Trumpet Mobile was a prepaid cell phone service which had a couple of unique features.
Trumpet phones were sold at Walgreens and Casey's General stores. You could also buy airtime there or buy it online once you established service.
Their page tells customers that their service has been transferred to ReadyMobile, but not to worry, it will still work. If you still have Trumpet's reload cards, they will still work. You can buy additional airtime cards through ReadyMobile.
As always, you have to first make sure you can use the service. Coverage is provided by the Sprint PCS network. You can check out out Trumpet Mobile coverage by going to Sprint's site and see if it works for you.
You can choose an Individual Plan or a Family/Group Plan.
This plan costs 10 cents per minute plus a 50 cent daily access fee on the days you use the phone. (So it doesn’t really cost you exactly 10 cents per minute.) So, if you plan to use it every day, that’s an extra $15 a month.
If you don't want to pay an access fee you can go with their Basic plan which charges 20 cents per minute.
The family plan is designed for 2 to 9 members. You can share airtime within your group, and you can set up a “reserve fund” that anyone in your group can tap if they run low.
The rate appears to be 10 cents per minutes within your group, and possibly 20 cents per minute outside your group. Or you can choose the 50 cent daily access fee and pay 10 cents per minute outside your group as well.
I can't find any mention of this feature on their website in 2012. Here' the earlier info:
You can make a Western Union money transfer directly from your Trumpet Mobile phone. If you transfer money frequently, then this is an amazingly useful (if somewhat expensive) feature.
You can transfer money from your Trumpet Cash card only, so you will have to load it up to use this feature.
You can send money anywhere in the US, the Carribean and most of Latin America.
Just remember to factor in the fees involved with using the Trumpet cash card in addition to Western Union's fees.
The Trumpet cash card allows you to withdraw money from ATM's and use it for payment wherever they accept debit/cash cards.
You can load up the cash card at Radio Shack, Western Union or any locations that are part of the Green Dot network.
The load fees can be as high as 4.95 which makes it quite an expensive way of handling your money. The advantage to it is that you can use it for Western Union money transfers from your Trumpet Mobile phone.
Trumpet Mobile's website lists three phones and Radio Shacks's lists four. Because the lists don't completely overlap, you appear to have a choice of up to five phones:
This could be worth trying for the Western Union money transfer feature, as few other services offer this.