How to Stop Hating Your Cell Phone

Ever had a cellular eruption–outbursts of profanities at the sight of your cell phone bill? When your cell phone bill looks more like a car note or rent payment, you have a problem. Working for a cell phone company has taught me a few tips for getting people’s bills back under control. Some of the tips below can help get to keep your bill down.

Get the right plan
Sometimes a pretty plan brings in ugly bills. You may pick a plan because it has a great price tag… and you tell yourself “I can manage these minutes.” You tell yourself that you’ll just wait until the weekend or the night time. Most of the time it really doesn’t work out that way

If your bill is consistently above 100 bucks for a you alone, start considering the new unlimited callings plans that all the companies have now. They might save you money, and you’ll never have to worry about your talk time again.

Text message
Add a text messaging package! You don’t text? That’s nice, but everyone else does. You get stuck with a 15 cent charge whenever someone sends you a text. At this point it’s unavoidable. Protect yourself and add a package. There are packages for as low as 5 bucks and this way you can feel comfortable with actually responding to these texts.

Also, adding text messaging can protect you from long winded friends. Don’t talk, just text. This way you can still do what you need to do without having to spend loads of time talking and using up all your minutes.

Ringtones

Do you still download ringtones–and pay for them? There are a number of websites you can visit to get free ringtones. Also, your friends can text them to you at no charge or send them via Bluetooth. If you have a phone with a music phone, you can use an MP3 as a ringtone too. And all of these methods are completely free.

On the other hand, if you’re watching a commercial that gives you a number to text to get ringtones. Chances are that they automatically will subscribe you to their ring tone service for $9.99 and you will never know it unless you look at your bill. To find out if this has happened to you, take a look at your bill and look for a random $9.99 charge for Dadda mobile or something equally as lame.

Read your bill
Check your bill. Take off the features that you aren’t using. And make sure that you’re on the right plan. The customer isn’t always right. So before you confront the cell-phone rep over the phone or in person, look at your phone bill first. I know it’s really hard to believe that you talk to much… but you do.

Everyone always assumes that calls to people with the same cell phone service are free and included with your plan. This is not the case. Everyone doesn’t have mobile to mobile. Make sure that you do. This can save you a lot of minutes and help prevent overages.

Take advantage of freebies
You can call 1 800 free 411 instead. Or if you have a PDA phone you can Google it. 411 calls are usually 1.49 a piece. I’ve seen cell phone bills with 30 bucks worth of them, which is really a waste of money if you can get the same information for free.

Consciousness and Maintenance
Be conscious of events in your life that will increase your talk time. New boy in your life? Job hunters blowing you up? These things will eat up your minutes, so be conscious of them and adjust your plan. You can change your plan in the middle of your bill cycle in order to prevent nasty overages.

Change your plan ever so often. Last year’s plan was $49.99 for 1000 minutes. This year the exact same plan is $39.99. This is a great way to easily save 10 bucks. I once had a customer who was on the same plan for four years. For the same price, I changed their plan and got them 600 more minutes for free.

These are just a few ideas that came to mind, I hope some of them help.

|  Print