Cell phones. Honestly, how is it that in this day and age, with cell phones being such a “necessary” thing, do people still not understand how to read their bills? LOL Seriously, I’ve been taking billing calls and frankly, most people either do not understand how to read the bill in the first place, or they completely miss charges for months and then call and ask about it.

For example – if you get a text message offering free ring tones. If you reply to the text, you will start a subscription to something. This is a given. Just delete the message. The subscription won’t start unless you actually reply. If you DO accidently reply, text back with “stop” “end” or “close” or something to that effect. If you aren’t sure, check the texts you receive from the service – they’ll usually give you the keyword you need to text back to end the subscription.

Then check your bill. If you got charged for it, call the cell carrier and ask them to refund it. Usually they can, but if they can’t they can usually tell you who you need to get in touch with.

Also – overages. It’s not a long distance card. If you get through your minutes, you pay per minute. It doesn’t just stop or shut off. I think this is especially confusing for people who are used to prepaid cell phone service. They figure that their plan comes with 900 minutes, after 900 minutes are used, the phone will stop working until it refills at the end of the month. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it goes. Your phone keeps working and you get charged per minute – usually anywhere from 30 cents – 45 cents per minute. Ouch. Watch your usage. Most carriers have * or # numbers you can use to check your minute usage. Find out what your carrier’s numbers are and use them. In fact, some carriers, such as Verizon have them pre-programmed into your contacts list on your phone.

But please, do your best to educate yourself. Don’t let that store rep get away from you and start serving the next customer until you’re satisfied you know what is going on with your service and your bill. They’re paid to make sure you understand everything, so make sure they earn their pay! After all, then you won’t have to spend an hour or more on the phone with customer service trying to untangle the mess that is your bill.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 1:46 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.