Am I that popular that people are calling me all the goddamn time and keeping me on the phone at 15 minutes at a clip? Cause I cannot figure out how in THE hell I keep doing this.
It’s obvious I need to sign up for a different kind of plan. But I need to SAVE money, not add new $$$$ plans!
Fuck!
Y’know, I think every provider has a minute checker code you can dial to make sure you have minutes–I’d get into the habit of checking it often. If you have free night and weekend minutes, be aware that a call begun in one time period is all counted in that time period, so if your nights begin at nine a one hour call started at 8:50 will ALL be counted against your daytime minutes. By the same token, if your nights end at seven AM, a one hour call begun at 6:50 will not count against daytime minutes. Unfortunately, few people like to hear from you at that hour of the morning. It’s a bummer.
At any rate, if you’re going over the minutes regularly you’re probably spending way more in overage than it would cost to move up to the next rate plan, just sayin’. It’s a false economy trying to stay in an ill fitting rate plan…
You get charged when people ring YOU? How the hell does THAT work??
How familiar are you with cellular phones? Because I was under the impression that charging for incoming calls is pretty standard for mobiles.
Not in Europe it ain’t. It’s ridiculous and unfair in my estimation.
Has the OP considered a pay-as-you-go phone for the time being?
Here in the US, most cellphone plans count the minutes you’re using the phone, whether you place the call or receive the call. So, if your plan has 1000 minutes a month, this is the TOTAL amount of time you’re allowed to spend on the phone, including both incoming and outgoing calls.
I guess that, originally at least, this system was instituted because cellphone providers figured that the cellphone user makes use of the cellphone network (towers, etc.) whether he or she places or receives the call.
Of course, while this system seems outrageous to people from Australia, remember that there are aspects of cellphone use that are much, much cheaper in the US. For example, when you call a cellphone, it costs you no more than calling a regular landline in the same area code. So, if i make a call to a 619 number from my home phone here in San Diego, it’s a free call (for me) whether the phone is a landline or a cellphone. When i was in Australia, calls to cellphones were typically charged at incredibly high rates, up to $1 a minute, even if the cellphone user was right around the corner. I’m not sure if those rates have come down or not, but i believe that it is still more expensive to call a mobile phone in Australia. Is that right?
Also, here in the US you can actually get some reasonably cheap unlimited plans, which allow you to use your cellphone as much as you want. And even some of the limited plans allow unlimited calling in the evenings and on weekends, or unlimited calling to other phones on the same provider network.
Not in Australia either, and we have the pre-paid system as well which works brilliantly for me!
Another vote and endorsement for pre-paid subscriptions. I transfer a set sum at the start of each month to my cell provider account and get those minutes directly, in an easy-to-account-for way. If I’m in the middle of something and need more minutes than I’ve paid for and am finding myself running out, I can send off a command from my cellphone for my service provider to charge my credit card for more minutes, at no premium.
One hour calls? On a cell phone? Holy crap! I only answer my cell if I know the caller, I have different rings for friends, I have call display, and I never answer unknown ID’s. I have a land line for long calls, my cell I use a lot, but only for short calls!
First off, the Man is screwing you, never doubt it.
However, a lot of people have no idea how much time they spend on the phone. We’ve had this issue at work in the past when minutes limits were part of our mobile phone plans.
I work with middle-aged men who are like teenagers when they’re on the phone.
ETA: removed the chauvinistic part
Shorten your conversations by using just ‘fuck’ instead of ‘fuckity fuck’.
My cell phone is my only phone. It might be the case for the OP as well.
Not in Europe. This was discussed recently in this thread.
I like the European system where the caller pays for the call. It makes sense to me. On the other hand I would have no trouble cutting calls short by saying I can’t talk right now.
In the US system, the caller and the callee pay for it. It’s complete BS, and I don’t understand why more people don’t get up in arms about it so it gets changed.
I think most people don’t realize the rest of the world does it differently.
Oh, and we also get charged for our incoming texts, too, which is even MORE BS because unless you turn off texts completely, you can’t just ignore it like a call and not get charged. There are thousands of stories about people accidentally signing up for those “joke a day” texts, which then have their number sent to even MORE txt spammers, and have thousands of dollars in text charges.
One of my former coworkers’ ex-girlfriend, the night they broke up, signed his phone number up for all those stupid little things she could find. He had to get his number changed very shortly thereafter.
Assuming, of course, the caller pays for it in the first place :smack: I went over my minutes badly one month because of Owls calling me a lot during the day. He was within the terms of his plan, but I got billed for double the usual. (I didn’t use my landline much then as I was in a dorm–dialing out, unless it was local, was a PITA).
The text thing is worse though. I was fortunate that few of my friends did it much, and I asked the couple that did to not text me since I didn’t have it on my plan. I probably sent and received 20 texts in the three years I had the phone, including spam from the provider. I can kinda see charging for incoming calls, since you have more control over them, but charging for texts received is total shit.
It is in America.
It is not in Australia, where Kambucta and I live.
mhendo, yeah, not sure when you were here last, but it’s come down a LOT from that. There’s some unlimited plans out there, too (well, no directory or international calls included, but you see what I mean.
It sounds like cell phones have gotten a lot cheaper in the US since I left, too.
I like the actual response that I heard a cell phone store employee say to a person who was being rather rude about blaming them for her repeatedly going over her minutes;
"Maybe you could just stop talking once in a while."
Did he add, “Right now would be a good time”? 'Cause I would pay to see that.
Most phones have some sort of tracking of the call duration. Try checking that sometime to see if you are really using the amount you are billed for.
PS: Since the operators in America are doing nothing special compared to the rest of the world, billing both sides is totally a ripoff in my opinion. They are making money off ignorance about the practices in the rest of the world.
If my idiot friends drunk dial me, I shouldn’t have to pay to listen to their rambling.
I recommend switching to MetroPCS if it’s in your area and you don’t travel out of their coverage area often.
I pay a flat rate of about $50 for unlimited calls and texts. If I travel out of my area, I can add cash to my Metro Account to cover those calls, but their coverage has really expanded. I’m in GA and went to The Bay Area and Dallas last year and was billed no extra charges.
When I had Sprint, to be safe I would wait until about 3 minutes past the “night rate” start so that I didn’t get billed daytime charges.
If you call just one minute too soon at 8:59 let’s say, and you talk for an hour, you are billed the 8:59 rate for the full hour instead of 1 minute daytime and 59 minutes night rate.