Tracphone?

Tracphone vs. Virgin Mobile

Is Virgin Mobile pretty much the same quality of service as Tracfone? They have Virgin Mobile at Walmart as well, and the $150 phone (Kyocera) is rolled back to $98.

Any comments re: the quality of Kyocera phones?

Also, do any prepaid phone minutes cards (such as AT&T, Alltel, Tracfone, Simple Freedom, or Cingular) work with the Virgin service, or do you have to use Virgin exclusively (I don't see any Virgin prepaid cards on the Walmart site, just the phones). Walmart has $50 Alltel cards on sale for $30.

Walmart's Prepaid phone page

Walmart's Virgin phones
 
Re: Tracphone vs. Virgin Mobile

Every prepaid phone service works with only its own phone cards. You can add time with a credit card, and Virgin prepaid cards are available at just about any RadioShack store, or at least that's what I've been told. You could also check your local Circle K, Rite Aid, Target, CompUSA, Best Buy or Sprint Store.
 
Re: Tracphone vs. Virgin Mobile

As for Kyocera phones, they're not too bad. They had a battery recall issue not too long ago, but that's been resolved and all their new phones have the fixed battery instead of the recalled one.
 
Re: Tracphone vs. Virgin Mobile

Inkara1 said:
Every prepaid phone service works with only its own phone cards. You can add time with a credit card, and Virgin prepaid cards are available at just about any RadioShack store, or at least that's what I've been told. You could also check your local Circle K, Rite Aid, Target, CompUSA, Best Buy or Sprint Store.
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OK, I think I've got it now. I was confused because Walmart carries Virgin Mobile phones but not the cards.

The problem now is, apparently Virgin uses the Sprint PCS network, and their coverage is good around Panama City Beach (where I work) but spotty in Washington County (where I live). I was hoping to be able to ditch the land line at home.

I'm still trying to find a coverage map for Tracfone, however.
 
Re: Tracphone vs. Virgin Mobile

Virgin will also roam without charging you extra for it. I don't know about over there, but here they'll roam on parts of the Verizon network, since Sprint and Verizon are both on the CDMA standard.

As for TracFone's coverage map, good luck ever finding one that's actually informative. I tried to check their website to see if I could find a map, but I couldn't get the site to load. It's 3:45 a.m. and even at this time of the day the site loads extremely slow and stalls. It pulls that same crap during business hours when I need to add airtime to someone's phone.

Oh, Annie told me a horror story about the time her mom tried to call in some TracFone airtime she'd bought. Their phone system got messed up and hung up on her, and when she tried again it told her her airtime PIN was now invalid. Since she'd waited until the last day to add time, that would mean she'd have to dump more money that she didn't have into the phone or else lose the minutes she'd accrued before and probably her phone number too. It took a lot of wrangling with three different supervisors to finally get the mess straightened out.
 
They all have coverage in town, but as soon as you cross over the bays and into the hinterlands, there is none. :shrug:

Also, there is a whole passel of complaints similar to Annie's Mom's about Tracfone on ConsumerAffairs.com.

I'm seriously considering Virgin Mobile, and I'm going to check into them on a local basis, as well as AT&T/Cingular Wireless.

I would go with a contract plan, but the coverage seems to be similar, and my friends all have horror stories about them.
 
I think one reason I'm considering virgin over trac, I've heard with trac,
if you leave their service you can't take the number with you....?
 
I HONESTLY reccomend Virgin over Trac. I sell both at my store, and Virgin has Trac beat in my opinion. The rates, you have to put 20 dollars on every three months, and it's 25 cents a minute for the first ten, and then I believe a dime for each after that.

Virgin is run off the Sprint PCS system, which has greatly improved since they were Sprink Spectrum.

I -highly- reccomend Virgin. They have cheaper phones (that are still good phones) and a better service ^^
 
catocom said:
I think one reason I'm considering virgin over trac, I've heard with trac,
if you leave their service you can't take the number with you....?
Click to expand...
Indeed. TracFone is based off the phone's serial number, not the phone number like everyone else. If your phone breaks, you lose your number and all the time you put on it. You can try to get them to transfer the minutes over to the new phone... but I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
Kittie said:
I HONESTLY reccomend Virgin over Trac. I sell both at my store, and Virgin has Trac beat in my opinion. The rates, you have to put 20 dollars on every three months, and it's 25 cents a minute for the first ten, and then I believe a dime for each after that.

Virgin is run off the Sprint PCS system, which has greatly improved since they were Sprink Spectrum.

I -highly- reccomend Virgin. They have cheaper phones (that are still good phones) and a better service ^^
Click to expand...
It's 25 cents a minute for the first 10 minutes used in a given day. After that, it dropes to 10 cents a minute. But the next day, it resets.

Virgin is basically Sprint's prepaid service, and they're native to the Sprint network. However, they will roam without charging you extra for it, which is an advantage Virgin has over both TracFone and Verizon prepaid. I recommend Virgin for people who make short calls and make a lot of them, because there's no connection fee. I recommend Verizon Prepaid to people who make calls of more than a minute or two but make fewer per day, because they have a 10-cent-a-minute rate but a 25-cent connection fee. At the end of two minutes for the first call of the day, you're 5 cents cheaper than with Virgin, and 20 cents cheaper after 3 minutes. But which one is cheaper is really dependent on how the customer uses the phone. One nice part about Virgin is that the minimum you have to add is $20 and you only have to add it once every 90 days to keep the account active and make the minutes roll over. TracFone has a 60-day limit on that, and Verizon only adds a month for its $15 re-up and 2 months for the $30 and $50 re-up.

Oh, hey, Kittie... I'm just curious, what are your dollar-per-hour sales usually?
 
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