im buying a new cell phone and...

im buying a new cell phone and i dont really understand the difference between no contract phone and a prepaid phone. if anyone can explain this then thanks alot.

if you're using a SIM card on your current phone and you simply want to change phones, then you buy a phone with no contract so that you just place your SIM into your new phone to start using it. prepaid is almost the same, in that your phone comes with a SIM card which you pay a certain amount for monthly (for example, $20 a month).japa28

sorry i dont understand can you plaease simplify a little

im buying a new cell phone and i dont really understand the difference between no contract phone and a prepaid phone. if anyone can explain this then thanks alot.

dragonmaster64

Do not go prepaid, unless you NEVER use the phone unless in emergencies. A prepaid phone will offer no deals, such as free nights, free weekends, free mobile to mobile (meaning that if you had Sprint, for example, all calls are free to other Sprint phones). A prepaid phone means you will pay for every single minute you use. A plan, however, can be more expensive if you're stupid and go over your alloted minutes every month. For example, I pay $40/month and have 500 anytime minutes. If I make calls from Sprint to Sprint, on a weekend, or after 7:00pm no minutes are deducted off of my 500. If, however, I constantly make calls on weekdays, and go over my 500 minutes, I'll end up paying $0.40/minute which is a LOT!!! But still, plans are 500% better.

I believe no contract just refers to you not being locked into a two or three year service plan - in which case you'd already own a phone or would buy one outright, rather than get it for free in exchange for pledging the provider thousands of dollars of service.

Pay as you go works by topping up your account, and your balance decreases as you do anything. It's fine if you don't plan on using your cell phone much, but keep in mind that pay as you go setups vary quite a bit across providers and tend to be somewhat of a dumping ground as the companies don't like offering such a service - they like locking people into contracts as it results in a nice steady income on their part.

It comes down to what you want to use the phone for, and how often you think you'll use it. I have a pay as you go plan with SpeakOut (probably Canada only) and it's working well for me, though my balance would drop steadily if I used it more than occasionally.

One nice thing about pay as you go plans is that they generally offer free voicemail, free caller ID and such, where you pay extra for those with a plan. But make sure to read the fine print on any plan, prepaid or monthly - cell phone providers LOVE gouging customers. IE, Fido offers free voicemail but charges you overtime per-minute charges for messages anyone leaves on it, which is ridiculous.

pay as u go deducts mins form ur total every day whether u use it or not, and prepaid u buy minute cards like for trac fone and have a time period to use them before they expire unless u add more cornholio157

Ugh, I don't know how companies can pull stuff like that off, since having an ever-decreasing balance seems silly. I wouldn't doubt it, though, since I've seen some of the **bleep** cell companies pull.

And yeah, balance expiry is another big variant among providers. Any good one should let you put a chunk of cash on there (say, $100) and have it remain there for up to a year. A lot of companies that do both will sell $10 or $20 cards and have your balance expire after a month if you don't use it up. Some will even bump up the per-minute charges if you fail to keep your balance above zero. It's a mess.