We all grieve in different ways. When some of us open our cell
phone bills we let out a blood-curdling shriek that sends the cat under
the couch for days. Some of us just lie down gently and try to
will ourselves to die. If this happens to you, perhaps it’s a cry from
your bank account for help. Here it is.
Thing No. 1 If you’re freaking out at your bill, you don’t
have enough minutes.
Maybe 1000 minutes sounded like an awful lot when
you signed up. What is there to possibly say that can take that
long? A few “yeah, yeahs” here, a few movie dates there, a few drunk
dialing voicemails on Saturday nights – how long can that take?
Apparently too long. You’ve got to buy over to come in
under. If you’ve gone over more than once and there were no
mitigating circumstances, you need to up your minutes. It costs a
lot less than overages do. Some plans like Cingular let you roll-over your
unused minutes from month to month and some let you pay a small fee
($5) to start the nights of their “free nights and weekends” earlier
like 7PM instead of 9PM (or, they’ll give it to you for free for the
first 2 years and then charge you.) If you need a phone, some come with
a free cell phone or a very inexpensive one.
Thing No. 2 Sometimes, a different plan will give
you more minutes for less.
Depending on what the wireless company is
trying to push at the moment (things like faves or circles or family
plans) you might even find one that works better for you (usually
depending on whether you call the same people all the time or not) and
costs you even less than your regular plan while giving you more
minutes. These are tricky though. They give you more minutes for
less providing you’re calling the right people. Unless you really,
really, really only call the same 5 people over and over again (and
more often than not they have to be in the same network – right now,
Alltel’s My Circle plan is the exception allowing
10 numbers in your circle including numbers in other networks and
landlines) it could really screw you up when you finally do venture
outside of your little tribe by charging you higher per-minute
costs. Plus, they very carefully only make these plans available
at certain levels hoping you’ll be enticed to sign up for a more
expensive plan in order to get these particular calls free.
Side-by-side comparisons can be had at Mobile Burn or Lets Talk.
Thing No. 3 Bicoastal Grifting.
For you true grifters
out there (and you do hold a warm spot in our hearts) legend has it
that if you live on the West Coast but get an East Coast area code,
your free night minutes start on East Coast time giving you a full
3-hour advantage. Pretty shifty but perfectly legal.
Thing No. 4 You're supposed to give yourself a cell plan
physical every 6 months.
Yeah right, like after you go through this and
realize how many different options there are you will ever willingly do
it again. Nevertheless, the really organized people with lots of time
on their hands (presumably because they’re so organized) say that you
should check in on current cell plans being offered on a regular basis
so as not to miss out on hot new deals. This will have to be
within the range of plans offered by your existing carrier for the
duration of your contract because they’ll charge you through the nose
for early termination (usually 2 years and between $100-$300). If
you do upgrade your plan, your contract will be extended so, if you’re
looking to get out because you have a special and even deeper hatred
for your carrier than the garden-variety hatred the rest of us have
then, be aware that this will only extend the duration of your carrier
marriage. Consider supplementing with Thing No. 4 until you can
get a cheap divorce and nowadays, you can have custody of the phone
number.
Thing No. 5 It is possible to pawn your plan off on someone
else.
You might be able to find someone to take over your plan and
therefore, get around paying the termination fee. Celltradeusa.com
is $19.99 for sellers -- due after you receive messages from interested
parties (and free for buyers). Most carriers allow transfers
although some of the terms may vary. The carrier will do a credit
check on the potential buyer but you guys will have to carry out the
transfer yourselves (celltradeusa acts merely as a matchmaker) and you
can still keep your number.
Thing No. 6 Prepaid is very Euro-chic.
Well, we’re not
really sure about that but you could certainly pass it off as such if
you posses even a little bit of je nais se quos. In this country,
pre-paid cards have historically been the domain of kids (and other
cash-strapped people large and small), deadbeats and grannies for use
only on those occasions when their Hoverounds break down in a dark
alley. But, not so in Europe. There, they can’t seem to be
bothered with signing contracts, long-term commitments, age limits and
credit checks. They must be too busy with bottles of wine
at lunch, afternoon dalliances with their extra-marital lovers and long
naps in the afternoon to be hassled with such pedestrian matters.
You too can enjoy this breezy lifestyle but minutes can cost more and
if you don’t use them, they can expire. You can get around the
expiration if you add money to your balance before the expiration
date. In other words, if you haven’t used all your minutes when
the 90 days (or whatever it is) is approaching, you can add to it and
your remaining minutes will roll-over. If you don’t, then they
won’t and you lose the unused minutes. If you’re the forgetful
sort, you can also arrange an automatic debit from your credit card
every 90 days. Good old American competition is driving costs
down and expiration times up so you might want to buy yourself a beret
and check into what’s available. Do beware of daily fees though.
