"Regular" Cell Phones > Tracfone

December 25th, 2006, 4:10 PM. My family was gathered in the living room, tearing open gift after gift, filled with joy after joy of the satisfaction of receiving what we had asked for that Christmas day. Ah, yes, what a scene it was. Until one precocious present changed it all. My grandmother opened a gift wrapped in green, plaid paper, to find something she had least expected from her son. "It's a new cell phone!" she cried, as she held up a Samsung SCH-u340, all wrapped up in its plastic protection. Everyone oohed and ahhed over my grandmother's new toy, and she proceeded to open the box, flip it open, and begin transferring her numbers from her old phone to the new one. I remained dumbstruck on the couch. Me, a boy of 13, sat on this italian leather without a cell phone to my name, yet my grandmother, a crustacean, had moved onto her second. I had just entered adolescence, a time where if you didn't have a cell phone, you didn't have genitalia. I had evaded the peer beratings smoothly for a period of time, but now their taunts began to lag on my back like a sweat-soaked gorilla. If I didn't emerge out of middle school with a cell phone, I might as well have graduated without a diploma. Ah, but there was hope. With granny's spankin' new phone, what was to become of her old one? A lightbulb clicked in my head, and I sprang on the situation. By 11 o'clock on Christmas night, I was blessed with the bequest of a cell phone of my own, a mobile telephone, a cellie...a Tracfone. TracFone Wireless provides the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands with prepaid mobile phones, or, in layman's terms, "pay-as-you-go". One buys airtime for their phone, and they insert this airtime into their phone via pin code. This airtime lasts the cell phone user until they've used all their airtime, or until 3 months later, when they are obligated to renew it again. This seemed to be a reasonable idea to my overprotective parents, whose original statement was that I wouldn't have a cell phone until I could drive. I bought airtime, entered the pin code, and basked in the light of my first real phone. I held the silverish-green bar phone in my hands, and adolescent power rush through my veins. That power was drained, however, a week and a half later, when I found myself standing in line at CVS, purchasing more airtime for my phone. In 10 days I had fallen victim to inserting 60 dollars to the overbulging wallet of Amerian Capitalism. I had felt six weeks' allowance slip through my hands in a mere 10 days. Just how did this happen? Quite simple, really. Based on the link below, on average, teens send 455 text messages per month, and receive 467. That's roughly 15 sent and 16 received per day. http://www.cellular-news.com... Tracfone's messaging rates works as such: 0.3 minutes deducted for each text message received, and 0.3 minutes deducted for each text message sent. 120 minutes of airtime costs $30. Based on the average that teens send 15 text messages, and receive 16 messages per day, an average Tracfone teen user would use 9.3 minutes per day texting. As I had just been introduced to the wonders of celluar phones, I had been a bit feisty with my text message privledges, and had collaborately sent and received about 40 text messages per day, compared to the average of 31. This rate equaled out to 12 minutes per day used for texting, which I did for 10 days, and, 12 minutes times 10 minutes is-you guessed it!-120 minutes. I had used up all my airtime, which forced me to purchase another airtime card. Whoopee. I returned home to a beet-red-faced father, lecturing me on how I was abusing my phone, and how it was costing me, and, considering the fact that he and my mother provided me my weekly allowance, him. I tried to reason with the man, blaming the phone itself and its non-user-friendly messaging rates, and how everyone besides me had better phone plans, and they didn't have this problem. His response was, "They don't have better phone plans. You just text too much." My texting rate only increased, and my allowance tin only shrunk. Sometimes it took less than ten days to empty my airtime, and I eventually resorted to the bitter vigil of holding off on texting for a period of days, even weeks sometimes. Many of my at-school conversations sounded like this: Schoolgirl: Kenicks, you haven't texted me back. Is your phone broke? Kenicks: Nah, I just ran out of minutes. Schoolgirl: Huh? Kenicks: I have a TracFone. Schoolgirl: Huh? Kenicks: It's a prepaid phone. Schoolgirl: Huh? Kenicks: I have to keep buying airtime to support my frequent texting habit, which, although exaggerated by my father, is a common hobby of teens in the 21st century. Schoolgirl: Oh. (Twirls hair) I have unlimited texting. Kenicks: I know. Shut up and stop rubbing your cellular advantages in my face, you pig-nosed cretin. (Schoolgirl runs away crying) ...Okay, maybe I exaggerateed the last few lines, but you catch my drift. The vast majority of my texting colleagues did, in fact, have unlimited texting, and were free to message to their heart's content. Of course, their blessing was my curse, for their endowment of unlimited texting forced me to reply unlimited responses, wearing down my minutes even more.How I longed for that right, that privledge, that charm. Of course, I got the same response I always did when I brought up the possibility of getting a better, less expensive phone, which was "You don't need unlimited texting. You just need to cut back." But I had been cutting back, even if it meant leaving behind trails of messages. I tried to feel lucky to even have a phone, but what good was it if I had the bottom of the pile, the scum of all plans? I may sound like a helpless consumer, wanting only the best, the cream of the crop, the ripest tomato. But, trust me, if you were a teen with a text limit a fraction of the norm's limit, you'd feel the same way. But then, one day, the sky cleared, and the lord above let there be light on my situation. My father began to pity me, or at least get tired of watching me blow my money on airtime, and investigated adding a line to our family plan, which happened to be AT&T. And, oh, what a deal we found. Here is what my monthly bill adds up to be now, with the benefits: 700 Talking Minutes (shared with my mother and father)=$10 1500 Total Texts Per month, separate from those used to talk (going over the limit=.10 cents per text)=$15 $25 Let's compare those benefits and rates to tracfone, shall we: 120 Total Minutes (texting and talking)=$30 $60 per month That's a great deal on paper, but behind the scenes, it's an even better one. I would use up 120 minutes on text per week, equaling out to 360 total texts per week. In the sake of trying to be frugal, I went a week without texting, then bought a new card. Two phone cards, 720 texts, equaled $60-four times the price for not even half the amount of texts I got with AT&T. FOUR TIMES THE PRICE FOR NOT EVEN HALF THE AMOUNT! As soon as I got this new plan, a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. My texting anxieties vanquished, and I felt freer with my phone than I ever had before. Clearly, TracFone's texting rates are absolutely inexcusably overpriced. I await my opponent's first rebuttal.