AT&T Wireless GoPhone Pre Paid Cell Phone Service

AT&T offers a pre paid cell phone service plan that requires no credit check. Ideally it is for those who have bad credit or those who simply do not wish to be tied into a 2 year agreement which most of the time cell phone service carriers require.  I personally opted for the prepaid plan after I signed a 2 year agreement with Cingular (back before AT&T purchased them) and about half way through the agreement, several of the items in my package were reduced to new customer's but I had to continue paying the higher rate for another year or suffer ETF (early termination fees) of dropping my contract. A couple of months before my agreement was up, I began getting all of these wonderful offers, my service plan at a drastically reduced price to sign another 2 year agreement with them. I thought back to the previous year when I had called them frustrated with having to continue higher rates and them telling me "sorry, nothing we can do until your contract is up" and politely told them I would never sign another agreement with them and then had my number ported to one of the Go Phone pay as you go service plans.

You first will need to purchase a cell phone that is specific to the Go Phone Service. There are several really nice ones to choose from ranging in price from about $20 - $129. They can be purchased online, or from retailers such as Wal Mart and Radio Shack.  Most of the phones come with an initial $50 bonus that will be applied to the phone once you purchase $25 or more of airtime. You will from that point on, simply purchase a refill card or log onto the internet and refill through your Go Phone online account using either a credit card or electronic check.

Now, let's say that you purchased your phone that comes with the $50 bonus and you've purchased a $25 air time card. Once your phone has been activated (Radio Shack is very good about doing this for you, they will get everything set up and add airtime for you), you will have a $75.00 credit on your phone and can choose any of the following service plans or features ala carte.  Also, you should know that once your feature plan is used up or expires, and it is time to refill or add more features, you can select a different service plan each time if you want. This is especially good if you're trying to decide which plan is right for you, you can try them all out until you find the one that works best.

With the Unlimited Service Plan, you get unlimited talk minutes any time, any where inside the US and unlimited text messages. This is the best plan for someone who uses their cell phone every day for calling more than just mobile to mobile.

Break down of cost without using any plan:

If you make at least one call a day for 5 minutes, it will cost $37.50 for a 30 day period.

If you send and receive text messages 2 a day it will cost $24.00 for a 30 day period.

Total: $61.50 or $60.00 for unlimited talk and text messages which means if you go over the 5 minutes a day or more than 2 text messages sent and received, then you won't incur more charges).

*Web browsing is an automatic $2 per 2mb with any plan for new customers after July 31, 2009.

For $3 a day, you can make unlimited calls to anyone, anywhere inside the US for no additional costs. Since talk is unlimited, no roaming charges are incurred either.

Let's say you only use your phone a couple of times a week and call numbers other than another AT&T customer, and do not use text messages. Then this is the plan for you because you only get charged the $3 on days that you make a call. If you use the phone only 10 days out of the month, then it will cost you $30. If you plan to use the phone more than 15 days or also want to include text messaging, then you are better off with the unlimited plan because 1000 text messages will cost $9.99

Exactly the same idea as the $3 a day Plan except that only mobile to mobile is unlimited all other calls are .10 a minute.  Does not include text messages.

If you use the phone every day and only call mobile to mobile and even purchase the 1000 text messages, then this is still a better deal than the $60 Unlimited because you're only going to be spending $30 for access fee for talking 30 days, and $9.99 for 1000 text messages which comes out to $39.99.  This still allows you to make calls to other than AT&T mobile phones for up to 200 minutes for it to equal $60.00.

You can also select certain packages that fit your needs as follows:

Unlimited Nights & Weekends: $19.99

200 Messages: $4.99

1000 Messages: $9.99

Unlimited Messages: $19.99

Unlimited Talk & Text: $60.00

Data 1MB: $4.99

Data 100MB: $19.99

The AT&T Pre paid cell phone service plans can be a good choice if you do the math and come up with the right feature combination to fit your needs. It's also a good way to keep from committing yourself to a long term agreement with high early termination fees.