Pay as you go cell phones are becoming more popular as time goes by. There are clear advantages and disadvantages regarding these phones.
advantages:
No one can trace your number using a reverse cell phone lookup service. Despite improvements to reverse cell phone lookup services over the years, they are unable to give the name of 99% of pay-as-you-go users. If you are looking for anonymity, this is an advantage.
No credit check required. No credit check is required to use one of these phones. This can fall into either category, and I’ll explain it in both. You don’t need any credit rating to use these phones. As soon as you purchase, you will have the service and it will be up and running. No one will turn you down because of your credit score.
You have to buy the phone directly. If you don’t care much about the phone and a plain and simple phone is fine for you, then this is not a problem. However, buying a more sophisticated phone can be expensive.
Disadvantages:
Your number may not be available. Sometimes you want others to be able to find you or your number. You can usually get information about a person if they both use the same provider.
Fewer plans and options. pay-as-you-go phones have fewer plan options than regular service. However, there are unlimited plans: talk, text and online for most providers. However, these are usually quite inflexible.
I mentioned earlier that no credit check was a plus. The downside to this is that you can’t build up your credit using the phone service. However, regular plan providers report to credit reporting agencies.
Customer Support. Customer support, for obvious reasons, is more focused on subscription users than pay-as-you-go plans. If customer support is a big deal, you might want to subscribe.
No phone number protection. Typically, a cell phone service will give you a fairly long “grace period” to protect your number if you are a subscriber. If you’re on a pay-as-you-go basis and let the plan lapse, your old number can be reissued in a matter of days. This can cause problems not only for you, but also for those who wish to contact you.
The bottom line:
If you’re a new user and don’t have credit built up, you might want to go the pay-as-you-go route. You can get virtually instant service when you buy the phone. If you know you want to keep the number, try being a subscriber, you can keep the number, even if you change companies.