If you have ever lost or misplaced your cell phone, this post is for you. You don’t have to spend a lot or buy a crappy cheap phone as a replacement. Here’s my story:

A couple of weeks ago my relatively new AT&T cell phone disappeared. I looked everywhere and even retraced my steps to see if I could find it. After a couple of days I reported it missing and suspended my AT&T account. (Note: Suspending an account doesn’t cancel an account or what you owe on your contract!)

Last summer in a fit of tech-envy I switched from Virgin Mobile to AT&T. I wanted to try text messaging, web browsing, a better camera phone, and neat ringtones. So I picked out a slim flip phone and signed a two year contract. There was a $100 rebate on the cell phone, so it didn’t cost me much.

I needed to try mobile text messaging and web browsing for a project so I paid about $60 a month for these extra. Once the project was done in a couple of months, I shed the pricey services. I now have a very simple cellphone plan and my current monthly fee is only about $35 more than Virgin Mobile but still quite reasonable.

Unfortunately, one of the extras I dropped was the replacement insurance for the
cell phone. My contract was only six months old, so AT&T wasn’t going to give me any break on replacing my phone. The early termination fee would be about $150 but would leave me without a cell phone.

I like AT&T so I checked out the phones I could buy to replace my lost phone. Except for a couple of really crappy refurbished phones, the phones were pretty pricey. The cheapest cell phones were out: I switched to AT&T to improve on my Virgin Mobile experience, not replicate it. The expensive phones were out too, I’m just too cheap to spend a couple hundred on a cell phone.

It was time to do a little research. I combed Google listings for replacing lost cellphones and didn’t find a lot of really useful advice. Until I found Tony May’s article about How to replace a lost or broken cell phone cheaply.

May suggests buying a cheap prepaid phone for your carrier at Walmart or Target. I checked the prices for these phones online and they were great. Target had several prepaid cell phones ranging in price from $9.99 to $79.99. I found a very nice AT&T Samsung Prepaid Cell Phone in red for only $49.99. It has a camera, ringtones, web browsing (if you like really small print), and it small and light-weight. The cheap Nokia was very nice for $10 but I just wanted a few more bells and whistles.

May also suggests replacing the prepaid phone’s sim card with your own. Big problem here: my sim card is with my missing cell phone. So I called my local AT&T store and asked about using a prepaid phone from Target with my current account. I was told that I could bring the phone to the store and the AT&T technician would set it up for my account. I asked if they could do the same thing with a prepaid from their store and was told no. They can only switch the prepaid phones that customers bring into the store.

So I went to Target and got my new red phone and then visited the AT&T store at the mall. I thought that I would have to buy a new sim card, but the AT&T guy told me it’s part of their service.

So here’s what you do if you want to upgrade or replace a cell phone:

1. Buy a prepaid phone for your carrier at a discount store like Walmart or Target.
2. Take the phone to the carrier’s store and have them swap or update the sim card.

It’s another one of those techie tricks that is so obvious once you know about it, but so obscure when you are looking for a solution.

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