We use T-mobile pay as you go. It has worked fine. We have had no serious problems with coverage area. We don't have to pay a per-day charge of any kind. Once we spent $100 all minutes we purchase have one-year expiration. The per-minute rate varies depending on how much you buy: $10 gets only about 30 min. (33 cents/min), $25 gets about 150 minutes (17 cents/min), $50 gets 500 minutes (10 cents/min). You can get $100 increments too, and I imagine the rate is correspondingly better. I have found that having too great a balance causes overuse, but too small refills are too expensive per minute, so for us the best balance is achieved at the $25 level, which lasts about two or three weeks. We remind callers to call our land line first and place our chatty calls from the land line.
We had a Nextel contract at one point. What a nightmare. First the salesperson took advantage of wife's confusion over the various plans (I believe they make them excessively complicated specifically to engender said confusion) to sell her a plan that was horrible for our needs but maximized seller's commission. Then the hardware malfunctioned - the phone unit would "connect" and start incurring airtime, but the call wasn't complete, i.e. they could hear us but we could not hear them. The company made it very inconvenient to have the phone looked at. We had to go to a service center which was only open on banker's hours and some distance away. We used up the "included" minutes very quickly by hanging up/retrying calls. Got a $750 bill for a single month. Followed by a dozen calls complaining and requesting an investigation and credit. Nextel stonewalled the issue and sent us to a collector. 30 to 45 minutes on hold only to be transferred and dropped was not uncommon. At one point a flunky of theirs left an abusive message accusing me of trying to scam them. Wish I'd kept it for evidence but I accidentally erased it. Eventually I wrote to the Illinois attorney general's consumer complaints division with all the gory details; that got Nextel's attention and they dropped the collection action and wrote off the charges.
We learned early that difficult child and cell phones do not mix. We got some for "emergencies" at various times on various plans and difficult child always managed to maximize the bill, somehow. Not one was ever used for a bona-fide emergency. Of course when privileges were revoked the "emergency", a.k.a. the "but what if...", card was played, and we felt somehow guilty about it, like we were withholding essential safety gear or something. They are becoming more essential -- anyone tried to find a pay phone lately? -- but difficult child will have to pay her own way if she wants one.
