Are you wasting money on your cell phone bill?
Cell phone users may be wasting several hundred dollars a year, paying for unused minutes and services they’ll never use. At least, that’s the argument being made by the Illinois Citizens Utility Board, a utility watchdog group.
The group released a report this week, “Surviving the Cell-phone Jungle,” that says Illinois consumers could cut their cell phone bills by an average of $331 a year by changing calling plans and cutting back on things like roadside assistance services.
And while the group came to its conclusions by studying some 7,000 Illinois cell phone bills, the findings apply beyond the state’s borders, said spokesman Patrick Deignan, during a briefing this morning in East St. Louis.
“We see no reason why it would be any different from state to state,” he said.
Here are some of the findings based on the billings by the top five carriers, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon:
- The majority of the bills included unused minutes, with the average user wasting 439 minutes a month, or 46 percent of the paid minutes.
- Most bills with text message plans showed even more waste, with 65 percent of the monthly quota unused.
- More than half of the users were overpaying by an average of $10.64 a month, spent on extras like expensive 411 information calls, roadside assistance and insurances.
- The report was also critical of miscellaneous fees and surcharges “that appeared to have no other purpose than to fatten profits.”
Of course, it’s easy to suggest cutting back on calling plans. But most of us have felt the financial pain of exceeding minute limits at one point or another - those hefty per-minute overage charges are clearly designed to steer customers toward plans with bigger chunks of minutes.
Deignan said users who do make a switch to a smaller plan should keep that in mind: “Monitor your bills closely for the first few months to make sure you’re on the right plan.”
The non-profit also offers an online tool, Cellphone Saver, that’s supposed to help consumers figure out if they’re on the right plan.
Adding some new material here. I’ve asked several of the carriers for comment. The folks at AT&T didn’t want to address the actual survey. But they did send along some of their own tips for consumers. Here are a few of them:
- Evaluate your bill: Each month, take a look at your wireless bill to make sure it fits your needs. For example, if you notice that your teenager continues to go over his text message limit of 500 texts per month and it’s costing you lots of money in extra charges, consider moving to a different data plan or an unlimited plan.
- Look into FamilyTalk plans: If you have a family with multiple users, purchasing FamilyTalk plans may be the best option to save money. With FamilyTalk, you can add up to 5 lines and get Unlimited Mobile to Mobile Calling, Nights & Weekends and no roaming and long distance charges. You can add unlimited messaging plans so that everyone can send and receive as many texts as they want each month.
- Rollover minutes: The company says it does offer rollover minutes - the unused, accumulated minutes that carry over from month to month. The benefit for customers is that you can keep the minutes and use them when it’s convenient..
- Explore your options. Check out the link, www.wireless.att.com/gophone, to look at the variety of plans and options - including pay-as-you-go plans.
Another addition: Just heard from U.S. Cellular. As with AT&T, they didn’t offer any commentary on the survey. But the company said it works with customers to help them find a monthly plan that best suits their needs. The company also said customers are free to change their monthly plans without signing new contracts.
Tim has covered a wide range of topics, including tourism, crime, aviation and gambling, since becoming a reporter in 1990. The Oklahoma native joined the Post-Dispatch in 2007 after spending nine years in Orlando. In his spare time, he's often exploring one virtual world or another. He can be reached at tbarker@post-dispatch.com. 
While our bill is pretty high (about $170/mo), it does include all the bells-and-whistles. We got rid of our home phone, so this is saving us money. For 2 lines we get:
Unlimited minutes
Unlimited messaging
Unlimited data (e-mail and web browsing)
My wife has a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G and I have the T-Mobile G1 so we are required to have a data plan for each line. There wes a month (I think May) that we went a couple hundred minutes over our 700 minute plan. It was only $10 more per month to upgrade to the Unlimited plan that TMO offers to “long time” customers. So I think it roughly breaks down like:
Voice plan: $80/mo
Messaging: $15/mo
Data plan: $50/mo
Total: $145/mo before taxes and charges
So I don’t understand all the taxes and charges they tack on, but that’s really not bad for what we get in comparison to other services.
Oh, and T-Mobile has the hands-down best/friendliest customer service of the major players. I have had service with Verizon and the pure-evil company AT&T. They both had lousy, or down right insulting, CS. I dealt with Sprint and US Cellular as a sales rep and they weren’t much better.
mine is $35/month plus $5/month text messaging. i don’t think it gets much cheaper than that, and i never go over my minutes. but i don’t really see the point that this advocacy group is trying to push. i pay $160/month for cable TV, and i pay for 24 hours worth of TV per day but i only watch TV 3-4 hours a day tops. seems like a waste? shouldn’t we cut my TV bill down and only pay for used minutes? (of course, when i DO watch TV, i like to watch premium channels in HD, off of DVR hence the bill)
Our cell phone carrier kept billing us over the last few months for services such as downloading ring tones when we didn’t even do it! First, they billed it to my cellphone (which doesn’t even have the capability to access the internet), then they tried our daughter’s (I guess they thought we wouldn’t believe our teenager when she said she didn’t do it). The final straw was when they tried to bill it to my husband’s phone number. Each time, they ended up crediting us the $40 extra dollars on our bill. Moral of the story: check your bill VERY CAREFULLY. It’s quite a racket.
If you call Sprint customer service, they will evaluated your usage over previous months, and recommend if you could save money with a less expensive plan.
What makes me mad is that we have the lowest minutes package and when we go to renew it’s always higher minutes and higher prices. My wife and I don’t even use our 500 minutes why would we renew with 700 minutes and $10 a month more? Give me a less minutes at a cheaper price and I might just add data onto it. I would love to browse from my phone.
Want an eyeopener? Just add up all the taxes and fees, especially if you live in St. Louis city, and then figure the percentage of taxes/fees on the base. For me, its around 20%. That has to stop.
I can’t believe how much money some people spend on cell phones. We have a Virgin cell phone and pay by the minute. I spend about $20 every 90 days and only use the phone for emergency or semi-emergency calls. We don’t use our cell phone for just chit chatting. I don’t know how everyone survived before the invention of the cell phone.
The biggest racket of all is the extra about 18 to 20% added on to everyone’s cell phone bill. I have asked companies in the past what that charge would be and they say the only way they know the exact amount is when you get billed. A good rule of thumb is just to add about 20% to what your plan says and that will include all of the extra taxes and fees. I’m glad to see some relatively good deals like mycricket.com and boostmobile, where you can get unlimited US long distance for $30 a mo., or upgrade to the unlimited voice, text, and internet for $50 a mo. or less.
I also want there to be a law that has that unless you subscribe to it, you don’t get access, or better yet, if there’s a fee charged for anything including if you’re about to go over minutes of your plan, the phone needs to tell you what fees will be charged. I got a new phone and was billed $0.03/min for Casual Data Usage where I downloaded updates for my phone and I never signed up for internet. I did get the extra credited back and had to verbally tell them to block all internet access.
We use tracfone. You pay a yearly fee, based on how many minutes you think you’ll spend, usually $100-300. If you use up your minutes, you can add more later on. No monthly fees. You can call and text and that’s about it. No camera or other bells and whistles but it’s cheap. Our phones are archaic: our grandson laughs at them, which we find amusing.
I agree with the television comment. I wish there was a way to make us pay as you preview the tv. Maybe a few more people would be out doing more then watching it. I enjoy my tv, but most evenings I don’t even turn it on at all. I’ve had verizon for years and I’m content…. I do go w/higher minutes, just out of fear of one time going over and not being able to afford it.