Hi
I have looked online, and have spoken to a few people, but no where seems to really have a "good" idea of how to help me


I am a UK citizen, looking to move to America (at some point in the future)

I have lots of friends here, and have been visiting on and off since 2004, and it's never really been a problem before as my friends all lived in the same town and didn't work - i used to visit when we were all off from school

Now though, they have all started to move to different towns/cities and work different hours, and we have decided it would be quite useful if i was able to get a pay as you go cell phone or something, to allow us to communicate without having to rely on the internet - so i could be out and about and still get hold of them if need be

can anyone recommend the best option for this? can you get pay as you go cell phones in the US? would i be able to get one as a tourist or would it need to be tied to an address or something in the us?

any help would be very helpful, thank you

I've had a pay as you go phone with Verizon for several years. Good coverage. You buy a suitable phone for the service in Walmart for about 20 bucks.

Don't know whether you need a permanent address or just a temporary address while on vacation.

Since you are putting money on the phone 'as you go' don't see why you need a permanent address.

Plenty of Verizon phone shops all over the place to get you up and running.

My first phone when I arrived was a $10 cheapo phone from Walmart, from Virgin Mobile.
I still use it as a spare phone occasionally, it works great.
You just make a top-up account online, or you can buy top-up vouchers.
Walmart's great for that stuff!

Thanks guys, big help

If you all had smartphones you can get apps that you can use which don't cost anything (i.e. no charges for emails etc) though I appreciate that this is still 'using the internet' in some way.
I use an app called 'groupme' (I think it's part of skype?) to keep in touch with my (US based) girlfriend - though other apps are available- ditto with emails etc.
and tt doesn't cost her money to receive or reply to them (other than her usual 'contract', data costs etc) .

One thing to note though its that the Americans idea of 'pay as you go' isn't quite the same as it is here; Their PAYG is more like what we would consider here as a 'contract'.
I'll try to explain; Here we could pay as little as £5.00 for a top-up and then make it last the whole year if we so chose and were careful (and if we had no calls/ friends etc lol). There, however, they seem to have to pay a monthly fee just in order to keep the phone working, (though I maybe wrong, but it certainly seems to be the case with my gf who doesn't class this set-up as a 'contract' as such because she ''doesn't have to sign for anything'', even though to us, it would certainly seem like one!!)
So, it is my belief that if you top-up there, but go past the month, (whether you've used all your credit up or not), you may still have to top-up regardless.

It almost goes without saying that it'd be a lot more costlier if you also need to keep in touch with relatives back here too, as outside of the county you are in,(note; that's COUNTY and not CountRY) everything is considered as 'long distance' , which isn't quite the same here ( a £0.30p per min call, here is the same to anywhere in the UK mainland except for premium rate numbers).
You could try and get cheap phone cards to use in pay phones (though again, I believe pay phones are becoming as rare as 'hens teeth' over there), OR you could try and find a cheap sim card here to use there, though the only phones that I could find on the net that took sim cards in the States were T-Mobile's phones (I think though they're now having become part of At&T) so if you had a cheap international sim here, you could get a cheap T-Mobile/AT&T phone in the States and use you sim in that, (though naturally, the calling charges would be higher as you would be considered as 'roaming abroad').
Seriously, the internet, while not the best solution (considering your question), may be the cheapest and easiest option. Hope this helps?!