Cell Phones

Cheap cell solution for an elderly?

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Dec 30, 2007
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Cheap cell solution for an elderly?

My mother had just cancelled her wind service ( as they are horrible) and is stuck with no cell phone.
What is the cheapest solution to get her a phone? She doesnt need data or lots of minutes, and maybe just a good flip phone.
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Nov 30, 2011
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Take a look at 7-11 Speakout. They offer an Alkatel flip phone for $39.99 and offer prepaid service using the Rogers nework with or without automatic top-up. I know of an elderly lady who uses them (and a flip phone) just so she has a phone in case the power goes out. It costs her about $25 per year. If she uses her phone frequently, another suggestion would be Zoomer Wireless. They use the Rogers Network as well through Cityfone (a company which is owned by Rogers). There have been many threads on RFD discussing them. They are my cell service provider and I can vouch for their quality and customer service.
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May 17, 2005
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urir10 wrote: My mother had just cancelled her wind service ( as they are horrible) and is stuck with no cell phone.
What is the cheapest solution to get her a phone? She doesnt need data or lots of minutes, and maybe just a good flip phone.
how many minutes ? 10 - 50 - 100 ?
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Mar 10, 2006
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So, what happened to the phone that she was using under Wind?
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scoper wrote: http://www.speakout7eleven.ca/prepaid-cellphones
Speakout. They have the cheapest prepaid account I have seen for people who need a cell for emergencies and don't plan to talk a lot with it.
Where can i find those 7eleven phones in the york region area?
bvit6667 wrote: Take a look at 7-11 Speakout. They offer an Alkatel flip phone for $39.99 and offer prepaid service using the Rogers nework with or without automatic top-up. I know of an elderly lady who uses them (and a flip phone) just so she has a phone in case the power goes out. It costs her about $25 per year. If she uses her phone frequently, another suggestion would be Zoomer Wireless. They use the Rogers Network as well through Cityfone (a company which is owned by Rogers). There have been many threads on RFD discussing them. They are my cell service provider and I can vouch for their quality and customer service.
Zoomer seems like a good option if she doesnt like the idea of Speakout. By the way do speakout minutes ever expire? other than the 911 fee which is charged monthly
lubmar wrote: how many minutes ? 10 - 50 - 100 ?
50-100 should be more than enough, its mainly for those "just in case" situations..


terry0703 wrote: So, what happened to the phone that she was using under Wind?
she still has it, but its a touch phone and she would rather have a simple phone.
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Jun 28, 2003
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I got another vote for Speakout. My mom loves her phone (LG F4NR that you can get at BestBuy) so much, she asked me to pick up another one for her friend! It is a flip phone with decent-sized keys and good battery life, that's all my mom needs (and I suspect it's the same for other elderly folks as well).

They only use the phone for emergency so the fact that the credit is good for 365 days is really good!
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Aug 5, 2012
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urir10 wrote: Where can i find those 7eleven phones in the york region area?
7-Eleven convenient stores.

Actually if you cannot get to a 7-Eleven store, you can order it online.

And for future top-ups, you can top up from their website without going to the store.

http://www.speakout7eleven.ca/
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Feb 18, 2016
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I can vouch for 7-Eleven Speakout wireless. I got one of their Alcatel flip phones and a bit of time on it. You can put as low as $25 on it and it's good for 365 days, as opposed to Rogers prepaid which requires larger amount ($100 I believe) for a full year. With Rogers if you put $25 only, I believe it's only good for 3 months, $50 good for 6 months etc. Whereas with Speakout you can put any $ amount and it's still good for the year. IMO this is the biggest selling feature.

One thing to keep in mind: $1.25 is deducted monthly for 9-1-1 service, so $25/year actually means $15 is deducted for 9-1-1 throughout the year, leaving you with $10, which means 40 minutes ($0.25/minute). Texts are free to receive, $0.15 to send. You can get unlimited texting by paying $10/month but if you're going to do that you might as well just get a standard plan from one of the majors.

If a random caller leaves a message on your voicemail it doesn't use up minutes but it does when you listen to them, so if you don't recognize the number you can delete the message and not lose any time.

I have this phone essentially for emergency purposes and to make the occasional call, but otherwise I keep it off. I would think if someone were making calls with any sort of regularity, this would not be the best option. Just checked my account and I have 3 months to go for the year and I have about $35 left out of the $50 I started with. When the year is up I will add $25 and I'm set for another year.

As someone else has said, you can pick everything up at a 7-Eleven store, there is a store locator on the web site. You will get the phone, the sim card and a receipt for the time, there is no physical card (why produce another piece of plastic that gets thrown out as soon as it is purchased). You do the account set up yourself at home, to get the phone number and credit the time to it.
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thank you for the suggestions, we will be going with the speak out phones as thats the cheapest option for her right now
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One more thing: Once your account is set up you can also create a login so you can log in to the Speakout site and check your account. It will tell you remaining number of days and $. So far there is no calling history, ie you won't see when and how long your calls were, but when I did make a few calls I checked after and it was correct, so now I don't worry about it :)
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notfromqc wrote: One more thing: Once your account is set up you can also create a login so you can log in to the Speakout site and check your account. It will tell you remaining number of days and $. So far there is no calling history, ie you won't see when and how long your calls were, but when I did make a few calls I checked after and it was correct, so now I don't worry about it :)
You can also create a contact called Check Balance and assign number *777# to it and it will show your expiry date and money left over right on the phone, don't know if this was mentioned or not as I didn't read the whole thread. Another vote for 7-11 Speakout, my folks have been on it for 5+ years and it's the cheapest solution for people who need a phone for emergencies or a few calls here and there, with the convenience of 365 day expiry. Even the cheapest voice plans come out much more then what my parents spend on their phones every month. We refill like $50 and it's good for the year.

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