Old People Phones
 

My grandparents are old. And they suck at electronics. Hard

Mom got them a cell phone about 400 years ago for emergencies and travel and all that crap. Well the battery is now completely dead and the phone is now worthless.

Mom currently has them as a companion on a Verizon plan. She doesn't want to do the 2 years on the contract just for them, and she thinks the Verizon phones are too complicated for them.

She wants to do a jitterbug deal, because their phones are targeted at old people.

Is this the right thing? What are other people doing for elderly needing a cell phone?

TIA

Oh yeah, my grandparents live in Bum **** Nowhere, so coverage has to be good.

Buy a new battery off of Amazon.

Man, it's older than hell. Its that crappy LG kind from when LG first came out with phones. It's got that big ass round gay thing on the bottom. Could I get a battery for a phone that old.

You'd be surprised.
Try amazon or maybe even interstate battery.

I have a shit ton of old phones in my office. I'll check and see I I have an old LG in there, maybe able to hook you up if you want.

FTR, Jitterbug operates on the Verizon network. That's probably not a bad way to go. The network is good, and I think you can do prepaid.

I've had good luck with tracfone. You buy samsung tracfone at walmart, put some minutes on it, done.

LMAO WTF does that even mean?

If you'd seen one you'd know. Rewind about 7 years and look for the worst phone known to mankind.

Yeah - this. You can get pretty basic phones, too. The nice thing about Tracfone is you can buy just time without having to by a ton of minutes with them. 1 year and 800 minutes is around $100, so it's cheap if you don't talk much. Texts (sending and receiving) are 1/3 minute, iirc.

They can't text. The problem I can see with Tracfones is that mom will have to manage the minutes because they won't understand how, and you have to do that through the internet right?

Tracfone uses purchased minutes that come with a certain number of service days. For example, you can purchase a 400 minute card with 1 year of service. If the phone is only an emergency type deal, your mom wouldn't have to buy any minutes for a year. And if they're not used, when you buy another year of service, the unused minutes roll over. I've given all my elderly relatives one, and I just get an email when I need to reload the phones.

Actually getting them to understand how to use the cellphone has been a lot harder than the minutes aspect of it. "how do I hang this thing up again?" :facepalm:

Also, phones have to allow you to call 911, even within minutes. So in pure emergency scenarios, it's still nice to have.

Well, I looked at the phones I had in storage and you're ****ed, buddy. The only LG I had has a bad battery.

These are a touch on the spendy side at about $40 a pop, but they might help you:

http://www.yubztalkusa.com/images2012/red.jpg


http://www.yubztalkusa.com/