TracFone has a large presence in the prepaid wireless market. You can
buy TracFone products and airtime at many retail outlets, and convenience
stores. TracFone has also been in the business for awhile, they started
out back in the days when major wireless providers required $500 deposits
for anyone with less than perfect credit.
TracFone minutes are expensive. Best case scenario you can prepay for
a year of service and pay about 15 cents per minute. Most customers
will pay about 25 cents per minute. Go into a "roaming" area and prepare
to pay double. TracFone has not adjusted their rates to be competitive
with other major prepaid providers relying on their large market
presence to sell phones and service.
Text messaging rates vary from phone to phone. I've heard reports in some
cases incoming text messages are free. I would estimate you will likely
pay 5 cents or 10 cents per text message which is the industry standard.
TracFone's website does not list the cost of text messages.
Tracfone also owns NET10 which is one of the better
values in prepaid plans. They advertise NET10 as optimal for high use
customers. However TracFone doesn't promote NET10 as heavily as TracFone
plans and cards/phones for NET10 are not as widely available.
TracFone is probably most useful as an emergency cell phone, since their
product cost is in the lower end. Customers who use their phones heavily
should stick with TracFone's NET 10 product.
