Tracphone

CardinalRule wrote:

mcewena wrote:

PackerBacker wrote:
The only sort of reasonable solution is a US plan with your Canadian provider. That's what we will be doing after next week.

That's sort of what these guys are, they're a Canadian provider but only provide US service.... http://www.roammobility.com

Wow that's an expensive way to go. I buy four 90 day 60 min cards from tracfone and they triple the minutes. That's 750 minutes and a year of service for 80 bucks with no expiry date, just refill when I get low. I have a CDMA tracfone that works on the Verizon network so no dead-spots. I get calling back to Canada and all the calling I need in the US. Yes customer service is******but then so is customer service with our wonderful Canadian providers.

You have to compare apples with apples. I actually do use Tracfone but roammobility (which appears to just be a rebranded T-Mobile Pay by the Day plan and I beleive you can just get the T-Mobile one for a bit cheaper) offers a very different plan. With your 60 minutes cards (x 4 per year x triple minutes = 720 minutes), you're getting 720 minutes in a year for $80 and doesn't include any texting (texting I believe is charged at 1/3 minute per text and you can't text to Canada). Roammobility, offers unlimited plans. For a $60/month, you get unlimited voice and unlimited text (They also have plans for 1, 3, 7, 14 days).

To put it in perspective, my wife often uses over 800 minutes and sends / receives 300 texts in a months. Your $80 Tracfone plan would last her about 3 weeks.

Also RoamMobility is really targetted to someone who's looking at spending a few days in the US - if you plan to spend a lot of time, there are probably much better plans. The other benefit of RoamMobility is that they do offer data (I don't believe Tracfone offers any data options). While I have a Tracfone, I started using RoamMobility while we are travelling so that we get data usage as well.