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Free Prepaid Cell Phone - Do you qualify?!

Are you looking for a free prepaid cell phone? Do you have low income and are looking for a FREE cell phone and airtime? SafeLink Wireless offers Lifeline service, which is a government sponsored program. They provice free cell phone phones and service to "income eligible" people. There are no contracts, no fees, no monthly charges, no strings attached at all! You simply have to legitimately qualify.

Do I qualifiy for SafeLink?
Note that the actual qualification process values by state, but generally, you'll qualify for the program if:

You're already on State or Federal assistance. For example, Federal Public Housing Assistance, food stamps, medicaid.

Your total household income is below 135% of State and/or Federal government guidelines.

AND

No one in your household already receives Lifeline service through another wireless carrier.
You must have a valid USPS (United States Postal Service) address. In other words, you must live somewhere where you can receive mail, as they will send the phone to that address. Also note that P.O. boxes are not allowed.

What are the benefits?

Free phone
Free fixed number of minutes each month automatically added to your account
No contract
No fees
No monthly charges
Unused minutes rollover each month
When you stop the SafeLink service, you can keep the phone

What other services are included?

Caller ID
Call waiting
Voicemail
Roaming
Long distance

How many free minutes do I get each month?

Each state has their own number of minutes allocated for your free prepaid cell phone. To give you an idea of the range, I checked most states, and found the following:

Most states include 68 minutes
Some states include 55-60 minutes
A small number of states include 80 minutes

You get your monthly minute allocation within the first three days of the month, but your phone must be on to receive the free minutes. If you don't receive your minutes, you can follow the instructions on their site to retrieve them.

What about text messaging?
Text messaging/SMS can be used the cost of 0.3 min per message, which means for one minute's worth of time, you can send three text messages instead.

What about toll free numbers?
Toll free calls are actually not included, and are charged at the normal per minute rate, including calls to Lifeline and TracFone customer service. So if you're going to call their customer service, if possible, you should try to call from another phone or landline.

What company is behind this service?
You may be wondering whether the SafeLink free prepaid cell phone service is good. Will you have coverage? Will it be reliable? The short answer is yes! TracFone is the prepaid wireless provider behind Lifeline. TracFone is the largest prepaid provider in the U.S. (at least at the time of writing this!), at greater than 10 million customers. They also offer the Straight Talk service available in Walmart stores. The parent company also owns Net10, another prepaid provider. To learn more, visit TracFone Prepaid Cellular. Bottom line is that you can have confidence that you're getting a quality service.

If I run out of minutes, can I add more?
Yes! Because it's a service offered by TracFone, you can actually use any of their reload products. Just visit any store that offers TracFone, and pick up a replenishment card there. Also, after finishing with the SafeLink program, they let you keep the phone, so you can go ahead and activate it on regular TracFone service. SafeLink specific airtime cards are said to be coming soon, however, they don't say when. They also don't say when that happens whether TracFone airtime cards will work. I guess we'll just have to wait to find out!

Can I use my own phone?
No, you cannot use your own phone. You must use a phone provided by SafeLink Wireless as part of the free prepaid cell phone program.

NEXT - Free Prepaid Phones: How is this program possible?

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