romanojg

My daughter tried Walmarts phones and had nothing but trouble with the phone and service. After a few months she cancelled. Her brother later on used that phone to get Walmarts service in his name. Her dad got her 6yr old son a trac phone from the Family Dollar where you can do the minute thing or monthly thing without a contract and it works pretty good. Most have a basic amount; like 200 min and then you buy more but some have a certain amount for the monthly fee. There are a few larger phone compaines out there that do that without a contrac but I don't know which ones they are.

The thing you also have to remember when wanting to use a different phone; some of them have a chip in them so that they can only be used by a certain company. Which if you had one with a Sprint chip then you couldn't use it at Walmarts.

BellaBoo

Do not give a phone to a young person without unlimited text or media or you will be very upset when the bill comes. Young do not talk on the phone much, they text, instagram, and post. My neighbor has four boys and they use Straight Talk. $45 a month for unlimited use and no contract.

Peckish

Yes, Straight Talk was the Walmart plan I was thinking of, but their shelves were pretty bare of decent phones. So I ended up going with a TracPhone (on sale, woo-hoo!) with lifetime triple minutes, meaning when you purchase 60 minutes, you get 180 added onto the phone. I'm not worried about the internet data usage, I think he'll use it mostly for texting. And I like that he can add more minutes when he gets low, but if he has extra minutes they'll roll over. This puts him in charge of his usage, which is exactly what I wanted. Thanks, everyone for your help.