I've just purchased a SPEAKOUT phone from 711 (yes, the corner store). They are running a promo that if you buy a $100 airtime voucher, you get a $59 credit in purchase of a phone of your choice. Their cheapest phone is $59. so basically you get the phone for free. Any airtime voucher last 1 year, monthly admin fee is $1, costs per call is $0.25. it comes with free call display, call waiting, voice mail and free incoming text. plus you can check your voice mail from a home phone which means you won't get charged for checking voice mail. On top of this, all phone comes with a $5 free air time plus after activation of your phone and the air time voucher, you can give this referral code ******* to the customer service group (by calling 611) and you will get an extra $10 credit.
For me and my 10 yr old son, the phone is for emergency purpose, I may use 10 min a month especially if there is call display and voice mail. As long as I know who is calling, I can always call back with my office/home phone. So this $100 airtime will last me more than a year and the good thing is as long as you buy another air time voucher ($25 being the min), the left over min+the new min will be carry over to another year. So between now and till my son is like 16, all i need to spend is probably $225+tax ($100+5*$25). not bad for 6 years of service. After that, I will probably need to get him a all you can talk and all you can text plan from some other company. I used to be on rogers montly plan and I pay around $40 for my service which I hardly used. This will really saved me a lot of money.
another good thing about this 711 phone is they are compatible with Rogers system so you can use your 711 SIM card with any rogers phone/unlocked phone. That's what I am doing now, I am using the 711 SIM card with my rogers phone. I am going to put my unused 711 Nokia phone on the internet and hopefully get $25 for it. Also, since you can purchase 711 SIM card separtely, there is always a market for selling used SPEAKOUT SIM card. You can easily sell your Speakout Sim card for $20+air time you left on your card. I am so happy and proud of this findings and I am telling all my friend about this if they need a emergency phone.
