For someone who doesn’t love talking on the phone, I seem to talk and write about phone service quite a bit. My 2011 post about options for home office phone service generated a lively discussion, so now let’s talk about cell phones! And for what it’s worth, I’m still quite happy with my Vonage line, and I think that the sound quality has actually improved since I originally set it up.
If you’re a freelancer, or even just a human on Earth in 2012, chances are you have to have a cell phone. Maybe you only have a cell phone. But I bet that you have one. And in my conversations with many freelancers about their cell phones, here’s what I’ve found out:
- Almost everyone hates their cell phone company. Nearly everyone will tell you that their coverage, sound quality, tech support or customer service are abysmal, or that all of those are abysmal, or that none of those are abysmal but the cost of that non-abysmalness is far too high.
- Almost everyone thinks that their cell phone bill is too high. Many people in the US have an unlimited talk, text and data plan with a smartphone, and I’m guessing that if you have that, you’re paying between $60 and $100 a month for your phone.
- Lots of people feel that they don’t use all of the features that their cell phone plan offers. Unscientifically, it seems to me that most people either talk a lot, text a lot, or browse the Web a lot, but not all three. But if they have an unlimited plan, they’re basically paying for all three whether they use them or not.
I know that for some people, an unlimited plan with a smartphone is the only way to go. If you don’t have a land line and/or you talk on the phone a lot; if you are an interpreter and you are out of the office almost all of the time; if you live in an area where Wi-Fi is scarce but cell service is good, or maybe even if you’re really hungry for work and you don’t ever want to miss an e-mail. Those are all good reasons to sink $1,000+ a year into your cell phone. However, I think that a lot of people spend that money without really casting a critical eye on their need for a full-featured cell phone. For a lot of people, I think that the 90/10 rule could be applied to cell phones; meaning that there could be a phone plan that does 90% of what you want, for 10% of the cost of the full-featured plan. If you don’t really need the full-featured cell phone’s features, you could take a pretty nice vacation for what you’re saving by switching to prepaid.
So here’s my confession: I love Tracfone and the prepaid cell phone service that they sell. This review perfectly sums up what I like about TracFone, and I fully agree with the author’s take on their service (“If you can keep your cell phone minutes down to a bare minimum, or really only use your phone for texting, quick chats, and emergencies, then Tracfone is a great option. It’s essentially taking what has typically been a high-priced subscription model product, and taking it to a frugal, bare bones extreme.”) Like the author, I’ve never had to deal with TracFone’s customer service to activate or add minutes to my phone, even when I accidentally let the service expire while I was out of the country. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dropped call either. Best, I’ve spent about $100 per year on my phone in the eight years I’ve had it. Also, on the odd occasion when I hate TracFone for a few minutes (their coverage in remote locations is not great), I remind myself that I’m paying $9 a month for the privilege of hating them, not $100 a month.
After eight years of using a totally bare-bones Samsung phone that (get ready) only makes phone calls, I did recently upgrade to one of TracFone’s “smarter” models that has a Qwerty keyboard, Wi-Fi and some type of “mobile web,” although I’m still figuring out what that means. I’ll report on that model once I receive it and activate it! If you’re a heavier phone user, TracFone also owns two other companies, Net10 and StraightTalk, which offer unlimited talk, text and data plans for about $45 per month.
Like other frugal lifestyle options, a prepaid cell phone isn’t the right choice for everyone. Neither is living without a clothes dryer, but my family has managed that for 8+ years. I’ve nearly taken the smartphone plunge numerous times. But after realizing that, like the review author I quoted above, I largely use my cell phone to be available in emergencies, quickly check in with clients or friends when I’m out of the house, and to provide an alternate number in case clients really need to reach me, I’ve stuck with TracFone and saved a ton of money.
Thank you, thank you for this post!
I have been thinking about ditching my smartphone with its very expensive data plan for the last couple of months. Every time I mention this to somebody, they look at me like I’m crazy.
I’m an in-house translator, so I feel like my phone is just a big fancy device I carry around in my purse. I would like to go back to being a freelance interpreter in the future, and then I’ll consider getting a smartphone with a plan, but next month I’m going back to prepaid.
Thanks Amaia! Glad you liked the post! I agree that especially if you have an in-house job and don’t need your phone for work purposes, prepaid is a great option unless you make a lot of social phone calls. If you use the phone very little, I would look at TracFone. I’ve never used Net10 or StraightTalk, but their unlimited plans are about $45 which is still much cheaper than the major carriers.
I’m actually really happy with my T-Mobile smartphone. I rarely have dropped calls and the quality is pretty darn good. I don’t text much, but I talk and browse the Web a lot. I pay $80.00 a month for unlimited everything, which I think is just fine.
Thanks Jill! It’s actually great to hear from someone who likes their cell company! Just out of curiosity, do you also have a land line and a work line, or is the cell your only phone?