Some carriers will charge you $1/day every day you use the phone
although this will only be found in teeny tiny type on the back of the
card. You’ll also have to buy a certain phone to use with certain
plans but these phones tend to be cheap. You most certainly want to
consider it for those chatty teenagers. “Give ‘em a monthly
allowance of minutes and then cut ‘em off!” we say. It will teach
them the value of money and that it is really inconsequential if they
made out with Johnny or not – they can use their time more productively
to figure out a national health plan or something.
Thing No. 7 Data plans aren’t just for smartphones anymore.
Although we have seen groovy kids from Brazil insisting on data plans
for their $30 phones, surfing the Internet from a “regular” handset
usually blows. Although, like many things, it’s big in Japan,
accessing Internet services from a cell phone handset takes some
getting used to. WAP-based services (those designed specifically
for mobile devices) are revised versions of what you see on your
computer and the interface often leaves a little to be desired.
If you have a data plan you’ll be able to do quick checks of stocks,
scores, movie times, flight times etc. but if you want more than this,
you’re going to find that the screen is small, making website browsing
tedious and you won’t have the keyboard that you need. Plus,
these devices are not optimized for memory and the service will often
get disrupted and you’ll get pissed off.
There are some exceptions to this rule. And, they’re free.
• If you have a Gmail account and a Java compatible
carrier (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) you can download a fast,
full-blown, terribly cute, miniature version of www.gmail.com to an
ordinary, not so smart phone. You can enter your cell phone
number @ www.mobile.google.com and they’ll send you a text message that
tells you if your phone is compatible and a download link. This
includes your address book plus, any filing, deleting or sending you do
there will magically be reflected in your regular web version.
• A similar option is available for Yahoo mail. The nice thing about Yahoo’s version is
that you can set up Yahoo Go to check for email constantly (although
this will tax your battery) whereas Gmail checks when you open the
program and when you hit the Refresh button. Yahoo will also let
you open attachments in Microsoft Office as well as picture files
(including Flickr). The bad thing about the Yahoo version is that
it is available for far fewer phones and it’s much slower.
• If you don’t have the right phone or the right
carrier and you simply refuse to be left out, you can sign up with
www.teleflip.com and they will check your email, convert it to a text
message and alert your cell phone when a new message arrives. Not the
most elegant solution but it gets the job done. Teleflip will
also ask you to approve email addresses to avoid interrupting your
3-martini lunch by forwarding you your spam. If you’re ready to
flip for this service, hold on – there are a couple of problems.
1.) Text messages can only be up to 120 characters which means that
messages longer than that will be broken up into chunks (although you
can set a cap on the number of chunks.) 2.) Teleflip won’t find your
new messages if your computer finds them first. So, if your PC is
at home checking email every 5 minutes and it gets to them first, you
won’t get them on your cell phone. The only way to avoid this is
close out your email program before you head out.
Thing No. 8 Different plans offer different
access
Some are email only or access to selected sites (e.g. Amp’d Mobile get.ampd.com/ optimizes for youth-oriented content) not to
mention different connection speeds between carriers and plans and even
between locations on the same plan. And, they are priced
differently just like the voice plans; unlimited or according to the
amount of data used. If you’re going to be downloading stuff,
“unlimited” is usually best since the same rules apply when you exceed
your amount and MP3 and/or video files are big. Finally, there
are also hybrid plans that combine voice and data or allow you to dip
into your voice minutes for data. A normal data plan should run
you $10-$20 per month.
Thing No. 9 Txtg is Gr8!
It comes in handy when you really
want to use your phone to avoid talking to somebody and it’s cheap
(anywhere from $5-$15) but it isn’t included. So, buy a bundle
(especially if you’re Teleflipping.) Otherwise, you could be billed
15-cents per message or per chunk as the case may be.
Thing No. 10 If you’re really fancy, you can use your cell
phone as a modem.
You can connect it to your laptop when you find
yourself in a dead zone in which case you will have bought a data plan
that covers this, a Mobile Kit with USB drivers and software managers
and you’ll be happily downloading your software and not be needing the
likes of us anyway.
Thing No. 11 You’re covered.
Some people say Cingular
has the largest coverage; some people say that Verizon has the best
coverage. Some people say the strangest things. We don’t
really know but who cares? Unless you’re always moving around, you just
need the coverage where you need it. The major metros are pretty
much at parity but if you’re somewhere else, check coverage maps deadcellzones.com or cellreception.com because what you don’t
want to do is incur roaming charges. You can access J.D. Power ratings and Consumer Reports releases an annual report in January of each
year. If you can’t get bars in the right places or they
just keep dropping your calls, you have 30 days to call it quits and
not be charged an early termination fee. If you want to use your
phone abroad, there is the same myriad of pricing options. Just
make sure you have a tri-quad GSM enabled phone.