How Do You Avoid Cell Phone Bill Overcharges?

I recently posted some tips to save money on your cell phone bill over at One Money Design.  Those tips are fine to watch your cell phone costs, but what do you do when you receive your bill only to find it’s a lot more than you expected?

This month’s Consumer Reports has a number of good tips to help you avoid “bill shock” (as they put it). I remember a few times when I opened a cell phone bill I saw that it was well over a hundred dollars more than what I expected it to be.  I learned a quick lesson that spending more minutes than my plan allowed was never going to be a good situation financially speaking.

The median overage is estimated to be $85 per month according to data Consumer Reports has collected.  That’s no small amount of money and can certainly put a person into budget shortfall.  The shortage has to be either made up with savings or a credit card at the end of the month (not good).

So, how do you avoid such overcharges?  One might say it’s careless or mismanagement of your resources, but I’m not going to be that harsh (I just mentioned I’ve been there).  Rather, I’ll simply say we all make mistakes and I want to help you avoid such mistakes.  Let’s take a look at some of the tips Consumer Reports provided:

• Monitor your usage.
• Sign up for an overage alert.
• Adjust your plan as needed.
• Consider prepaid.
• Consider getting your new cell phones with something like AmazonWireless to save money.

So, what do you think about these simple tips?  Let’s dive a little deeper.

If you’re going to own a cell phone, monitoring your usage is critical to avoid overages.  With the internet, there is really no excuse to not pay attention to how many minutes (or data) you’ve used.   You don’t have to work through the inconveniences of customer service or an automated phone system to find out your usage.  You can simply log onto your provder’s website and get your usage.

I have an iPhone, so I manage my minutes and data in a couple of different ways. I’ve created an online account which I can log in and see our usage and billing information. Or even better, I have the ATT iPhone app which allows me to see minutes and data for our plan.

Have you tried overage alerts? I haven’t signed up for them, but I think it’s definitely worth looking into if you don’t want to have to check your usage all the time. Many people prefer receiving email reminders.  The more ways to keep you informed, the better.

Adjusting your plan as needed is a great tip. You need to move to a new plan if you’re bumping up against your limit every month.  Also, if you’re not using all your minutes you need to consider a cheaper plan and save more money.

In my post, tips to save money on your cell phone bill, some readers suggested prepaid phones. I haven’t explored this option because I love my iPhone, but it seems to work quite well for those commenting about it. I would think this would also be a great solution when kids or teenagers need a phone.  The prepaid option would certainly teach some responsibility in watching usage and when the minutes are gone; they are gone (sounds similar to managing your money each month, right?).

As I was thinking about these tips I had another idea.  Evaluate your cell phone usage and when you’re getting charged for calls. Is it possible to make the majority of your calls at night or on weekends? Readjusting your schedule can make a huge difference in your usage.  Also, some providers are now offering free numbers.  In other words, you can select numbers you typically call and you’ll never be charged for them.

Have you ever experienced “bill shock?” If so, what changes did you put in place to avoid it from occurring again?

Photo by Jonjon_2k8