tracfone in Hawaii... will it work?

[desmerelda]

We are cruising Dec 10 on Pride of America and our US Cellular service is not
in Hawaii. I am thinking of getting a $20.00 tracfone and putting 100
minutes or so on it so we can call home and/or whomever in Hawaii for
excursions and rental car pick-ups.

Does anyone have any experience with Tracfone in Hawaii.
I am hoping it will be a cost effective way to communicate.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Judy

[LuAnn]

Judy..don't know either, but I have one so home it works!!! LuAnn

[spleen93]

Tracfone should work in Hawaii - I plugged in several Hawaii area codes into their coverage maps and they read OK. They use GSM technology so they're probably roaming on Cingular's coverage in Hawaii which is pretty decent.

OTOH, your US Cellular service should work in Hawaii as well. You'll be paying roaming charges on each minute that you use but if you're planning on only using your cell phone for quick calls, that might not be too bad. US Cellular technically isn't in Hawaii but they do have roaming agreements with other cell phone carriers (like every other cell phone carrier) and since they use CDMA technology, I suspect that you'll be roaming on either Verizon's network (which would be very extensive in Hawaii) or Sprint's network (which also is pretty good). If you wanted to make sure, you could always call US Cellular's customer service to confirm ...

Spleen

[ndamro]

Originally Posted by desmerelda

We are cruising Dec 10 on Pride of America and our US Cellular service is not
in Hawaii. I am thinking of getting a $20.00 tracfone and putting 100
minutes or so on it so we can call home and/or whomever in Hawaii for
excursions and rental car pick-ups.

Does anyone have any experience with Tracfone in Hawaii.
I am hoping it will be a cost effective way to communicate.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Judy

I was looking at their website since I'm pretty sure our cell phone won't have coverage in Hawaii (Canadian) and it appears that some phones (I believe the digital ones) will have all of the islands without roaming charges (the Nokia 2126), and some will only include the island which you indicate as the home area when you register (Motorolla 120) and even then their appear to be some roaming charge areas.

At least that's the impression I get from their coverage maps. It would be worth looking into if you intend to use the phone over the entire cruise to avoid roaming charges, etc.

[desmerelda]

Thank you for all the information...... After further review I changed
my cell phone to national for one billing cycle it costs me $20.00 per cycle (month) so I figured that should work the best. I should receive no roaming charges during my stay in Hawaii

Judy

[ndamro]

Good choice

I had been doing some more research on Tracfone and honestly it's quite scary! The level of customer service seems to be non-existent and it sounds like they have a lot of phones that haven't been serviced properly and don't work from the get go - scary!

[JKHawaii]

I cruised Hawaii at the beginning of November and my Tracfone worked perfectly everywhere. We visited every island except Molokai.