What Do Your Cellphone Minutes Cost?
Submitted: March 26, 2009 - 7:26am
Last updated: March 26, 2009 - 7:26am
Last updated: March 26, 2009 - 7:26am
Source:
New York Times
Author:
Bob Tedeschi
There's a good reason many people don't bother to closely read their cellphone bills. They're a mess. Even if you have a so-called bucket plan that's meant to simplify things — 450 minutes for $40, say — the bill is probably split into categories of minutes (in plan, out of plan, promotional, roaming), data charges, taxes, E911 fees and other cryptic line items. If you have a family plan, forget it. Now a consumer advocacy group is arguing that, actually, there's not enough information on a wireless bill. And it has a point. The group, the Utility Consumers' Action Network, based in San Diego, released a report this month in which it analyzed the phone bills of 134 consumers and suggested that they paid far more for each call than they realized. That's because wireless carriers, unlike most other companies that sell things to consumers, don't offer a unit-based price on the bill, indicating how much each minute of cellphone use costs.
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The $3.02 per minute figure from the article is especially large when considering that one study I saw indicates that the average roaming fees cell users pay come to $2.61 per minute. The bottom line is that we're overpaying, and certainly paying more than we often think we are, for our cell phones. I will mention that there are a couple innovative methods to use the internet to cut your cell bill. For example, one great new savings blog called http://fixmycellbill.blogspot.com/ constantly tracks new ways to cut wireless costs and exposes shady billing practices utilized by the cell phone companies. Also, check out the consumer advocacy website where I (admittedly) work, www.myValidas.com, that slashes the average cell bill by 22 percent. Through the site, we have currently audited over 26,000 cell lines and have saved consumers nearly $5 million off their wireless bills. You can see myValidas.com in the national news media, most recently on Good Morning America at http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6887412&page=1.
Good luck to everyone reading on lowering expenses in the recession.
Dylan