Best prepaid wireless carrier?

[mscdex]

I'm looking to find a good prepaid wireless phone carrier, preferrably one that has the cheapest minutes, but decent coverage (i'm in 45424). Anyone know any good ones?

[Jon Westfall]

I'm interested in this thread not because of inadequate coverage in prepaid providers, but because of the way they treat their customers.

I've had prepaid phones on and off for the past 6 years. My first (A Qualcomm QCP-2700, which still ranks as one of my favorite phones despite it being large) was on the network that would eventually become Verizon. Coverage was good, but the rates were horrible (Mind you this was 1998). The worst was calling their tech support. Average conversation went something like:

Me: Yea, I have a question about my prepaid service.
Them: Oh - prepaid... we'll have to transfer you - this line is for contract plans only.
Me: Why is this number printed on my prepaid card then?
Them: You'll have to hold sir...
<30 min. later>
Me: I have a question about my prepaid service.
Them: This line is for contract plans only...

etc..
I dropped them like a brick when rates on contract plans fell and ended up on Sprint for a year, before Verizon again for 2. About the time I ended up back on Verizon, my mother wanted a prepaid phone for emergencies. Since I had a spare startac lying around, I decided to activate it on Verizon. This time the coverage was still good, and customer support appeared to be better. Then one Friday I decided to call her at 3pm and got a message:

"Welcome to Verizon Wireless... the phone number you are dialing does not accept incoming calls at the request of the owner"

I called Verizon, and after being placed on hold for 45 min (Which I asked for, and got, a $5 credit for), was told that it was a "network" problem and that it was resolved.

3 Weeks later, same thing happens on a tuesday. Call back, and am now told that the message I received happens when the cellular network is overloaded and there are no available circuits. Since I had another Verizon account that I tried calling right after calling my mom's phone and didn't have a problem getting through, I could only deduce that Verizon has a very limited number of circuits dedicated to the second-class citizens that own Prepaid phones.

By July of this year, the situation with my mom's phone was so horrible that I couldn't get through 9 out of 10 times I was calling. We switched her to a verizon monthly plan and haven't had a problem since. As a side note, don't believe Verizon if they tell you that they can't transfer your prepaid balance as a credit to your monthly account - they did it fine for me after a little leg pulling.

So Prepaid for me has proven the following:
Pros: Fairly cheap if you don't use the phone much, decent coverage in Cleveland Metro market.
Cons: Pray nothing goes wrong because tech support won't want to talk to you non-contract people.

Just my 2 cents - I hope people start sharing on this thread so we can possibly find a cellular prepaid service that treats their customers right.

[mscdex]

Well, the reason I'm looking to get prepaid vs. contract billing is because I'm not going to be one of those heavy cell phone users that pay $40/month for mobile phone usage. I just need a phone where people can contact me if I'm away from home, and I can just buy minutes when I need them, at my own pace, and not have to be committed to a contract.

If anyone has any good prepaid wireless deals please let me know. Thanks :)

[Janak Parekh]

The two I know of are:

Virgin Mobile (http://www.virginmobileusa.com/), which uses the Sprint network and is apparently very easy to use;
Verizon Wireless FreeUp (http://www.freeup.com), which is Verizon's new attempt at doing prepaid, hopefully a bit smoother than Jon's experiences.

I believe T-Mobile also does prepay, but I've heard disaster stories on that one too. Mind you, I haven't used any of these. ;)

--janak

[Kati Compton]

I use Virgin Mobile. Haven't used it for very long, though, so can't really give informed pros/cons. It's 25c/minute for the first 10 minutes of the day. After that it's 10c/minute.

It seems to be marketed towards greasy teenagers, though. At least the photo of some chick's belly button isn't the first thing you see on the web page anymore. ;)