BTW someone posted this site which explains 'em all:

http://www.cellguru.net/prepaid_compare.htm



On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 03:13:32 GMT, (The Real
Tom Miller) wrote:

| On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 13:24:03 -0500, chicagofan
| wrote:
|
| | The Real Tom Miller wrote:
| | chicagofan wrote:
|
| | I'm obviously doing a VERY bad job of explaining this. Maybe if I explain
| | my usage and why it works for me, it will be easier to understand. After my
| | landline phone was out of serivce for 2 weeks, I decided to see if I could
| | replace it with a cellphone, because I make *very* few local calls. The
| | comparison I've been making is $30 mo./$360 yr. for local telephone service
| | [rarely used] with NO long distance coverage; to Tracfone service for $90
| | yr. for local AND long distance.
| |
| | I don't use the phone as much as most people, but since long distance is my
| | primary usage... the cost works out for me.
|
| Hey, I don't think you are doing any worse job explaining it than I
| probably am!
|
| However, for the usage you explain above you could use many prepaid
| services. You are calling from your home region and making mostly long
| distance calls. You don't call much. Pretty simple and straightforward
| and many plans, including VM, would accomodate this usage.
|
| We use our cellphone mostly to make local calls when we are out of our
| home (my wife calls me from the supermarket to tell me to go to the
| kitchen and check our bread supply, for example). When we travel, we
| use the phone to make calls from our hotel. We sometimes call
| restaurants while we are shopping to make reservations for later.
| Basically we use it like people used to use pay phones.
|
| But if we wanted to use it in the home to make long distance calls, we
| could.
|
| We use our landline flat-rate service to make most long distance
| calls. The landline flat rate is MUCH cheaper, and especially when we
| ran a business we saved hundreds of dollars each month using it. But
| we're talking phone bills of $300+/month.
|
| What I like about VM is that when I make the calls, they are
| automatically posted to my credit card and that's the end of it. No
| phone cards (unless I want to use them, which I don't). Without this
| feature, it's not much different from Tracphone, although for a very
| low user it is apparently slightly cheaper. Very slightly cheaper.
| (You pay $7.50/month, I'd pay $5.00/month).
|
| We had an ATT cellphone for a year and a Verizon phone for two years.
| Basically we were paying a fat monthly fee and never using the phones.
| And the free phones we got were the size of bricks. The ATT service
| was dreadful, too.
|
| That's why I looked into prepaid cellphones in the first place. I
| settled on VM because I could essentially charge the calls to my
| credit card as I made them and forget about it. I'm not on a budget,
| but I don't like paying for something I'm not using.
|
| As for the Tracphone promo offers, all I can say is that I'm a retired
| marketing executive and I spent a huge portion of my adult life
| setting up promotions and special offers, and I knows 'em when I sees
| 'em. :-)
|
|