No Contract Cell Phone

Especially during uncertain economic times people are always looking for ways to avoid being tied into lengthy and costly cell phone contracts, favoring no contract cell phones. There are a range of places to pick up no contract cell phones, including Walmart, RadioShack and all of the major American cell phone providers such as Verizon and AT&T now offer no contract cell phones, often referred to as “pay as you go”.

At Walmart you can pick up a range of no contract cell phones for as little as $15 which will provide texting and voice capabilities. You can then purchase either monthly plans that you have to manually renew each month (as there is no contract) or prepaid refills that you can use directly on minutes and texts and only need to be repurchased when you run out, making your no contract cell phone purely a pay as you go expense, and you will never end up with left over or unused minutes that you lose each month.

Realizing the market need for no contract cell phones the major providers now offer prepaid cell phones with prices starting at $15 for brand new phones. As with Walmart they offer a mixture of prepaid packages with no contract, ranging from $2 for unlimited daily talk and text that you can cancel any time to pay as you go cards for direct use.

No contract cell phones are especially attractive to people with low credit as with a conventional contract a security deposit will often be requested if you have bad credit, adding insult to injury on top of an 18 month – 2 year contract and a several hundred dollar phone. No contract cell phones are also a great way for parents to control the amount of usage of their children, by limiting the amount that is loaded onto the phone at any one time and not worry about their children potentially losing or damaging an expensive cell phone.

One thing to be aware of when using no contract cell phones, especially pay as you go is to ensure you are fully aware of the cost per minute and cost per text message, as these rates will almost certainly be higher than a conventional land line and you can easily find yourself spending more on prepaid cards than you would on getting the comparable amount of minutes and texts from a contract. Be aware of what you are spending each month and compare it to contracts available to decide if a no contract cell phone is still the right thing for you.

As with everything else, ensure you shop around and look at any special offers and bundles, often if you buy a no contract cell phone and a refill at the same time you can get the phone even more reduced, just make sure you read all the fine print!