virgin mobil pay as you go

[insertnamehere]

anyone have this/used it/ heard about it. my dad doesnt have a cell phone, doesnt have long distance, and drives a truck where he can neither contact anyone nor be reached all day, so i got him one and some minutes for a christmas gift. im just wonderin other people's opinions or if they had any problems with it.

[cosmo105]

my ex had that, and it actually got realy expensive. it's like 25 cents a minute for the first ten minutes of the day and then ten cents a minute after that...and it really added up to be a lot more expensive than a regular phone plan.

[abcdefz]

I have pay-as-you-go with Verizon. They call it "Free up."

...do you want pay-as-you-go opinions or, specifically, Virgin-pay-as-you-go opinions?

[insertnamehere]

well i guess any input would be fine. if you convince me to go with something else i can always give him the phone still packaged and be like "i heard bad things about that one so im returning it and getting you something else" haha

i dont think he would use it much. he woudlnt even use it every day. mostly just if he was on the road and someone needed to get in touch with him, or like, his mom can call here for regular price but he cant call her at all because he doesnt have long distance, so he could call and tell her to call him or somthing.

arent incoming calls free? that was the impression i got.

[abcdefz]

I wind up getting dinged for all kinds of crap, which amazes me.

The fact is: I don't use a cell phone much at all. I use it often enough to want to keep it, which is my tough luck, I think. I might get rid of it.

I don't know about Virgin's plan, but it's not quite pay-as-you-go with Verizon. You have to make a MINIMUM monthly payment of $15.

You used $5 last month? Fuck you -- pay me.

You used $10 last month? Fuck you -- pay me.

Etc.

It also charges once a connection is made, which is beautiful, because it makes a connection then tells you how many minutes you have left and, once the time draws near, how many days you have until your next payment. This means that sometimes your first 20-30 seconds is taken up with stuff you just heard when you made a call half an hour ago. (It used to be an optional function; nowdays, you can't switch it off.)

It kind of sucks. We get used to having a cell phone even though we could live life just swell without it, but now you're in AT LEAST $15 a month... that's $180 a year you could spend on gas, CDs, feeding the poor, or buying....um.... one or two pairs of shoes. :D

[insertnamehere]

see the virgin is $20 every three months, which i dont think is very bad for him to have access to a phone if he needs it

[abcdefz]

That's very cool.

Actually... would you consider footing the bill for it for a year or two?

I just ask because.... it just seems nice that, if you're going to give someone a gift service, it really shouldn't cost them anything for a while.

[dancin2beasties]

i have one. i got it a few years ago and it was perfect because i was 14 and didnt really have much use for a cellphone. But now that i need use it more and more it really is getting expensive. So it really depends how much he's going to be using it. If you make calls sparingly then one of those 20$ things will last forever but if you use it every day its not worth it. And it's not like it has any sort of plans like, calls are free on weekends or after 9 or something. its always 25 cents a minute. it really just depends on the amount of time he's going to spend on it, you gotta use your own judgment there.

(if you get the kind i have it comes with a cool little flashlight built in that i love. im debating over keeping the sweet flashlight or getting a less expensive phone, its a toss up.)

[insertnamehere]

i think minutes come with the package, i have to look, but i also got him $20 in minutes. im gonna have him look at the options and chose what to do, whether he wants to just get cards or use this other option, and if he wants the other thing i have to do it when we activate the phone. i figured $20 was good till he read the little book and decided how he wanted to use it.