| Prepaid cell phone plans have obvious benefits to a variety of customers. For people with bad credit, a prepaid cell plan can be purchased without the credit check required by monthly service plans. Prepaid wireless plans also make it easier to control how often, and how long, the phone is used. Finally there is no monthly bill and no long term contract that the customer is committed to.
Prepaid phone plans work much differently than their monthly contract counterparts. With prepaid cell plans, customers generally purchase prepaid cell phones, which differ than those sold to customers of monthly service plans. After buying the phone, a calling card needs to be purchased so that minutes can be added to the phone’ s account. Minutes are sold in increments like $10, $30, $50, $100. These prepaid cell phones do not allow a user to add $2 or $23. Instead the phone card contains a code that when activated by the store, can be entered into the phone and the account is updated with the number of minutes purchased. Any number of minutes can be purchased per month and added to the account. It is important to note that minutes purchased on most prepaid wireless plans have an expiration date. Generally, the more minutes purchased, the longer the customer has to use them.
Expiration dates typically are 30, 60, and 90 days from the date the minutes are added to the account. Once the expiration date is passed, any unused minutes are lost. Some prepaid cell phone plans will allow for the expiration date on existing minutes to be extended if additional minutes are added to the account. With these prepaid phone plans, the existing minutes assume the expiration date of the newly added minutes. Again, not all prepaid phone plans allow this so it is important to check with the provider.
Despite the benefits, prepaid phone plans can be subject to other charges as well. While most monthly plans offer free long distance or free roaming, not all prepaid phone plans allow this so it is important to verify if the plan you are looking at will include these features, or if you will be charged extra for using what most providers refer to as "premium services." In addition to call related charges, many of the prepaid cell phone plans have a daily usage fee. Under these circumstances, each day the phone is used, the customer is charged a fee, usually around one dollar. Some even charge a daily or monthly fee to keep the account active. These fees can run anywhere from $15 to $30 a month. Remember, these fees are exclusive of calls made. Despite the usage or account fees, you are still charged by the minute for phone calls. The benefit to plans that require a usage or account fee is that the cost per minute is lower.
Prepaid wireless phones are generally not as feature rich as those purchased through monthly service plans since the features are not available. When looking at a prepaid cell phone plan, it is important to determine what it is being used for. Unless the phone is only to be used on a limited basis, such as emergencies, it may be more economical to look into monthly service plans.
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