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Everyone today carries a cellphone everywhere mainly for convenience, business and enjoyment. People just use them. A lot. Talking, texting, snapping a picture. They are fashionable. The iPhone is fashionable while the Blackberry is for business. A lot of choices in what you have as a phone and what you have as a plan. Prepaid or postpaid. Prepaid is you buy a lot of minutes. Postpaid is a monthly plan. Some say postpaid is expensive and some say prepaid is best. Choice sometimes is blatant stupidity among cellphone users.

In Europe and Asia, cell plans are cheap compared to America. The simple reason is they invested in one type of cell system while we have several different ones. They have a standard and we really don't. 3G, EVDO, 4G, and all the others get confusing. Americans go with cell companies while the rest of the world has a standard. The simple truth is American cell plans, postpaid or prepaid, are outrageously expensive.

Postpaid really is cheaper so let's prove it. Postpaid does require a credit check and most likely a contract. Prepaid just requires you buy a phone and then some time on their network. Postpaid has lots of plans and options an so does prepaid. Postpaid has taxes and prepaid includes them. But, some people just can't get postpaid due to credit issues, and that's how prepaid really got started.

Prepaid is going to give you a lot less choices in a phone. Most reviews of their phones almost always say they are cheap and don't last as long as ones you buy with a plan. YouTube has reviews of prepaid phones. There might be one or two phones prepaid has that really is worth buying. Postpaid cell plans here kill the postpaid market except for those that can't get a postpaid phone due to credit issues.

Prepaid plans are exceptional tricky in how they work. With postpaid, you can say that $59.99 plan is going to be $75-80 with taxes. Prepaid sells you minutes. 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 or more minutes. You can even recharge your phone by calling a toll-free number if you have a credit card. But, those minutes aren't really minutes. That is the subtle trick to prepaid cellphones and their plans. In the industry, we call them "screwdrivers" and other funny terms.

Those minutes you just bought looks great. It isn't. A text message might eat up 25 minutes. Calling long distance might eat up 2 minutes for every minute you are on the phone. Ringtones can eat a 100 minutes. Browsing the web on prepaid? Only if you are rich. Roaming will also kill your minutes. Most postpaid are roaming free; prepaid isn't. Maybe 10-25 minutes disappear for a minute call while roaming.

Some prepaid, well, all, charge you to use those minutes. One dollar a day, a connection charge (59 cents) or some other gouging charge that eats up those minutes you bought. The minutes also expire. Some expire in a month or three months or a year. Prepaid cell plans know you won't resist the convenience and use it and all those hidden fees will just make you have to buy another card or recharge it. Unless you just use it for an emergency, prepaid is a ripoff that cellphone salespeople in the know and the company's executives laugh all the way to the bank. When I sold cellphones, I hated selling a prepaid because I knew it was a ripoff. But, thanks to people that bought them I got great commissions, which I used to pay for my postpaid cellphone.

Learn more about this author, Jordan St. Claire.
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