Mary, nice article. The main thing I would mention to anyone considering switching to pre-paid cell phones is that you should figure out first whether you can reduce your current cell bills down to acceptable levels--thereby saving often significant plan cancellation fees (AKA "early termination fees"), not to mention the convenience of keeping your present cell phone number. In this vein, I thought that I'd elaborate on a method for effectively reducing cellular expenses. Not to blatantly plug, but I work for the consumer advocacy website http://www.fixmycellbill.com, powered by a company called Validas, where we slash the average cell bill by 22 percent. It costs five bucks to implement our suggested changes to your plan (the average consumer currently saves around $450 annually through us) but we will analyze your bill for free without any commitment of purchase, just to let you know exactly how many dollars your carrier is ripping you off by. I could go on and on about how shifty these cell companies can be in their attempts to make you overpay. We stop them, and have currently put over $5,000,000 back in the pockets of consumers. You can check out Validas's fixmycellbill.com in the national news media, most recently on Good Morning America at http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6887412&page=1.

Good luck to everyone reading on making an informed wireless choice.

Dylan

Hey, I just love the NET10 service you mentioned in the article. I have been using it for about 8months now and am so impressed with their service. The cheap rates are reason enough to switch to them. I mean, I save about $30 a month compared to the Verizon contract I was on previously. But the best advantages is the flexibility you mentioned as well. I can spend as little as $15 a month or as much as I need to and never pay more than 10c a minute. No overage charges, no unused minutes (which actually costs money) and convenient, easy recharge whenever I want.