you could buy
just the service time. I'll keep that in mind. As for now, I'm good till
5/9/09 and still haven't cashed in the annual card yet.
SoCalMike
> My question is how long can you reasonably expect a cell phone to
> last, if you're careful not to drop it or let it get stolen? How long
> before the rechargeable battery stops taking or holding a charge?
ive got a nokia 5600 series thats got to be about 10+ years old. still
has the pacific bell SIM card (pacific bell became cingular, later ATT)
and the original battery.
works great as a backup alarm, and i can still play that "snake" game.
dunno bout the newer phones, though.