Prepay more

Recently, a friend asked me to look into mobile prepaid plans because she only uses her mobile for emergencies and wanted to try to reduce her monthly bill. She had heard from another friend that prepaid plans might be a good way to save money. Her current service is through Verizon, so we decided to check their prepaid plans first. So I did a little homework.

Verizon has 2 prepaid plans, EasyPay and INpulse.

The EasyPay plan doesn’t sound like it would save any money, as there are two versions of it and the lesser expensive one costs $50 per month. So unless she is already spending more that $50 per month, that’s probably not a good option. It also includes things that I know she will never use, like text and picture messaging.

The INpulse plan sounds good at first, but when you look at the details, it starts to sound less attractive. First off, there is a $.99 per day fee, regardless of whether you use your phone or not. That means there is a minimum of approximately $30 per month without ever making or receiving a call. Then, each minute costs $.10.

This is where it gets tricky.

The minutes expire, and how soon they expire depends on how many you buy at a time. The more you buy in one chunk, the longer they last. It appears that you have to buy a minimum of $15 worth of minutes at a time (approx 150 minutes), and at that amount, the minutes expire after only 30 days!

That means she would have to spend approx $45-$50 (with fees and taxes) per month to have 150 minutes per month. Hmmm, sounding like less of a good deal.

I decided to compare these prepaid plans with the regular monthly plans. They have a basic plan for $40 per month that includes 450 minutes. I’m pretty sure this is the plan my friend has currently, and I’m also sure she would never use 450 minutes in a month (probably not even in a year). After fees and taxes, this would probably be around $45-$50 per month.

It appears that the minimum you can spend per month to have service from Verizon is realistically around $45-$50. If you go prepaid, then you only get 150 minutes in that month, and if you go regular, you get 450 minutes.

The only benefit I can see to the prepaid plans is that they might be slightly cheaper if you are willing to buy minutes in large chunks so that they don’t expire so quickly, and you don’t want to be locked into a contract. Otherwise, I can’t really see any benefit. Am I missing something?

If you know of a carrier that provides a relatively inexpensive prepaid plan that would be good as an emergency plan, please let me know.