Thanks for your post Corinne. I mainly use my phone for email, and I have a Blackberry because I like the “real” keyboard and instant push mail. Here in France, that used to mean being tied in to an expensive plan with generous amounts of talk time which I didn’t use. However, a new company entered the market at the beginning of the year, and shook things up completely, leading all operators to lower their prices. Unlimited talk, text and internet plans with certain companies now start from EUR 20 if you already have your own handset, although the customer service can be a little hit and miss! I pay EUR 12 per month for internet, unlimited texts and 120 minutes of talk time – more than sufficient for my needs. The quality is fine, and as you can imagine, I’m really happy with the set-up, especially when I hear what mobiles cost you over there in the US!
Thanks Caroline! That’s so interesting; normally I think of everything in France being much more expensive than in the US. But here, the equivalent of 12 euros a month will get you a very, very basic plan or prepaid. Unlimited plans through prepaid carriers here are $45-$50, and everything else is $60-$100. Anyway, I agree with you about the “real” keyboard; that was a feature I really wanted in my (slightly) upgraded phone. Thanks for your comment!
Thanks, Corinne, for that article! I have been enjoying being on prepaid here in France, thought it more expensive per minute, we hardly use it at all here and like the low cost! I kept my fancy smart phone but have no phone service on it here and use it as a mini-tablet at the house to check email so I don’t have to disturb family life and constantly run the big work computer to check for impt emails! I also got Vonage for my business line at Corinne’s urging and am kicking myself for not doing it sooner. It is waaaaaay cheaper than my original landline and the quality has been good. I am currently using it as a message phone only while I am out of the US. I get emails of the transcripted messages. I hardly get any phone calls for work (mostly emails) but do get some, so need to keep my work number, but not pay $50/month for it! Also, while being abroad, I switched my cell # of 10+ years to Google Voice. It is free and I can get messages and texts on it (but, apparently, not picture texts and a friend sent me some pics I never received). But, that allows me to preserve my cell # while I am out of the US and get messages from people who do not know I am gone. I appreciate that a lot! The Google Voice messages are also transcribed (for free). As for cell phone companies, I have been with most of them and here is my quick assessment: Sprint – customer service was annoying and unresponsive till I complained to FCC and then I got first class service from special 2nd tier team. T-Mobile – customer services was awful and they wasted a lot of my time which drives me nuts. Verizon – just charged me an entire month – no proration despite having cancelled one day into the next cycle (to come abroad) – and despite them having told me would be prorated. Also, Verizon coverage is pretty bad. Everyone tells me the connection is poor in CO and I think the quality of voice on my (very expensive) smartphone was not good. Ah well. For now, I am free of that, so I will live it up! 😉
Thanks Eve! That could be a post in itself, thanks for that thorough review of your setup! Enjoy your time on prepaid plus Vonage…definitely worth celebrating. Thanks also for that overview of the various cell companies; I have also heard other people complain about Verizon’s coverage and sound quality in Colorado, and I agree that the sound quality on your old BlackBerry was close to a land line, but on the Android phone with Verizon, is not as good. All interesting, thanks for taking the time to write in!
Interesting article, thanks.
Just read that in France B&You (Bouygues) is going to market an aggressive offer on prepaid: http://www.businessmobile.fr/actualites/b-you-rafra-chit-le-marche-du-prepaye-39782252.htm
(for personal use not business), I subscribed to the 16€ /month Free Mobile unlimited data plan for my smartphone (that price if Free is also your ISP) in January, and we have also the 2€/month 60min 60 text messages plan for the 2nd cell phone (feature phone). QoS is now quite acceptable (wasn’t the case when it was launched in January), but we have had numerous dropped calls and text message issues (e.g. never received text messages from Germany) during the first months.
Thanks for your comment, Fred! Compared to what we pay in the US, those prices are just amazing. I don’t think that any cell company (even prepaid) in the US offers anything for the equivalent of 2 euros per month…and the B&You offering looks really interesting. I do think that a lot of companies are looking at aggressive marketing of prepaid cell phones because of market saturation in the contract cell phone market. People might upgrade their phones, but I think that pretty much, everyone who wants a contract plan has one. Interesting food for thought!
Thanks Corinne,
of course with the 19.99 €/2€ plans (15.99€/0€ if your ISP is Free — but the discount only applies to one plan, so you have to choose), the handsets are not carrier-subsidized.
You have to buy an unsubsidized “unlocked” phone “full price” (or keep the one you already own, needs to be unlocked though if it is a subsidized phone bought from an other carrier).
