I am driving solo from Toronto to Phoenix, starting on Monday or Tuesday. I don't have a cell phone but I want to take a prepaid with me for the trip. No use signing up for a 2 year contract with the local providers here just for the trip. Anyway, I will probably be hitting Best Buy this weekend to look around. Do these come with long distance service (I am mainly going to use it to call hubby while in transit so he knows I didn't drive off a bridge or anything).

You can get them at grocery stores too. All of them are time based and include all international calls. Of course they're rates internationally are more expensive. Also many deduct more points (or minutes) when calling from a pay phone too. I grabbed one years ago that I still use and just reload new minutes onto it until it got too stupid to use (jacked up rates to call on pay phones, higher rates to call anywhere etc) that it wasn't worth it.

For you, I'd just grab any of the cards as they all should work in the lower 48 with the same rate...

I think she means an actual prepaid cell phone as opposed to a phone card.

I don't have one, but from what I've heard they are great...no limitations on where you can call, and you can get them dirt cheap now.

I have a pre-paid fido from walmart it was about $80.00 I use it daily, when I went to Kansas last week I loaded it with $80.00 of prepaid time to cover the trip, but the roaming charges killed me I made 3 calls the first day out and was left with 80 cents for the following 2.5 days, I think I was being charged between $3.50 and $4.00 per call. I'm sure someone can come up with something better for you.

That's always an issue... roaming chargese with a prepaid phone will kill your minutes really fast.

I guess check with each carrier's prepaid plans for their roaming costs (Bell, Rogers, Telus, Fido) before you go to Best Buy tomorrow.

Prepaid Telus, is only good in Canada. You will not get service in the States unless you have a plan.
Bell prepaid, you have to give them your credit card number, and they'll keep the phone "topped" up. BAD IDEA. I went to Sturgis for 2 weeks, every call I made would drop as soon as the caller picked up, and I ended up with a $235 credit card bill. They refused to credit me, even though I had just bought the phone from them, and they said they cannot credit me for American roaming charges. NOT one call went through.
BELL BITES everyway......little rant sorry. Switched back to Bell land line and nothing but a pain in the ### from day one.


I'm not sure about the other prepaid. I've only used the two. I can't call from just over the bridge on Telus, at Thousand Islands, but I can call home from Port Huron...lol Guess it depends how close their Canadian towers are.

There is also Virgin Mobility which has very good customer service. I'm not sure about their roaming fees but their rates are incredibly reasonable.

I use Tracfone
www.tracfone.com
its only 10c a minute in the U.S. & Canada.
You can buy minutes in stores or online. You can buy the phones in Walgreens, shopko Kmart, Target etc....

I'll add my careful to this as well.

My CDN virgin Mobile stopped working at the US border, and my now US virgin phone (i had to buy a new one) stops at the CDN border..

I would double check that they can work on both sides of the border, cause from my experience with Virgin they won't talk nice over the border..

Sorry..

I did only pay 20$ for my US one though - AND it came loaded with 20$ of air time, so really i got one of them for free!!

You can get these as low as 20 bucks with first 100 minutes included.. pick up an international phone card and use them together. I do this to call my habibi and it works well. International calls on prepaid cells can be outrageous(1.60min for me) vs reg per minute rate using the international cards.
Hope that helps