by Beks
According to a USA Today article, within the next year and a half, you’ll be notified before you exceed the voice, text, or data limits on your cell phone. Apparently, enough folks had an ‘oops’ bill high enough to buy a small car and complained to the FCC.
I’ve never had a bill with over the limit usage (I always check my usage online) but it might be nice for the folks who don’t suffer from OCD like I do. *wink*
Is the over the limit problem that bad? Have any of you had a whammy of a cell phone bill?
Beks is a full-time government employee who enjoys blogging late into the night after her four kids have gone to sleep. She’s been married to Chris, her college sweetheart, for 15 years. In 2017, after 3 long years working the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, they paid off more than $70K and became debt free. When she’s not working or blogging, she’s exploring the great outdoors.
I had a $500 dollar cell phone bill one time; it was because of the free nights and weekends, it’s free to call after 9:00 pm, only thing was my son called his girl friend at 8:50 every night and talked for 2 hours. Had he waited 10 minutes it would have all been good, and after that bill, he did.
This is the reason I wont change my cell phone bill. My contract is up but I don’t want to sign up for a new plan because I am still grandfathered in to the ATT unlimited data plan. I can see on my phone what my total usage is and if I were to go to a pay for data plan, I’d end up paying out the ear for the service! and I honestly do NOT use my phone for internet as much as I know most people do. So I can only imagine some of the bills that people receive because they have no idea what their usage is like.
It isn’t a problem for me! I buy a “pay as you go” $100 cell phone card from Virgin mobile and it lasts me the WHOLE YEAR! I last topped up on Dec 31st, 2010 and I still have $38 of my $100 left. To each their own… I could NEVER afford (or want) to pay $50 or $100/month (or more) for a cell phone…. maybe I’m just showing my age???
I’ve never had a crazy bill, but this week in the news there was a story about a woman and her brother who shared a phone plan and the brother had unknowingly racked up a $200,000 bill while spending two weeks outside of the U.S. in Canada. I think it was T-Mobile and they decided to drop the cost down to $2500.
Thanks to my teenager daughter we once had a $600 bill, took her 3 months to work it off and she never went over again. 🙂
I’ve never gone over on my minutes but I could see how it could happen. I think a notice from the cell phone carrier would be nice. It’s so easy to just send a text and let someone know. It would cost nothing for the company once the system is in place.
I’ve been tossing around the idea of going to prepaid cell phones. We really don’t use our phones very much. I think we get 1,000 minutes on our plan and we use like 200 per month. I should look into it.
I went over once….just one of those months where I had more calls than usual and didn’t think of it.
I sure thought of it when my bill was $50 higher than usual. Forty-five cents a minute adds up fast.
I have a Tracfone. It costs $100 a year and I never use up all my minutes!
I have had a few bills around the $500 mark and my husband had one over $1000 if I recall correctly, I paid one of mine and the other was waived, and I think for his it was reduced to $400 or similar. Smart phones can use data without the human having any idea what’s hapening! An app on my phone downloaded a huge audiobook without warning me, which is how I got the first huge bill. My phone companies have never given me an easy way to monitor my usage and I would love it if cap warning SMSs came out in Australia.
i don’t go over my limit (bc i mainly exchange text messages) but every single month, my bill gets an extra charge of $3 or $4ve for some service that i did not use or is already free in my plan, and i have to call and argue about it to get it removed. i have a contact with telus and when it is up i am done with telus. i am sure this is how htey make money. charge small extra amounts that people may not notice. and every month they put me only hold for 20 minutes before i get a person on the line…. they do everything they can to discourage people from calling to challenge the bills i am sure of it. it usually takes a full hour before the issue is resolved.
Only once, because I thought I had a national calling plan when, in fact, I didn’t. I live in Wisconsin and had been making calls and texting while on vacation in California. I came home to an “Oh My God” bill. I called Verizon, explained, they made it go away, and put me on a national plan. For all the things Verizon has done for me in the 6 years I’ve been with them, they’d have to do something pretty ridiculous for me to switch. I’ll gladly pay more for them (and I know I do).
I use Strait Talk cellphones – bought the phone and buy a $45 phone card each month. $45 covers unlimited texting, phone calls and data. Never have to worry about going over and never have to worry about a contract.
My t-mobile phone just downloaded this new myaccount app yesterday and yeah, it tells you where you are in your account whenever you want, which is so stupidly obviously necessary it’s stunning it wasn’t on there by default. Of course, they’d make less profit if they gave you control over your own account.