Wow, $9 a month — that’s pretty amazing. Like my friend Jill, I have a T-Moble Samsung (Galaxy) and am mostly happy with it, although I don’t like the $85/month price tag. However, I do a lot of interpreting and I am on the road a lot, so it comes in very handy. However, on a recent 2-week trip in the western US (which included dinner in Boulder with an awesome translator that I know and her family), I have zero reception the entire time. Couldn’t make a phone call from Fort Collins, CO or Rapidy City, SD. Or Salt Lake City, UT. I’ve been dealing with T-Mobile to try to get a discount for the month, as the thing was just a useless piece of electronics in my purse.
While we who use pay-as-you-go phones are few…someday we will cover the earth like moss! Thank you for the honest admission.
@ Judy – let me know if TMobile gives you a discount for the time lost. A few years back, I fought with them on something very similar and they would NOT give me a $20 discount. Very frustrating and a total waste of my time on many levels. They obviously are instructed not to do so from higher ups. That is one of the reasons I dumped them.
Quite an interesting discussion; thank you for starting the conversation Corrine. I especially like hearing the alternatives that exist abroad. Here’s hoping that one or two of those companies can break into the US market someday.
I am a freelance translator/interpreter working from a home office. I currently use a prepaid SIM from T-Mobile in an unlocked smartphone along with Skype for my business (I have a Skype Number and a US&Canada subscription); I have no landline. I think I spent roughly $450 last year with the prepaid phone + Skype. For me the benefit of the smartphone is being able to keep contacts, calendars, and emails with me on the road. I don’t have a data plan since I work from home and I just use my own wireless connection 85% of the time. I make work calls from my smartphone through Skype. Even, if I am traveling for a week or so, I find I still save hundreds of dollars paying for access as I go with a service like Boingo or Skype Wifi versus having an always on data plan. Also, since this is an unlocked smartphone, I just pop in my Japan prepaid SIM when I go to Japan (and I discovered recently there are a few companies in Japan that are starting to offer pay as you go access to mobile hotspots — brilliant! ).
I think the more important thing to take away, as you said Corrine, is to think about how you use your phone. This incarnation will probably change when I am interpreting and/or on the road more often. I would certainly consider a pay as you go data plan; none of the carriers here seem willing to do it though, so I sticks with whats I got.
Nadine E.
I wanted to add that in France, I have SFR as an ISP and have a VOIP phone here for our home phone. We have free calls to the US, free calls to French landlines and free calls to French cell phones (which is a big deal as that can cost up to the equiv of USD 0.50/minute!). We pay EUR 35/month for this and that price includes our Internet service. And, they have a special app we can install on the computer and have any call to our home phone ring us on the laptop when traveling (so need to give out other numbers) and we can still call out to anywhere in the US, France and most countries of the world for “free”. Also, we get voice mail messages forwarded to our email as well. Very happy. Connection usually very good. It is VOIP, so once in a while and issue, but we just hang up and call again and it is fine.
Tracfone? Really? If it works- it works!
I wanted to recommend some other options for telephone options. For those that want to keep only their cellphone.
Ringio, Grasshopper, Google Voice, and Skype can all forward calls to cell #’s.
Grasshopper and Ring Central help you set up a professional sounding answer system that will ring to your cell.
For some more options see this page compiled of translation tools for running your biz. http://blog.mundabla.com/translation-tools/
Love, love, love my TracPhone ! Husband home on landline working, and I make calls there too. I’m a realtor, on-the-go, with landlines at our offices. After being ‘ripped-off’ by Verizon for 8 years for and over-blown service and minuites I didn’t use, I dumped them and went straight to TracPhone. I have their new LG800 … and for now… couldn’t be happier !! Thanks for listening. ~ R Designer/ Realtor
Thank you Rosanne! TracFone users unite! Great to hear that you love yours too.
I just got YracPhone, and I love it. I’m not a heavy phone user. I just need to make the occasional business or personal call. I was paying over $70 bucks a month to Sprint, for an expensive smart phone and data plan I hardly ever used. TracPhone is cheap – and I’m paying hardly anything a month for it. I have no complaints about connections or service. It’s cheap and it’s what I need.
Update: I love my “real” smartphone, but I just got a TracPhone for my son to be able to call me after school, or text him if I am late, and it is great! Cheap and does the job. He can text and call (that is all we wanted). Also, the phone I bought was on sale at Target for $7 and it is a “2x” phone, meaning that any phone card I buy has double the minutes listed on the card. Woo hoo!
Thanks Eve and TJ for these updates! I agree; for low use, TracFone is fabulous, and I think there are lots of people paying $60+ a month for phones that they barely use. And for kids, just for quick check-ins and texts, it really cannot be beat (my daughter has one too!).
I can’t STAND tracfone and its idiocy. It has cost me over a month of lost time and nonsense. You can’t contact them by email, and if you mange to contact them by phone the labyrinthine call they allow to go on forever will be cut off due to…. OUT OF AIRTIME!! Right now I can’t even BUY airtime because the site won’t work, and hasn’t for a week.
Vonage is just as bad.
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