Prepaid mobile phones offer numerous benefits to users and should be considered by everyone as an option. Read more below on signs that a prepaid mobile phone is the right choice for you.
No Contract
All major phone companies have a contract of some sort. In the past, accepting a contract entitled customers to get discounts on phones, often receiving the phone for free or close to it. Today, of course, there are no discounts on phones as you pay full price for every phone even if you accept a contract. Contracts lock you in for multiple years, yet if the company wants to, as long as it gives you notice, it can change the price of your plan on a whim. The contract means nothing to them, yet it will penalize you for leaving even after your company raises its rates. With a prepaid phone, you buy minutes as you need them, and if you happen not to buy minutes for a while, even months or years, then there’s no penalty for having done so.
Controllable Costs
In a world where everything is twice, or even three times, as expensive as it was even just a year ago, spending $80 or more a month, every month, for a contracted cell phone plan might not be tenable. In these cases, you can select a prepaid phone and spend only what you can afford without worrying about getting in trouble with the company.
Options for Less Expensive Phones
Sure, you can get prepaid minutes on nifty smartphones, but you can choose to spend just a few dollars on a simple flip phone and save yourself $1,000 or more over the cost of such a smartphone. These less expensive phones don’t have any real data capability, so you won’t have to pay for data costs either. They’ll still work just fine for phone calls and are passable when it comes to texts.
No Credit Required
If you’re going to have a contract, the company wants to make sure that you’ll pay when you say you’re going to pay. Therefore, they do credit checks before they allow you to have an account. With a prepaid phone, because there’s no contract, and all minutes are paid before you use them, you can get such phone service without good credit or even any credit history at all. Additionally, you can remain anonymous because there’s no actual account with your name on it. Such anonymity means that you don’t get targeted advertisements, either, which is a nice perk.
Flexibility
Let’s say that you’re going to take a trip to Iceland. You need to be able to use your phone while you’re there, and you don’t want to pay dollars a minute for roaming. So, you buy an Icelandic sim card and load the phone with Icelandic minutes when you arrive in the country. You can repeat the trick in any country you visit on your trip. Then, you can decide not to buy minutes when you return home because you want to unplug for a while. So, you do that, and there’s no cancellation fee or other penalty.
Published by: Khy Talara
