Best prepaid phone plan?
 

I just got my financial aid in from school and I need to get a phone. I'm not interested in any contracts, so prepaid is the way for me.

To help you help me, here is how I will be using it:
I don't plan on text messaging that much.
I doubt I'll be talking that much, and wouldn't mind waiting until 7 if they have a different rate based on the time of day.
I don't need a camera in my phone.
It can be a no frills phone.

Thanks for any help, I really appreciate it.

The Wandering God

I get by fine with my TracFone. There are no rates, just the fact that the more minutes you buy at once, the cheaper each individual minute is. Just add minutes every three or so months to keep it active, or shell out the extra cash for the one year card.

Consumer Cellular

More for your dollar than prepaid, flexible, and no contract. Not the best phones in the world, but they do what ya need.

Personally, I enjoy my Virgin Mobile prepaid. It hasn't given me any problems.

We had T-Mobile prepaid and it worked really well. You can get the phones and cards at Target, and you can add minutes online, over the phone, or buy another card. Once you buy so many minutes you're a "Gold Member" and your minutes take a year to expire. I want to say it's $100 worth of minutes but its been a while since we had the prepaid plan.

I use T-Mobile as well....like another plan mentioned above, the more minutes you buy, the cheaper it is (they do charge quite a bit for texting though 20 cents to send, 10 to recieve, but if you spend 100 bucks on minutes, its 10 cents a minute...I bought a 100 dollar card [1000 minutes] back in june, and still have about 30 dollars on it, as I don't talk a lot either.)

T-Mobile also has a second prepaid plan that is 10 cents a minute, plus a dollar a day charge every day you use it, but free nights. If you do a lot of calling in the evening, this might be the plan for you.

This. I got a tracfone around September 08 and I've had no problems at all so long as I remembered to buy minutes for it.

Seriously guys, Consumer Cellular beats almost anything. If you talk less than 1600 min a month you should look into it...

Actually, I tried signing up for it and I was denied after a credit check. :(

The Wandering God

Did you actually talk to someone? There should be a way around that. They make exceptions for AAA members sometimes. Or do you think your folks would put it under their names?