Best Reviewed
Prepaid Cell Phone Plans
- Prepaid cell phone plan with advanced phones Virgin Mobile Beyond Talk *Est. $25
- Best prepaid phone plan for occasional use T-Mobile Prepaid *Est. $10
- Prepaid phone plan with international calling TracFone *Est. $10
- Best as an emergency phone T-Mobile Prepaid (annual plan) *Est. $100
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T-Mobile Prepaid (annual plan)
Best as an emergency phone
- Low price per minute
- Above-average customer service
- 90,000 retail locations nationwide
- Minutes don't expire for a year
- No free nights or free weekend calling
If you want to keep a cell phone on hand for emergencies but don't plan to use it on a regular basis, reviewers suggest the T-Mobile Prepaid Annual plan, which is a prepaid wireless plan with a long expiration. You get 1,000 minutes for $100 and a whole year to use them. Another top-rated prepaid provider, TracFone, offers a similar plan, but $100 gets you only 400 minutes.
You can get a good idea of the effectiveness of prepaid wireless cell phone services, such as T-Mobile Prepaid, by looking at large customer surveys like those conducted by ConsumerReports.org, J.D. Power and Associates and PCMag.com. In addition, PrepaidReviews.com allows customers to post their own reviews of prepaid wireless plans.
Our Sources
1. ConsumerReports.orgDetails/Subscribe
ConsumerReports.org polls more than 58,000 magazine subscribers, asking them to rate their cell service for call quality, handling of calls and complaints and billing problems. Wireless providers, including T-Mobile Prepaid, are ranked accordingly.
Review: Prepaid Cell Phone Service Ratings, Editors of ConsumerReports.org, Jan. 2011
For overall customer satisfaction, T-Mobile ranks "about average" among nine prepaid wireless providers in this annual survey of about 5,400 prepaid wireless cell phone users. However, T-Mobile gets the highest rating for customer service.
Review: 2010 Wireless Non-Contract Customer Satisfaction Index Study, Editors of J.D. Power and Associates, Aug. 2010
T-Mobile rates about average in this annual survey of prepaid wireless cell plan users, although it earns above-average scores for fees, plan options and customer support.
Review: Cellular Service Providers: Prepaid Providers, Ben Gottesman, Sept. 7, 2010
T-Mobile Prepaid ties for first place with three other carriers in editors' rankings of 29 prepaid wireless providers. Users posting comments to the site, however, give T-Mobile only 3 stars out of 5.
Review: T-Mobile To Go Prepaid Cell Phones, Editors of PrepaidReviews.com
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