Help me get a mobile phone

[nvictor]

Guys,

I need a mobile phone. I went to Wal-Mart. They have interesting offers, which adjust well to how you will use your phone. I have also checked online: Verizon offers free phones online, but they all have a monthly payment plan. I need a plan that does not require me to pay monthly. A plan that works with prepaid cards and that has low fees for international calls/texting, because without a job I can't afford to take a monthly access plan...

Do you know somewhere I can look at?

[Dan.Linehan]

See if any of your friends will add a family plan onto their account for you.

Those generally only cost ten dollars a month.

[JimC]

I use virgin mobile + topup cards.

It's like $60 for the phone and $0.18 per minute. You buy a top-up card at least once every 3 months to keep your account active. The cards range $20 and up.

If you don't do a ton of talking, $20 will probably last you for the whole 3 months (almost 2 hours of talk time) and it also has texting for $0.05 per message or a couple of bucks for 50 messages. It has a bunch of other features but I don't use them.

All of the features (talk time, messaging, ringtones etc...) are taken from the card credit, so you will never use more than what you paid for.

[aussieNickuss]

I don't know how pre-paid works in your Country (US?)......but in Australia, all you'd have to do is get a second hand phone (about a year old) from eBay for no more than about $50 - $100 or so and just go down to a newsagent or supermarket and grab a pre-paid card. There is of course very cheap brand new phones with pre-paid cards but they are just that.....cheap.

Without a monthly plan though, I don't think you could hope for decent priced international calls.